that the Nobel Literature Committee ignored his books or was confused because of the misleading titles: many people supposedly thought that they were self-help books on various subjects – The Guide, The English Teacher, The Painter of Signs, The Vendor of Sweets, etc. Other humorous speculations on what might have tripped him, "His writing is too simple, and too readable, requiring no effort on the part of the reader. He has created a new map called Malgudi in which his characters live and die. Story after story is set in the same place, which is not progressive, a rather stagnant background." The heavy focus on European authors, and Swedes in particular, is the subject of mounting criticism, including from major Swedish newspapers. The majority of the laureates for the Nobel Prize in Literature have been European. Swedes in particular have received more prizes in this category than all of Asia. In 2008, Horace Engdahl, then the permanent secretary of the academy, declared that "Europe still is the center of the literary world" and said that American writers did not win often (the most recent at the time was Toni Morrison, 15 years prior) because "the US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature." In 2009, Engdahl's replacement, Peter Englund, rejected this sentiment ("In most language areas ... there are authors that really deserve and could get the Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well"), and acknowledged the Eurocentric bias of the selections, saying that, "I think that is a problem. We tend to relate more easily to literature written in Europe and in the European tradition." 2019 The 2019 prize awarded to Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke came under heavy criticism due to his history of denying the Bosnian genocide and his vocal support for late Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, even speaking at his funeral in 2006. Authors Miha Mazzini, Hari Kunzru, Jonathan Littell, Slavoj Žižek, and Salman Rushdie each heavily criticized the choice, and it was further condemned by PEN International and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who said that the award gave his views a platform that "he does not deserve and the public does not need him to have". The governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Turkey issued condemnations against the award, and the ambassadors from Albania,