Polish Authors, Tokarczuk and Handke wins 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Olga Tokarczuk and Austria’s Peter Handke, Polish authors, have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Two winners were named in this year’s award, one for 2019 and one for 201. The two award were presented because the prize was not awarded last year.

The Swedish Academy, which oversees the prestigious award, suspended it in 2018 after a sexual assault scandal.

Tokarczuk, who also won the Man Booker International Prize last year, was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize, with this year’s award going to Peter Handke.

The 76-year-old Austrian playwright, novelist and poet was given recognision for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”, the academy explained that in a statement.

However, he has been a highly controversial figure for his support for the Serbs during the 1990s Yugoslav war, and for speaking at the 2006 funeral of the former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, who was accused of genocide and other related war crimes.

In 2014, Handke also called for the Nobel Prize for Literature to be abolished, saying it brings its winner “false canonization” along with “one moment of attention [and] six pages in the newspaper”.

Both laureates’ winners have agreed to receive their awards this year, however, the Award organisers stated that each awardees will receive nine million Swedish kronor (£740,000), as well as a medal and a diploma.

The 2018 Nobel Prize was delayed by a year after a crisis in the academy sparked by allegations against Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of Academy member, Katarina Frostenson. Arnault was sentenced to two years in prison in October after being convicted over allegations of rape.

Frostenson stepped down, and the events also led to allegations of conflict of interest and the leaking of Nobel winners’ names which all resulted in “reduced public confidence in the Academy”, says the awards body.