Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk on Thursday won the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize, which was delayed over a sexual harassment scandal, while Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke took the 2019 award, the Swedish Academy said.
Tokarczuk was honoured "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life".
Handke won "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience."
The Nobel Prize for Literature was postponed last year after a sexual harassment scandal left the institution paralysed.
Left in tatters by the debacle, the Academy, tasked with selecting the Nobel Literature laureate, postponed the 2018 prize until this year -- the first delay in 70 years.
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Only 14 of the 114 literature laureates since 1901 have been women.
The Academy's woes began in November 2017 when it disagreed about how to manage its close ties to Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault, accused and later convicted of rape.
Arnault is married to Katarina Frostenson, a member of the Academy who later resigned over the scandal at the height of the #MeToo movement against harassment of women.
The pair also ran a cultural club in Stockholm that received funding from the body. Ultimately, seven members quit the Academy, including then permanent secretary Sara Danius.
(With Agency Inputs)
