Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and Austria’s Peter Handke have been awarded the Nobel Literature Prize.

The award was not given last year, so Handke won the 2019 prize  for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience” while Tokarczuk won the 2018 prize “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”

Each author will receive a $918,000 cash award.

The Swedish Academy did not name a winner for the prize last year following accusations of sexual abuse and other wrongdoing by people connected to the academy.

The coveted Nobel Peace prize will be awarded on Friday.  

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