Friday 21 Lifestyle | Nobel Friday, October 11, 2019

Peter Handke: Avant-garde writer, Nobel lga Tokarczuk, considered the chology at the University of Warsaw. She Omost talented Polish novelist of her worked as a therapist for a few years in the generation, has a string of best- western city of Walbrzych and published a sellers to her name and a style that blends collection of poems before taking a stab at critic the real with the mystical. A vegetarian and prose. Following the success of her early environmentalist with long, dark dread- books, she turned to writing full time and locks, the 57-year-old writer is also a po- settled in the Sudety mountains near the ustrian Peter Handke, one of the most litical activist who does not shy away from Czech border. original German-language writers alive, criticizing Poland’s right-wing Law and The mother of one is an animal lover Aonce used his famously sharp tongue to Justice (PiS) government. She received with a keen interest in astrology and psy- call for the Nobel Prize in Literature to be death threats in 2015 after telling state choanalyst Carl Jung. “She’s a mystic in abolished. The prize brings its winner “false media that an open and tolerant Poland constant search of the truth, a truth that canonization” along with “one moment of at- was a myth. Her publishers assigned her a can only be perceived on the move, by tention (and) six pages in the newspaper,” the security detail for a week. transcending borders,” said Kinga Dunin, a novelist, playwright, poet and translator told Her books portray a polychromatic friend and fellow writer. “All set forms, in- Austrian media in 2014. It was not the first world perpetually in motion, with charac- stitutions and language are death,” Dunin time that Handke had shown himself to be an ters’ traits intermingled and language that told AFP. iconoclast. He has described Thomas Mann, a is both precise and poetic. “I don’t have a giant of German literature and a 1929 Nobel clear biography of my own that I could re- Spanning borders laureate, as a “terribly bad writer” churning count in an interesting way. I’m made up of Tokarczuk’s first novel, “The Journey of out “condescending, snotty-nosed prose”. the characters that I pulled out of my head, the People of the Book,” released in 1993, But what really appalled many peers and that I invented,” Tokarczuk said in an inter- chronicles a failed expedition to find a fans was his attendance at former Serbian view with The Polish Book Institute. “I’m mysterious book. She won the Booker In- president Slobodan Milosevic’s funeral, and Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke made up of all of them. I have a huge, multi- ternational Prize along with her translator his sympathy for the Serbs in the 1990s Yu- frame biography.” Jennifer Croft for her 2007 novel “Flights”, goslav wars. Handke was born in Griffen in Tokarczuk has written more than a whose English version came out in 2017. southern Austria during World War II on De- An indignity dozen books and won numerous honours, The book was praised for its “series of cember 6, 1942 to a German soldier father and At the 2006 funeral of Milosevic-who died including Britain’s Man Booker Interna- startling juxtapositions (as Tokarczuk) flies a mother from Austria’s Slovenian minority. while on trial for crimes against humanity, and tional Prize last year and Poland’s most us through a galaxy of departures and ar- After a few early years in Communist East who wanted Handke to testify in his defence- prestigious Nike Literary Award-twice. rivals, stories and digressions, all the while Berlin, Handke grew up back in Austria, and the writer made a speech in front of thousands Her books have been turned into plays and exploring matters close to the contempo- first discovered his love of writing while con- of mourners. Some stood up for Handke, in- films and translated into more than 25 lan- rary and human predicament”. tributing to the magazine of his hated Catholic cluding Nobel-winning compatriot Elfriede guages, including Catalan, Hindi and Her 900-page “The Books of Jacob” boarding school. Jelinek. But many others, from Susan Sontag Japanese. spans seven countries, three religions and He burst onto the literary scene in 1966 to Salman Rushdie, lined up to lambast him. five languages, tracing the little-known his- with his novel “The Hornets” and with a play, German poet and essayist Hans-Magnus En- Mystic tory of Frankism, a Jewish messianic sect “Offending the Audience”, in which four ac- zensberger, noting Handke’s 1960s firebrand Born on January 29, 1962, in the western that sprang up in Poland in the 18th cen- tors dissect the nature of theatre and then turn past, said it was “a paradox that the remnants town of Sulechow, Tokarczuk studied psy- tury. Released in 2014, its pages are num- on the audience. That success led him to kiss of the peace movement are running around bered in reverse in the style of Hebrew goodbye to his law studies and write full-time. with supporters of mass murder”. books. It became both an award-winning He has never looked back, leading a peri- In 2006 an outcry forced him to reject an- bestseller and the target of harsh criticism patetic existence and writing prolifically. other German prize-the Heinrich Heine from nationalist circles in Poland. award-and the Comedie-Francaise theatre in Tokarczuk also co-wrote the screen- Cult classics Paris refused to put on one of his plays. And play for the Polish crime film “Spoor”, Notable works include “Short Letter, Long when, in 2014, he came to collect the Ibsen which won the Alfred Bauer Prize for a Farewell”, the poetry collection “The Inner- prize in Norway, he was greeted with demon- work of particular innovation at the Berlin world of the Outerworld of the Innerworld” strators chanting “fascist” and holding “Geno- film festival in 2017. “Spoor” was also se- and “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams” about his cide-denier” placards. “What an indignity!” lected as Poland’s entry for the best for- mother, who killed herself in 1971. He has also Handke told the Austria Press Agency after- eign language film at the 2018 Oscars. been no slouch in film-making, cooperating wards. “Not for me, but for the seriousness of When not travelling, Tokarczuk divides several times with German director and close writing.” But despite it all, at 76 and with a her time between an apartment in Poland’s friend Wim Wenders. Many of their works ex- mane of grey hair, Handke remains active. western city of Wroclaw and her moun- plore themes such as loneliness and mortality. His play, “The Innocent, Me and the Un- tain home.—AFP In 1972, Wenders adapted Handke’s novel known Woman by the Side of the Road”, pre- “The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty” about miered at Vienna’s hallowed Burgtheater in a goalie who is sent off during a match and February 2016, while later that year a Wen- later commits a murder. ders-Handke creation, “The Beautiful Days of The pair also worked together in the 1987 Aranjuez”, competed at the Venice Film Festi- cult classic “Wings of Desire”, about a pair of val. “Without him I would perhaps have be- angels roaming Berlin. In the 1990s Handke come a painter,” Wenders said. — AFP emerged as a vocal defender of the Serbs in the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia, even com- paring them to the Jews under the Nazis, a re- mark he later retracted. His 1996 travelogue “A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia”, Polish author caused a storm, and in 1999 he returned Ger- Olga Tokarczuk many’s prestigious Buechner prize in protest at NATO’s bombing of Belgrade.