The Nobel prize in literature was awarded twice on Thursday after the body that selects the winners was rocked by a sexual assault scandal that forced it to postpone the 2018 ceremony. The 2018 prize was belatedly awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, while the 2019 award was handed to the Austrian author Peter Handke. The panel said Tokarczuk was being recognized “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Handke was commended “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.” Last year's ceremony was shelved after the Swedish Academy was engulfed by rape accusations against the husband of one of its members.