European Union Prize for Literature 2009

[Stewart]

Bit late with the news, but the first European Union Prize for Literature was announced last week. This is a strange one, in that it runs over three years, with a writer from each country in the European Union being recognised, with the countries split over the period. Like so:

• Phase 1, 2009: Austria, Croatia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Sweden.
• Phase 2, 2010: Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.
• Phase 3, 2011: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Serbia, The Netherlands, Turkey and United Kingdom.

So, Phase 1 it is, and here's the twelve winners:

The Sweetness Of Life, Paulus Hochgatterer
Ice Girl and other Fairy-tales, Mila Pavicevic
Les Adolescents Troglodytes, Emmanuelle Pagano
Communist Monte Cristo, Sz?csi No?mi
Longshore Drift, Karen Gillece
Movable Horizon, Daniele Del Giudice
Breathing Into Marble, Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė
Encirclement, Carl Frode Tiller
ICE, Jacek Dukaj
Os Meus Sentimentos, Dulce Maria Cardos
It happened On September The First (Or Whenever), Pavol Rankov
The Shadow Of A Crime, Helena Henschen

[miercuri]

Sorry, I don't really understand the dynamics of this prize. Will there be 27 winners by the end of it? It seems really absurd...

[Stewart]

I don't quite get it either. A jury in each country picks their nation's winner. I suppose it highlights a book from each country per cycle. No idea if there is cash involved.

[Liam]

I suppose it highlights a book from each country per cycle.

I think it's also political in that only the EU countries are allowed to participate (sorry: Iceland, Norway and Ukraine!), thus strengthening the ties (as well as the literary interchange) between these fellow European nations. It's a nice idea, but like every award that's political in theory and practice, it is also terribly circumscribed.

[Clarissa]

The European Prize for Litterature

Apparetly they will each be given an award. It is very odd.

[Stiffelio]

Will there be an overall regional winner each year? If there isn't it's an all but meaningless price. I mean I'm sure most countries have some sort of their own national literature award, so for it to be called European shouledn't there be a winner across Europe?

[Eric]

I agree with Miercuri: what a bloody complicated (yet ah, so fair) way of running a book competition! People in the book world seem to have become more and more obsessed with setting up prizes which, if I suspect rightly, are really an excuse for cultural bureacrats to receive yet more money for doing very little except judging the works of others. This culture of exclusion versus the in-crowd is inimical to the healthy and broad-scaled promotion of literature. It breeds a nastily competitive rat-race mentality among wannabee authors.

The only author of the Phase One pack that I recognise is the Lithuanian author, of gypsy background as I believe, Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė. I read a story or excerpt by her in translation, and thought that her writing looked interesting.

I'm all for the promotion of authors from smaller countries, but this Euro-author mentality is not to my liking. And I agree with Liam that non-EU countries, which are nevertheless just as European as those included, are snubbed because they don't belong to the right economic, not cultural, entity.

So, overall, I'm as negative as the rest of you about this prize.

[Aiculik]

Eh... well, I think it would be fair to check the facts before criticising. The prize is NOT only for EU countries - if it was so, then Croatia could not be there. The prize is for the countries participating to the Cultural Programme. These include:
- The 27 Member States of the European Union on 1 January 2007 (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom);
- The 3 EEA countries: Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein;
- The candidate countries for accession to the EU: Turkey, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
- Serbia

Each year, between 2009 and 2011, 11 or 12 of the 34 countries participating in the EU Culture Programme will select their respective winner as emerging talent in the field of contemporary literature (fiction). The aim is to encourage interest of people to read works that are not from their own national literature. The winners will be introduced at FBF in October. (you can find more information here: http://www.euprizeliterature.eu/)
I really can't see what's discriminating of giving every country that participates in European Cultural Programme the equal chance to present one author they think is great.

My secret hope is that all winning books would be translated into all languages of EU... that would be great. I'd love to read them. That'd be one book per month until next twelve are chosen.

[Eric]

Aiculik, you say:

My secret hope is that all winning books would be translated into all languages of EU... that would be great. I'd love to read them. That'd be one book per month until next twelve are chosen.

Surely, this should be written into the rules of the competition. So that the winners get widely distributed throughout Europe, including Britain.

My gut feeling is that too many of these pan-European competitions only benefit the huge number of bureaucrats that will be involved. Writers, translators and publishers are fine, but with many European projects there emerge mysterious numbers of bureaux and hangers-on, paid salaries and fees that far exceed what the writer or translator gets. I'm not against the European Empire, but feel that a lot of money is wasted on meetings, restaurants, accommodation and bureacracy that could be better spent promoting and printing the actual literature. And marketing it in a visible manner.

There should be more of a spirit of subsidiarity, so that people lower down the chain get decent fees and recognition, and the money is not creamed off by those already rich and powerful.

There are too many literary competitions nowadays. More thoughtful promotion of what people actually write, so that readers can get hold of it, is called for. Literature should not be reduced to a EU equivalent of the Roman bread and circuses.

[Aiculik]

Heh. So first it was wrong because it was discriminating; now it's wrong because it's too bureaucratic - because everyone knows it must be bureaucratic, right?

The jury was national. Its members are literary critics and scientists. They already have jobs and salaries connected to literature. Maybe there were few business trips at the beginning, when it was all agreed and the members of juries were appointed. But there was definitely no need for the members of jury for any travels, accomodations or dinners at restaurants due to judging the books. For 99,9% they already knew the book. After all, one of criteria was that it was published 5 years before the prize. The book that won was published in 2008. It is nominated for our national literature competition, it's one of ten finalists.

Also, could you please name just those "too many literature competitions" in Europe that give the same chance to authors of all countries? Where there are no prejudices regarding who should win, and no accusations of bureaucracy or politics? Well, I don't care about politics, or bureaucracy. I don't even care if the members of the jury had a chance to get a dinner in a fancy restaurant. I even don't envy them trip to FBF. The professional writers are very rare and endangered kind in my country; and there are few professions more neglected and despised than literary scientists. So if they finally had a chance to enjoy a bit of glory, I hope they enjoy it! I'm definitely NOT going to ignore the good books because of that.

Thoughtful promotion of what people actually write, so that readers can get hold of it, would really be great, but unfortunatelly, it's not realistic. My country will never have enough money to promote books of our writers in all countries of EU. Especially as literature is the last on the list of things that need attention and money. And I doubt that the member countries themselves will be so much interested they would promote our books. So politics it might be, but thanks to grants on literary translation, there are few more books translated from Slovaks and few more books translated to it, as well. And this is another chance. So it's not perfect. And? Nothing is. Still it shouldn't be wasted. And it doesn't deserve to be blackmouthed before it even started properly.