Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke have been awarded the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature, respectively (the prize was not awarded in 2018 after scandal and impropriety rocked the Swedish Academy).

Article continues after advertisement

Tokarczuk was one of this year’s favorites to win; here’s translator Jennifer Croft on the intense, nationalist backlash The Books of Jacob received in Tokarczuk’s native Poland. Here’s an excerpt from her novel, Flights (trans. Jennifer Croft), and from her latest, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones).

Austrian playwright/aphorist/novelist Peter Handke… was not one of this year’s favorites. Here’s what critics thought of his latest novel in translation, The Moravian Night.

 

Article continues after advertisement

Jonny Diamond

Jonny Diamond

Jonny Diamond is the Editor in Chief of Literary Hub. He lives in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains with his wife and two sons, and is currently writing a cultural history of the axe for W.W. Norton. @JonnyDiamondJonnyDiamond.me