Here's my latest story about the Peter Handke/Nobel Prize controversy: his publisher, Suhrkamp, has privately circulated a 24-page defense of his work. But it's backfiring, drawing criticism for selectively quoting from his Bosnia war books. theintercept.com/2019/11/09/pet…
The Intercept obtained a copy of the strange statement that Peter Handke's publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag, quietly circulated in response to widespread criticism of the Nobel Prize winner's books on the Bosnia war. Here's a link to the statement. documentcloud.org/documents/6543…
It's basically unprecedented for a Nobel Prize winner's publisher to feel obliged to issue a statement of this length in defense of his work. This is a sign, I think, that criticism of the Nobel Committee's choice has hit home. But the statement appears to be backfiring.
German and Austrian news outlets, though generally supportive of Handke's Nobel, are criticizing his publisher's statement as lopsided and deceptive. The Frankfurter Allgemeine asked whether it “will enter literary history as an act of heroism or an act of villainy.”
Der Tagesspiegel accused Suhrkamp of doing what the publisher was accusing others of doing: “It may work here and there, but in its entirety it is a problematic endeavor. Many of the Handke quotes are torn from their context.”
My latest story examines several of the publisher's claims; some of them are specifically against stories I previously wrote about Handke's work that pointed out the ways in which he denied the Serb genocide of Muslims in Bosnia.
Suhrkamp cites two begrudging statements Handke made in which he admitted genocide and war crimes by Serbs. But that's in the face of a far-larger number of occasions on which Handke expressed skepticism and even scorn for reports of Serb atrocities. From my story: 
The statement by Handke's publisher is almost comically inept (yet there's no comedy in this). Trying to rebut criticism of his closeness to Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Suhrkamp weakly notes that Handke did not testify as a defense witness at Milosevic's war crimes trial.
I can go on (and very well might, the day is young) but I just want to step back and note that the evidence of Handke's genocide denialism is substantial and growing. Suhrkamp's attempt to throw dust in our eyes is a sign of the injustice done by the @NobelPrize organization.
