The Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian writer Peter Handke have both been given Nobel Prizes for literature for 2018 and 2019 respectively, in a rare double awarding that saw the prestigious prize go to two big names in contemporary European writing.

Ms Tokarczuk, whose books include Flights , the story of a woman in perpetual motion that won the Man Booker International prize, and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, an exploration of a string of murders in a remote village, was praised by the Swedish Academy for her “narrative imagination” and wit.

A former clinical psychologist who says she turned to writing because she was “more neurotic than [her] clients”, Ms Tokarczuk, 57, has been attacked in her native Poland for her focus on the darker sides of the country’s history, including criticism of the treatment of refugees and anti-Semitism.