Serbia

Ten years ago David Cameron, as the British prime minister, pledged $65 million for the centenary of World War One. The focus was on “capturing our national spirit in every corner of the country, something that says something about who we are as a people.” Beyond a celebration of the Tommy on the Western Front and a belated acknowledgement of colonial Britain’s sacrifice, it was a missed opportunity. There was little attempt to better understand the region where the war began — and where, according to Nick Lloyd’s exhaustive The Eastern Front, it never really ended.

Peter Handke’s Nobel win is the latest in a series of unfortunate incidents surrounding the Nobel prize in literature, from the weird decision to give it to Bob Dylan in 2016 to last year’s sexual assault scandal. When Handke called for the prize to be abolished in 2014 he said it was a 'false canonization' of literature. The fact that he has now won it proves he was right. This is what Sweden is today – if the Nobel committee had any courage they would give the peace prize to Julian Assange (one of the true heroes of our time), yet instead they would rather honor an apologist for genocide.