(CNN) The decision to award Austrian writer Peter Handke a Nobel Prize in Literature has sparked widespread outrage, with critics calling it "shameful" that the award has been given to a "genocide denier."

Handke, who was born in 1942, has long been a controversial figure, attracting criticism for his outspoken positions on the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s and for his close ties to former Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević, who was charged with war crimes associated with the conflict.

He notably made a speech at Milošević's funeral in 2006.

Handke defended himself in an interview in 2006, saying that Milosevic was "not a hero and a tragic human being" and that he "was a writer and not a judge."

Austrian writer Peter Handke was awarded with the 2019 Nobel Literature Prize.

Handke won the Nobel "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience," according to the Swedish Academy, the cultural institution responsible for awarding it.

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