Amitav Ghosh-Jnanpith award 2018

Amitav Ghosh  is an Indian writer and the winner of the 54th Jnanpith award, best known for his work in English fiction.Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956 to a Bengali Hindu family and was educated at the all-boys boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun. He grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. His contemporaries at Doon included author Vikram Seth and historian Ram Guha. While at school, he regularly contributed fiction and poetry to The Doon School Weekly (then edited by Seth) and founded the magazine History Times along with Guha.  After Doon, he received degrees from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, and Delhi School of Economics. He then won the Inlaks Foundation scholarship to complete a D. Phil. in social anthropology at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, under the supervision of British social anthropologist Peter Lienhardt. His first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi.

Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. They have two children, Lila and Nayan. He has been a fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York, as Distinguished Professor in Comparative literature. He has also been a visiting professor at the English department of Harvard University since 2005. Ghosh subsequently returned to India began working on the Ibis trilogy which includes Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), and Flood of Fire (2015).

He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government in 2007. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2015 Ghosh was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow. The Circle of Reason won the Prix Médicis étranger, one of France's top literary awards. The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997. Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. It was the co-winner of the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2009, as well as co-winner of the 2010 Dan David Prize. River of Smoke was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2011. The government of India awarded him the civilian honour of Padma Shri in 2007. He also received - together with Margaret Atwood - the Israeli Dan David Prize.

Ghosh famously withdrew his novel The Glass Palace from consideration for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, where it was awarded the best novel in the Eurasian section, citing his objections to the term "commonwealth" and the unfairness of the English language requirement specified in the rules.

Ghosh received the lifetime achievement award at Tata Literature Live, the Mumbai LitFest on November 20, 2016. He was conferred the 54th Jnanpith award in December 2018 and is the first Indian writer in English to have been chosen for this honour..

Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri-2019-India’s highest literary- Jnanpith Award

Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri  popularly known as Akkitham, is an Indian poet and essayist of Malayalam language. Known for a simple and lucid style of writing, Akkitham is the 2019 recipient of India’s highest literary honour, the Jnanpith Award, and several other awards including Padma Shri, Ezhuthachan Award, Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry, Odakkuzhal Award, Vallathol Award, Vayalar Award and Aasan Prize.

Akkitham received the Sanjayan Award in 1952, for his work, Irupatham Noottandinte Ithihasam and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1971 for Balidarshanam. He received two major honours in 1973, the Sahitya Akademi Award for Balidarshanam and the Odakkuzhal Award for Nimisha Kshetram. He was selected for the Asan Smaraka Kavitha Puraskaram in 1994 and, two years later, for the 1996 Lalithambika Antharjanam Smaraka Sahitya Award, followed by the Vallathol Award in 1997.

The next major honour for Akkitham came by way of Vayalar Award which he received in 2012.The Government of Kerala awarded him Ezhuthachan Puraskaram, their highest literary award in 2016.He received Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of the Government of India in 2017. He could not attend the investiture ceremony due to ill health; the award was later handed over to him by the district collector of Palakkad. He received Jnanpith Award, the highest Indian literary award, in 2019. He is also a recipient several other honours such as Krishna Geedhi Award, Nalappad Award, Puthezhan Award, Moorti Devi Award of Bharatiya Jnanpith and Amrita Keerti Puraskar (2004). Arikil Akkitham is a documentary film directed by E. Suresh, which details the life of the poet from the perspective of his daughter, Sreeja

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk-2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk  is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual who has been described in Poland as one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful authors of her generation.In 2018, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights (translated by Jennifer Croft). In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tokarczuk is particularly noted for the mythical tone of her writing. She trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw and published a collection of poems, several novels, as well as other books with shorter prose works. Flights won the Nike Award, Poland's top literary prize, in 2008. She attended the 2010 Edinburgh Book Festival to discuss her book Primeval and Other Times and other work. With her novel Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob), Tokarczuk won the Nike Award again in 2015. In the same year, Tokarczuk received the German-Polish International Bridge Prize, a recognition extended to persons especially accomplished in the promotion of peace, democratic development and mutual understanding among the people and nations of Europe.

Tokarczuk is a leftist, a vegetarian, and feminist. She has been criticized by some groups in Poland as unpatriotic, anti-Christian and a promoter of eco-terrorism. She has denied the allegations, has described herself as a "true patriot" and has said that groups criticizing her are xenophobic and damage Poland's international reputation

Peter Handke-Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019

Peter Handke  is an Austrian-born novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director and screenwriter. In the late 1960s, he was recognized for works such as the play Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience) and the novel Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick). Prompted by his mother's suicide in 1971, he reflected her life in the novel Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams).

Handke was a member of the Grazer Gruppe (an association of authors) and the Grazer Autorenversammlung, and co-founded the Verlag der Autoren publishing house in Frankfurt. He collaborated with director Wim Wenders, leading to screenplays such as Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire). Handke held various highly controversial positions on matters such as the Yugoslav Wars.

Handke has received many awards, including the 1973 Georg Büchner Prize, the 2018 Austrian Nestroy Theatre Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019

Abiy Ahmed Ali -2019 Nobel Peace Prize -

Abiy Ahmed Ali  is an Ethiopian politician serving as the fourth prime minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia since 2 April 2018. He is chairman of both the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), which is one of the four coalition parties of the EPRDF. Abiy is also an elected member of the Ethiopian parliament, and a member of the ODP and EPRDF executive committees.

     A former army intelligence officer, since becoming prime minister Abiy has launched a wide programme of political and economic reforms, and worked to broker peace deals in Eritrea, South Sudan, and a transition agreement in the Republic of the Sudan. Abiy was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending the 20-year post-war territorial stalemate between Ethiopia and Eritrea.