October 18, 2019

Swedish Academy forced to defend choice for Nobel Prize

topic:	Human Rights
located:	Austria, Sweden
editor:	Katarina Panić

The Swedish Academy defends choice for Nobel Literature Prize to Austrian author Peter Handke, claiming he had made “provocative, unsuitable and unclear comments in political questions” but had not glorified bloodshed.

The decision has sparked angry reactions by many political leaders, intellectuals and civil society organisations - not only in the Balkans – because of novelist’s sympathy for Serbian strongman leader Slobodan Milošević. 

Croatia's Foreign Ministry said Milošević’s policy “led to wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in which many lives were lost, numerous people were driven out and long-term instability was introduced in this part of Europe”. 

Željko Komšić, the Chairman of Bosnia’s Presidency said the Academy is risking future candidates rejecting this prize in order to avoid being associated with Handke. 

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said “the Swedish Academy managed to decrease the value of the award and turn it into another scandal which will be detrimental to its reputation for generations to come”.  

In Kosovo, which was devastated by the late nineties war between Serb forces and pro-independence ethnic Albanian fighters. A protest took place in front of the Swedish Embassy in Priština, while in Serb-dominated north of the country people have celebrated. 

In Serbia papers claimed the prize was awarded to a “friend of Serbs” who is a member of the country's academy of sciences and arts since 2012. The bookstores are overflowing with his books.

According to ORF, the novelist said he would never talk to journalists again: “I’m standing at my garden gate and there are 50 journalists – and all of them just ask me questions like you do, and from not a single person who comes to me I hear they have read any of my works or know what I have written,” Handke told the Austrian broadcaster. 

Should the literary work be separated from political opinions is not the dilemma for more than 10,000 people who signed an online petition to revoke the Academy’s decision. However, those who justify it say artists should not always be judged on what they said, or especially on what was said about them because there is not necessarily a link between their work and their beliefs.

Image: flickr, C.K. Koay