TIRANA, October 17/ATA/- Albanian novelist, poet, essayist and playwright Ismail Kadare has won the 2020 Neustadt International Prize.
Described as the “American Nobel,” the Neustadt International Prize is a $50,000 U.S. (approx. $65,260 Cdn) award given every two years to a poet, novelist or playwright in recognition of their body of work.
The prize is managed by the literary magazine World Literature Today and is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma.
One of Albania’s most influential writers
Kadare was born in Albania in 1936. He rose to prominence with his 1963 novel The General of the Dead Army.
Other notable works include the 1971 novel Chronicle in Stone and the 1985 novella Agamemnon’s Daughter. His work often deals with totalitarianism and tyranny, and he is an advocate for democracy and human rights.
“I became familiar with literature before I knew freedom, so that it was literature that led me to liberty, not the other way around,” he once wrote. “Faith in literature and the creative process brings perfection.”
He moved to France in 1990, claiming political asylum.
In 2005, he was the recipient of the first Man Booker International Prize, when it was awarded every other year to an international author for their entire body of work.
The prize is now known as the International Booker Prize and is awarded annually to a book in translation.
In 2009, he received the Spanish Princess of Asturias Awards, which recognizes global achievements in several disciplines including literature.
In 2015, he was honoured with the Jerusalem Prize, an annual award given to writers whose work deals with the theme of human freedom in society.
Robert Con Davis-Undiano, the executive director of World Literature Today, said that Kadare is “one of the world’s great writers and a champion of democracy and free speech” in a press release.
The nine Neustadt Prize jurors, who each nominated a finalist, decided the winner.
Kadare was nominated by Bulgarian writer Kapka Kassabova.
The rest of the jury was comprised of Colombian Felipe Restrepo Pombo, Iraqi American poet Dunya Mikhail, Filipino American poet Joseph Legaspi, nonfiction writer Anna Badkhen, American poet and translator Philip Metres, Iranian Italian poet and translator André Naffis-Sahely, Métis writer Katherena Vermette and Vietnamese poet Vi Khi Nao. //a.i/
