Nobel critics condemn decision to award controversial Austrian author

Critics have hit out at the decision to give Peter Handke a Nobel Prize for Literature, BBC News reported.

The Austrian playwright, novelist and poet was awarded the 2019 prize on Thursday.

He is a highly controversial figure for his support for the Serbs during the 1990s Yugoslav war.

Albania's Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj wrote on Twitter that the award was shameful and had been awarded to a "genocide denier".

The Austrian author said he was "astonished" at winning the prize adding that the decision was "very courageous by the Swedish Academy". His award was widely praised in Austria while the mayor of Belgrade, Zoran Radojicic, spoke of "a great writer, humanist and a man who loves Serbia".

The Swedish Academy which oversees the prestigious award said in a statement that Handke had been recognised for "an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience".

The Nobel committee also awarded the 2018 prize on Thursday to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk.

Her debut novel was published in 1993, and her breakthrough came three years later with Primeval and Other Times, which is set in a mythical village and traced Poland's history from World War One to the 1980s.

Handke, 76, once called for the Nobel Prize for Literature to be abolished, condemning the "false canonisation" of its winner.

He burst on to the literary scene in the 1960s and one his best-known works, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, dealt with his mother's suicide in 1971. He has also collaborated with film director Wim Wenders.