Handke says he did not expect backlash over Nobel prize

N1

Austrian writer Peter Handke told the Republika Srpska TV (RTRS) that he was surprised by the campaign against him over the Nobel literature prize, adding that his idea was to reconcile views.

Handke is the laureate of the Nobel Literature Prize for 2019. The decision by the Nobel Committee met with protests in the countries of the former Yugoslavia because of Handke’s support for the Serbs and the late FRY President Slobodan Milosevic.

“I would like to meet a mother from each side. A mother from Kravica (a Serb village in eastern Bosnia which was the site of a massacre by Moslem forces) where all the massacres started and a mother from the Srebrenica area. That was my idead but I think it was slightly naïve. I think it can’t be realized at this moment,” he said.

Asked about the moment that he was told that he won the Nobel prize, Handke said he was calm at first but only until the attacks against him began. “I am not a masochist. You can’t expect bad things. You can imagine them but in the end they turn out to be worse,” he said.

The award presentation ceremony will be boycotted by representatives of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Albania and Turkey while a number of journalists and academics from several countries have called the Nobel Committee to reverse its decision.