October 10, 2019 EditEdit with WPBakery Page Builder

Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish author, and Peter Handke, an Austrian writer, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced at a ceremony in Stockholm.

Mr. Handke won this year’s prize, while Ms. Tokarczuk won the 2018 prize, which had been postponed for a year because of a scandal at the academy.

Ms. Tokarczuk is best known for her 2014 historical novel “Księgi Jakubowe” or “The Book of Jacob,” centered in the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires and focused on the life of Jacob Frank, an 18th century Polish leader of a Jewish splinter group that converted to Islam and then Catholicism. “She has in this work showed the supreme capacity of the novel to represent a case almost beyond human understanding,” Nobel officials wrote in their citation.

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In 2018, she got renewed prominence after winning the Man Booker International Prize for translated fiction for “Flights,” an experimental novel based on stories of travel.

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Mr. Handke’s debut novel, “Die Hornissen” was published in 1966, and with that and his play “Publikumsbeschimpfung,” or “Offending the Audience,” he made his mark on the literature world.