Art and Culture State Secretary Andrea Mayer awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature to the Polish author Joanna Bator at the Mozarteum Salzburg today. The prize is endowed with 25,000 euros.
“Joanna Bator tells dozens of little stories in her extensive books, which are artfully interwoven into wonderful novels and which, from the very first sentence, draw us readers into a world that often seems strange, but which becomes familiar after a few pages,” said State Secretary Mayer. “There you live together with the characters in the novels, who seem so real, alive and physical that you would hardly be surprised to meet them on the street. In doing so, Joanna Bator has put her birthplace of Wałbrzych, from which she left at the age of 19 for Tokyo, New York, Berlin and London, on the map of world literature and secured a place for the resistant women from Poland in the memory of readers.”
“Some books sow hatred and imprison their readers in narrow, fearful worlds. Other books allow us to overcome our own limitations,” said Joanna Bator in her acceptance speech. “They help us realize that we are freer than we think. Ready to push and exceed boundaries. Connected to others by an invisible golden thread. Each of us remembers such books that undoubtedly created and shaped us and saved us from despair. By changing people’s reality, books change the world. I’m excited that my stories have the power to transcend boundaries and bring people together in that collective realm of imagination that we all so desperately need.”
With the “Intense and sensual exploration” the lives of its female characters, said laudator Sabine Scholl, “Bator traces political and social upheavals at the same time: the transition from National Socialism to communism to capitalism and its accompanying effects. But in all systems women were the losers. Conflicts were fought over their bodies and those of their children. This still applies today both in everyday life and in strategies of war and terror, as is clear in current crisis areas. Bator’s novels report on the major transformations that Europe was subjected to in the 20th century and their consequences to this day. They show how crucial it is for the House of Europe to know more about the history of the eastern member states, which is closely intertwined with ours. They warn of ghosts that haunt us all and urge us not to remain silent and not to remain inactive.”
The Austrian State Prize for European Literature has been awarded since 1965 for the entire literary work of a European author that has received particular international attention, which must be documented through translations. The work must also be available in a German translation. Most recently, the prize went to Mircea Cărtărescu, Andrzej Stasiuk, Karl Ove Knausgård, Zadie Smith, Michel Houellebecq, Drago Jančar, László Krasznahorkai, Ali Smith and Marie NDiaye.
The five-person jury for the Austrian State Prize for European Literature 2024 consisted of Dr. Bernhard Fetz, Benedikt Föger, Walter Grond, Mag.a Claudia Romeder and Dr. Sabine Scholl.
The jury’s statement:
“Born in the Lower Silesian town of Wałbrzych/Waldenburg, from which the German population was expelled from 1945, Joanna Bator makes several references in her works to the violent history of the Second World War, which continues to shape relations between Europe and Poland to this day. Bator processes traumatic experiences from the last century in complex stories, most of which focus on female characters. It charges burdened places with literature, gives the subjects space and voice, brings them closer to readers and impressively connects the past with present political and social realities. Her approach is never didactic, but rather observational, linguistically versed, playful, full of imagination and wit. The author also speaks out in essays, articles, columns for Tygodnik Powszechny, National Geographic and Voyage, among others, and speaks out against fundamentalist constraints that women and queer people in particular are exposed to in backward-looking regimes. Joanna Bator taught at universities in Warsaw, New York, London and Tokyo, gave poetry lectures, and held the visiting professorship for world literature in Bern, where she lectured on heterotopias, the uncanny and outsiders, including in Japanese culture. With her literary works, Joanna Bator tells great Central European history from a female perspective.”
About Joanna Bator
Joanna Bator, born in 1968, published in important Polish newspapers and magazines and conducted research in Japan for several years. The German translation of her novel Sandberg by Esther Kinsky was a literary event. Since then, Joanna Bator has been considered one of the most important new voices in European literature. For Dark, Almost Night (2012) she was awarded the NIKE, Poland’s most important literary prize. Joanna Bator is a university lecturer and lives in Japan and Poland.
Publications in German translation: “Bitternis”, Frankfurt 2023. From the Polish by Lisa Palmes, “Dark, almost Night”, Frankfurt 2021. From the Polish by Lisa Palmes, “Wolkenfern”, Frankfurt 2014. From the Polish by Esther Kinsky, “Sandberg”, Frankfurt 2014. Translated from Polish by Esther Kinsky
Prizes: Samuel Bogumił Linde Prize 2022, Eichendorff Literature Prize 2022, International Hermann Hesse Prize 2018, Usedom Literature Prize 2017, International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz 2017, International Literature Prize – House of World Cultures 2016 (shortlist ), Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize 2014, Nike Prize 2013, International Literature Prize – House of World Cultures 2011 (shortlist)