Hello
Gentle Reader
The
Franz Kafka Prize is only eighteen years old. Despite this, its list of winners
is salt and peppered with an eclectic list of authors, including the mainstream
and internationally renowned authors such as: Philip Roth, Peter Nadas, Amos
Oz, Haruki Murakami and Margaret Atwood; as well as respected by quiet writers
who are either niche, obscure or over looked by comparison, such as: Ivan Klíma,
Daniela Hodrová, Ivan Wernisch, and Claudio Magris. Two of the prizes winners
also became future Nobel Laureates in Literature: Elfriede Jelinek and Harold
Pinter.
Winners
of the award are chosen due to their ability to meet the prizes criteria,
whereby the author is able to create and maintain a:
”humanistic
character and contribution to cultural, national, language and religious
tolerance, its existential, timeless character, its generally human validity
and its ability to hand over a testimony about our times.” (The Franz Kafka
Society, 2019)
This
year’s winner of the Franz Kafka Prize is the French writer: Pierre Michon.
Pierre
Michon would sit on the scale of niche or obscure writer, when compared to some
of the previous winners. Though, Pierre Michon has a high level of English
language translations available. Despite this, is novels are niche. His prose
is noted for being dense, thick and complicated. His subjects are equally
obscure, detailing the fictionalized lives of artist’s poets, saints and
abbots. His work is saturated in the world of the overlooked, obscure, and
unknown; and at times the personal turned fictional.
Pierre
Michon is a paradoxical writer, he is literary and obscure, difficult and
uncompromising, and despite this is renowned and appreciated by the literati
for his attention to detail and high regard for language.
Congratulations
to Pierre Michon on winning the Franz Kafka Prize for two-thousand and
nineteen.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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