Rama: Nobel Prize for Handken '%s' scandal

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has once again shown concern for this year's Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Peter Handke, known as a supporter of Slobodan Milosevic..

Rama in an editorial published in Politico.eu writes that this award will not make Handken an excellent writer.

“In the election of Austrian author, the Swedish Academy has managed to reduce the price value and turn into another scandal, which would damage its reputation for the future”, Rama writes.

Below the complete editorial published in Polytico.eu:

The Swedish Academy's decision to grant Peter Handkes the Nobel Prize for Literature last week was a shocking move that should disturb politics as much as the world of literature.

The Austrian writer is the renowned supporter of former Serbian nationalist Freedom Slobodan Milosevic, and one of his genocide storm apologists, in the 90th wars in Yugoslavia.

Despite uncontested evidence of the crimes of the Serbian regime, Handke participated in the trial of the former dictator at The Hague and then his funeral. Defenders of the Swedish Academy's decision claim that Handke's views should not be mixed with his particular artistic capacity and contribution to literature.

Some say the Austrian writer's continued goal has been to be provocative and that his nonconventional political beliefs should be seen as part of a broader effort to promote debate and free politics from too much austerity. But dividing Handke's work from his political beliefs would make a big mistake.

Taking into account the admission he made to Milosevic's crimes and the disregard he has dealt with the victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and torture, Handke's art is deeply political.

One of the darkest examples, of Handke's extensive confession, is found in his book <x0...Roadway to Rivers: Justice for Serbia”, published in 1997, in which it documents the daily life of Serbs, after the wars that had begun in 1990. As the epilogue underlines, his aim was not to collect evil “-facts”, but to offer a source confession that would build peace. The Serbs of this confession are quite common, with empty pockets and innocent souls sleeping in cellars without heat. They eat sarma and cream while drinking Smederevo wine.

In this revision, Serbs come to us as people who are hurt by the European perspective, which has turned their backs on them. Putting the pipe to the daily life of Serbs, Handke does not complete the picture of other ethnicities' tragedy and strengthens the confession of Serbian champion Slobodan Milosevic, whose coming to power was fueled by the idea that Serbs were victims who had to find protection, to help protect freedoms and dignity. Handke is surprisingly silent about Serbia's central role in the Balkan tragedy of the 1990s, including the genocide in Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The atrocities committed there by the Milosevic regime, he presents them as blueprints of Western media and not as facts documented by the International Court of Justice for Crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Ignoring the facts, Handke amniston and defend the genocide campaigns of the Serbian leader. That way, he tries to rewrite history.

Ignoring the hegemous ambitions and the state genocide of Serbia allows him to present Slovenia and Croatia as the initiator of the breakup of Yugoslavia and to grant Milosevic the merits of post-detonian peace in Yugoslavia.

Handke's work cannot be isolated from the political service that has made Serbian leader. His political flyers are not literature. They are calls for hate to strengthen prejudice. I have no doubt that Handke should be read, studied, discussed. But the establishment of his work, on other candidates deserving of the Nobel Prize, was a careless mistake. As writer and critic Harry Kunzru described, “He is a good writer, combining deep knowledge with shocking ethical blindness”.

The Nobel Prize will not make Handken the great writer. But with the choice of the Austrian writer, the Swedish Academy has succeeded in greatly lowering the price value and plunging itself into another scandal that will make a reputation for the coming decades.