Celebration of the Shortlist & Award Ceremony June 28, 2018
10. Internationaler Literaturpreis
Award for Translated Contemporary Literatures
Celebration of the Shortlist & Award Ceremony June 28, 2018
Fiction by all available means: What literary forms do current narratives assume? What multiplications and interrelations of texts and realities are set in motion by the processes of translation? Under which conditions does our imagining and thinking, our writing, translating and reading take place? How does the contemporary text negotiate the complexities and distortions faced by mobile and incessantly self-observant societies? Who writes the texts in which the world is present?
Award winners 2018
Author Ivana Sajko and translator Alida Bremer are the winners of the tenth Internationaler Literaturpreis for translated contemporary literatures for the novel Liebesroman in its first German translation. Ivana Sajko receives a prize of 20,000 €, Alida Bremer receives a prize of 15,000 €.
“Ivana Sajko’s Liebesroman tells of a world in agony, of how political systems encroach on lives, put people under pressure, and slowly poison the personal. The main characters are an unsuccessful young artist couple, a child, an apartment, a neighbor and a whole country out of joint. With a few well-aimed strokes, Ivana Sajko draws a thoroughly political tableau and brings the world into the chamber-play narrative space of her novel. What happens in Croatia could happen anywhere. Under the surface, this love story, which is also about falling out of love, is about the power and impotence of the individual in our globalized present. Ivana Sajko’s powerful words create an explosive brightness. Alida Bremer, the important mediator of Croatian literature in German, has found a captivating language for her.” – The Jury
Internationaler Literaturpreis: The Celebration
A text is a world. Two books are two worlds that can enter into conversation. Six texts and six translations multiply into a celebration. The celebratory evening on June 28 brings together books, makes and makers of literature. All the shortlisted authors and translators, the awardees as well as the jury will meet with the audience. They will read and comment on the shortlisted texts, disseminate materials, and initiate conversations about literary condensations in the here and now.
