Anthology 2012 - European Union Prize for Literature

224 Pages·2012·2.24 MB·English

Twelve winning authors e
r
u
t
a
r
e
t
Anna Kim Giedra Radvilavičiūtė i
L
Die gefrorene Zeit (2008) Šiąnakt aš miegosiu prie sienos The European Union
r
(2010) o
f
Lada Žigo
e
Rulet (2010) Gunstein Bakke z
Maud og Aud: ein roman om trafikk ri Prize for Literature
Laurence Plazenet (2011) P

L’amour seul (2005) n
Piotr Paziński o
i
Viktor Horváth Pensjonat (2009) n
Török tükör (2009) U
Afonso Cruz
n
Kevin Barry A Boneca de Kokoschka (2010) a
City of Bohane (2011) e
p
Jana Beňová
o
Emanuele Trevi Café Hyena (Plán odprevádzania) r
u
Qualcosa di scritto (2012) (2012)
E

e Twelve winning authors
Sara Mannheimer
Th
Handlingen (2011)
2012
2
1
0
2

The European Union
Prize for Literature
Twelve winning authors
2012
www.euprizeliterature.eu

Table of Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
2012 winning authors
Austria
Anna Kim – Die gefrorene Zeit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Croatia
Lada Žigo – Rulet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
France
Laurence Plazenet – L’amour seul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Hungary
Viktor Horvàth – Török tükör . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
Ireland
Kevin Barry – City of Bohane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
Italy
Emanuele Trevi – Qualcosa di scritto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91
Lithuania
Giedra Radvilavičiūtė – Šiąnakt aš miegosiu prie sienos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
Norway
Gunstein Bakke – Maud og Aud – ein roman om trafikk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117
Poland
Piotr Paziński – Pensjonat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131
Portugal
Afonso Cruz – A Boneca de Kokoschka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Slovakia
Jana Beňová – Café Hyena (Plán odprevádzania) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Sweden
Sara Mannheimer – Handlingen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203
EUPL 2012 National Juries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209
EUPL 2012 Jury Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
The European Union Prize for Literature 2012 3
4 The European Union Prize for Literature 2012
Foreword
Foreword by José Manuel Durão Barroso, President of the European Commission
I have the great honour to present the twelve winners of the 2012 European Union Prize for Litera-
ture. This year, the winners come from Austria, Croatia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania,
Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Sweden. With this prize we are establishing a fine tradi-
tion and a true celebration of European literature in all its excellence, richness and diversity.
Since its first edition in 2009, the European Union Prize for Literature has gone from strength to
strength. In 2011, we completed the first 3 year cycle for the prize and this year we are embark-
ing upon the second cycle. The prize is yet another example of how much we treasure cultural
and linguistic diversity in the European project. Books are fundamental vehicles of European
culture, knowledge and languages. They open doors to our souls, help us understand the “Other”,
live experiences and feelings that otherwise would be out of our reach. The book sector is also an
important contributor to the European economy, creating jobs and growth.
The prize is organised by the European Commission and a Consortium consisting of the European
Booksellers’ Federation, European Writers’ Council and the Federation of European Publishers. I
want to thank the Consortium for their excellent work and fruitful collaboration since 2009, which
has ensured that the prize has gained in prestige and visibility and increased its added value for
the winners, readers and across the whole book sector.
The prize is open to all countries presently involved in the European Union’s Culture Programme.
Each year, national juries in a third of the participating countries have had the extremely difficult
task to nominate the winning authors, and accordingly, all countries in the programme are repre-
sented over a three-year period. I am very pleased to see that the participant numbers are growing;
Bosnia and Herzegovina is the 36th and Albania the 37th country to join the Culture Programme
and both will participate in the new cycle for the prize.
As world renowned author Umberto Eco said, “Translation is the language of Europe”. The Euro-
pean Union Prize for Literature aims to raise the profile of authors and to help increase publishers’
appetite for the translation and publication of a wide variety of European works. It also aims to
encourage people to read more and more literature from countries other than their own.
Within the EU Culture Programme we give grants for literary translations, from and into all 23
official EU languages as well as the official languages of the other countries in the Culture Pro-
gramme. Since 2007, nearly 3000 literary works have received EU funding for translation total-
ling €14 million. In 2011 a record-high 600 works were translated. The authors who receive the
European Union Prize for Literature are given priority for translation support and we have seen an
increase in award winners’ translations and in cross-border sales of rights.
The European Union Prize for Literature 2012 5
Every year we publish the book you are now holding in your hands. Here you will find information
about this year’s winning authors and chosen passages from their winning books in the original
language and in English translation. I wish you some very good and interesting moments to savour
these small but wonderful taste samples. I suspect they will give you a huge appetite for more!
I congratulate the winners of the 2012 European Union Prize for Literature!
José Manuel DURÃO BARROSO
6 The European Union Prize for Literature 2012
Austria
Anna Kim
Die gefrorene Zeit (2008)
Frozen Time
Publishing House Literaturverlag Droschl
© Roland Dreger
Biography
Anna Kim was born in 1977 in Daejeon, South Korea, moving to Germany in 1979, when her
father took up an academic post in fine arts. Since then, she has returned to South Korea several
times for short visits.
She studied Philosophy and Theatre Studies at the University of Vienna and wrote her master
thesis on Georg Lukács´ Theory of the Novel.
She has published several short stories, essays and poems in newspapers, literary magazines
and anthologies. Her three novels are Anatomie einer Nacht (Anatomy of a Night, 2012), Die
gefrorene Zeit (Frozen Time, 2008) – which has been translated into English and Albanian – and
Die Bilderspur (The Trace of Pictures, 2004). She has also written a collection of poems, Das Sinken
ein Bückflug.
Kim, who has received numerous awards and grants, lives in Vienna.
Synopsis
Since the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia, more than 30,000 people were reported as
missing to the International Committee of the Red Cross. So far, only 15,000 of them have been
identified.
This is the background to the story Anna Kim tells in her second novel: the search of a Kosovar
for his missing wife and the first-person narrator’s gradual penetration of the complexities
behind this traumatic event. Not only does she experience everyday life in the Serbo-Albanian
conflict zones of the Kosovo, she also encounters the gut-wrenching work of the archaeologists
and forensic anthropologists, and the Red Cross questionnaires to collect ‘antemortem data’.
Above all, the dimensions of memory and the loss of it, of interrupted biographies and of a
“frozen time” open up in front of her.
In this extraordinary book, Kim takes up where she left off in her debut novel Die Bilderspur,
exploring concepts such as foreignness with a depressing relevance to the present. However, it
is not just contemporary history that she is interested in, but also the linguistic portrayal of such
incomprehensible horror, the search for the right words and sentences to describe something
so extreme.
The European Union Prize for Literature 2012 7
Die gefrorene Zeit
Anna Kim
Du hast beschlossen zu berichten, doch manchmal zittern die
Hände, ein Zwillingszittern, wie das der Worte, ein Nach-
beben im Hals; starrst auf die Tür, als wäre sie ein Fenster
und in ihr unvergessliche Landschaft, dann ein Erwachen, du
kramst in der Hose und legst den Reisepass deiner Frau, ein
schmales Fotoalbum sowie die Heiratsurkunde auf den Tisch.
Der Ante-Mortem-Fragebogen: Zweiundzwanzig Kapitel, die
die Kennzeichen einer vermissten Person, Merkmale, die jene zu
Lebzeiten, ante mortem, besaß, festhalten mit dem Ziel, durch
Analyse und Vergleich mit Gebeinen, Knochenstücken, Daten
post mortem, fündig zu werden. Der Fund ist nicht die Person,
sondern ihr Rest. Das Innerste, wenn man so möchte, anderer-
seits das Äußerste, im Sinne von Letzte, Allerletzte, und doch
sprechen sie von Identität, die Vermissenden und Suchenden,
meinen vollkommene Übereinstimmung mit, zugleich innere
Einheit der Person, die Ebenen vermischen sich, scheinen
untrennbar: Es lässt sich nicht vermeiden, die Leiche wird zum
Individuum. Wie lange kann sich dieser Gedanke halten, doch
nur solange das menschliche Fragment nicht gesehen wurde,
solange das Totsein eine Abstraktion, eine Idee bleiben darf.
Dem Toten ist es gleich, ob seine Identität gefunden wird oder
nicht, für ihn spielt es keine Rolle mehr, ob er eine besitzt oder
ob sie während der letzten Jahre verloren ging; sie existiert
aus seiner Warte nur für die anderen, nicht für ihn selbst.
Wird sie schließlich gefunden, ist sie körperlich und zufällig;
zufällig, da es nie wirklich um sie, sondern lediglich um die
Zuordnung ging.
8 The European Union Prize for Literature 2012