Hello Gentle Reader
I had been so busy at work, that I failed, to notice the European Prize for Literature, had been awarded, a week ago. Twelve authors, hailing from Belgium; to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to Finland and to Slovenia. The following list is the winners, and a brief blurb, about the author and the winning novel.
Isabelle Wéry – Belgium – Wéry is a playwright, theatrical actress and director for the theatre. She is also an accomplished prose writer. Her debut in the novel format was, “Monsieur René,” a fictional and imaginary biography of the Belgian actor René Hainaux. This year’s winner is “Marilyn Deboned.” This is a novel of romantic encounters. It’s a novel, written in the three acts. About the main character Marilyn. The first act, takes place between ages six and eight – coming to terms with the fact that she is an independent creature. The second act as a young adult. The third act comes in the form of the here and now. It’s a novel of duos and ‘romantic undertakings,’ and the desire to know why we go through them – and why everything from human, to animals and plants – follows this same romantic law.
Faruk Šehić – Bosnia Herzegovina/Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – Faruk Šehić comes from the interesting part of South-Eastern Europe. Before the outbreak of the Bosnian War, the author had studied veterinarian medicine. However, after the start of the Bosnian war, Šehić, volunteered with the Bosnian army and became a lieutenant. After the war, the author studied literature – and has gone to become a writer. Šehić’s novel “The Book of Una,” is about the experience of the Bosnian war, and its effect on one man, trying to overcome the personal tragedy of the incident. Yet it is also a book about childhood along the river, and about the city Una.
Emilios Solomou – Cyprus – is not a new prose writer, in Cyprus. His novel “An Axe In Your Hands,” had won the Cyprus State Prize for Literature. His second novel “Like a Sparrow, Quickly You Passed,” has been translated into Bulgarian. His stories have been published in many literary magazines and published in Bulgarian and English. His winning novel “The Diary of Infidelity,” is a novel of excavation of personal memories. The novel chronicles Yiorgos Doukarelis, remembrance of his past and three women in it. He remembers the archaeological find that changed his life; the affair and the divorce of his first wife, and marriage of his second one, and the sudden disappearance of his second wife. This novel connects Yiorgos Doukarelis to the far flung past, by his excavation and find; but also his own personal past, and his strained present.
Kristian Bang Foss – Denmark – Foss at first studied mathematics and physics; however he later graduated from the Danish Writers Academy. Foss’s debut “The Window of the Fish,” was praised for its everyday pursuits and mundane actions; that by linguistic ingenuity transcends the banal. His next novel “The Storm of 99,” is full of black humour, depicts the vipers pit of an everyday work environment; the slanderous games the absurd events that take place within. “Death Drives an Audi,” is his wining book. It’s a road novel. A tour of Europe. But it’s about the situations that are beyond our control. A look into hopelessness and still finding an optimistic glimmer. It is also a race against time and death.
Meelis Friedenthal – Estonia – Friedenthal is known as a speculative fiction writer. His first novel “Golden Age,” won third place in a national, novel competition. It discussed how, history shapes our identities. “The Bees,” is his winning novel. It tells the story Laurentius Hylas, a student in the seventeenth century. As Hylas enters the city of Tartu is known as the city of muses, but all Hylas see’s, is starving people. What follows is the melancholic prone Laurentius Hylas, falls further into a black pit, into a dreamlike disease, where reality and hallucination coexist. It’s a novel, which offers a difficult view of reality. One, about a melancholic
Philosophy student and his questions about reality, and his disease, and the philosophical treatises that permit him to wonder if the real is the unreal.
Katri Lipson – Finland – Lipson studied as medicine, in Sweden, and has practiced as a doctor both in Sweden and Finland, as well as Africa. However, Lipson has always been a writer. She has written everything from poetry, to short stories, even fairy tales. She debuted as a novelist with “Cosmonaut,” and was nominated for the prestigious Finlandia Prize; and it went onto win the Helsingin Sanomat Debut Book. Her winning novel “The Ice-Cream Man,” is a playful novel about inventive reality and its place within reality – and the possibility of that fictional reality taking over. The novel is about a film crew, and director, who decide to make a film with a lack of script. The actors themselves therefore must create and invent characters and stories. What is presented is a fictional reality that borders, and threatens to take compete with the real reality. Lipson shows that life and reality are made up of historical events, which mix with the present. That history is made up of stories, and details of all the lives around it.
Marica Bodrožić – Germany – Bodrožić, moved from the former Yugoslavia, at the age of ten. She learned German, and has used her ‘second mother tongue,’ as her literary language. Her debut novel “A Cherrywood Table,” has won this year’s prize. In Germany it has been praised of its poetic evocations of memory and remembrance. Bodrožić deals with the civil war of the former Yugoslavia. The novel traces the main characters memory, of childhood, the escape to Paris to study philosophy; but it also discusses the loss of her homeland. Around the cherry wood table, inherited from her grandmother, the personal and the political of the twentieth century, intertwine, as the past and the present share a dialogue, around the cherry wood table; where memories are spread out.
Tullio Forgiarini – Luxembourg – Forgiarini’s father was Italian, while his mother was Luxembourgian; this explains his odd last name. He writes in French, and is inspired by the dark crime and noir novels; which have tinted his novels and stories with a black gloss. “Amok. A Luxembourg love story,” is written in seventeen short chapters. It tells the story of an adolescent youth on the search for love, recognition, and a place within the contemporary and forever changing society. It’s a novel that is crude with poetic economy of words. It depicts the lives one rarely sees in the media. The reader is thrust into an unmanageable reality, and the escape attempts the protagonist, creates in order to escape. It’s a harsh book that is socially conscious, of a divided and marginalized society.
Lidija Dimkovska – Republic of Macedonia – Dimkovska is known to English readers of poetry, by her poetry collection “\pH Neutral History,” a poetry collection, of spitfire linguistic showmanship, that pins readers down, like insects on a pin. Her first novel “Hidden Camera,” won the Writers’ Union of Macedonia award, it was also shortlisted for the Utrinski Vesnik award for the year. Her next foray into prose is “Backup Life,” and it has won this year’s European Union Prize for Literature. Dimkovska recounts the life of Srebra and Zlata (a play on the words silver and gold), and their quest for individuality – but they are Siamese twins; conjoined at the head. From nineteen-eighty four until two-thousand and twelve, the story is narrated. The girls play fortune telling. They talk of who they’ll marry, how many children they’ll have, and which city they will live in. Then the former Yugoslavia split, and the joint regions and republics. What comes’ after is darkness, guilt, death, and funerals marriage, and separation. A historical and political allegory in some regards, but also personal and poetic.
Ioana Pârvulescu – Romania – Pârvulescu has won the award for her novel “Life Begins on Friday.” It’s a story set a hundred years ago. Yet in its core, it reverberates with our own hearts, and our times, as the human conditions, most basic principles are forever untouched by time. The story follows the various characters through the last thirteen days, of eighteen-ninety-seven. The discovery of an unconscious boy, in the outskirts of Bucharest, leads to speculation of how he got there, and is the centre of the web. Yet the most important character of this novel is Bucharest itself. It’s a novel of an almost forgotten time, and often romanticised time as well. Yet, with this novel it solidifies the fact that the past lives on into the present.
Gabriela Babnik – Slovenia – Babnik has published two novels prior to “Dry Season.” Her debut was “Cotton Skin,” and received the Best Debut Novel by the Union of Slovenian Publishers. Her next novel “In The Tall Grass,” was shortlisted for the Kresnik Award. “Dry Season,” has won Babnik this year’s award. “Dry Season,” is set in Africa, a place that holds a special interest with Babnik. The story itself is the unusual love affair of Anna, a sixty two year old designer from Central Europe; and Ismael, a street twenty seven year old African, who has been raised on the streets, in which he was routinely abused. What connects these two is a loneliness of the flesh; a tragic childhood and the dry season – the time in which neither nature, nor love can hope to flourish. Anna comes to realize the difference between herself and Ismael is not, by the colour of their skin; but by her belonging to a western culture. The very one in which she had abandoned. It’s a novel fused with magical realism, and true political realities of Africa.
Cristian Crusat – Spain – The final author comes from Spain. Crusat teaches Spanish language and literature abroad. His essays on translation and comparative literature have been published in periodicals all over Spain and in Latin America. “Brief theory of travel and the desert,” is a collection of six stories. Set around the world. The stories showcase, characters searching, and exploring the plausibility and possibility of an epiphany or a revelation. It may never come or comes and is never noticed. Yet the characters isolated in a concrete modern desert – of hotels, parkades, roads. Then accidents and incidents of the most mundane, or ordinary happen, that reveal the characters true isolation and slow death of immobility.
There you have it Gentle Reader. The European Prize for Literature twenty-thirteen’s winners. Novels that trace the divides both culturally, geographically, and historically. The personal is at the backdrop of the historical. The political mingles with the personal tragedies. Playful novels, about fictional realities and dreams, that compete with the physical reality in dominance of perspective.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
