Read Nobel Prize in Literature winners Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke

Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian author Peter Handke have just been announced as the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prize winners in Literature, respectively. Naturally, we might expect our vast collection of their novels to be in high demand!

Before getting  started in literature, Tokarczuk was a psychologist at the University of Warsaw, working as a therapist and volunteer psychologist at an asylum in western Poland. She cites her love for psychology as a significant influence on her literary career. She rose to fame with her third novel, Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times), an enchanting microcosm of 20th-century Poland. She has also built a strong collection of short stories, poems, and essays along with her bestselling novels, which have won her Poland’s Koscielski Foundation Prize and prestigious Nike Award and the International Booker Prize. Tokarczuk has paved the way for Polish literature on the international stage with her insight into the human psyche.

Handke initially studied law at the University of Graz in Austria, dropping out when his first novel,  Die Hornissen (The Hornets), was picked up for publication. Often the center of controversy and known for paying close attention to the “material presence of the world,” he has had much commercial success with his plays and scripts written for films, particularly with his 1966 play, Offending the Audience and 1987 film, “Wings of Desire.” Handke has not only won awards for his novels but for his films as well, including the Gold Award for German Arthouse Cinema and the Georg Büchner Prize for German literature.

Read these selected books by the two authors before they go flying off the library shelves!