Handke to receive Nobel Prize at ceremony amid controversy

Nobel literature laureate Peter Handke, who backed Serbia during the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, receives his prize at a gala ceremony Tuesday in Stockholm, where hundreds are expected to protest.

The Swedish Academy's pick for the 2019 prize, announced in October, triggered outrage in the Balkans and beyond because of Handke's support for late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

The 77-year-old Austrian author is to receive his Nobel Prize from the hands of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony with this year's other laureates, followed by a gala banquet attended by more than 1,200 special guests.

The Academy honoured Handke "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience." It called him "one of the most influential writers in Europe after the Second World War."
In Stockholm on Friday at a press conference, Handke dodged questions on the Balkan wars, telling reporters: "I like literature, not opinions."
"He voted against dissolving Yugoslavia in one of the last ballots. His funeral was Yugoslavia's funeral too," Handke said. "Have people forgotten that this state was founded in opposition to Hitler's Reich?"