Chinese writer Yan Lianke awarded Kafka prize
- By Zhang Lulu
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E-mail China.org.cn, May 28, 2014
Chinese writer Yan Lianke was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize on May 27, becoming the first Chinese person to win the award, according to the Czech News Agency.
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Yan Lianke [Photo/Guancha.cn] |
The Franz Kafka Society, the co-sponsor of the award, summarized Yan's works as "strongly satirical with a tinge of parody".
Born in central China's Henan Province in 1958, Yan started writing in 1978. He is often labeled as "the master of magic realism" in China, but he coined the term "mystical/spiritual realism" to describe his own works.
Yan's works include "Xia Riluo," "Serve the People", "Enjoyment", and "Dream of Ding Village", and have been translated into more than 20 foreign languages.
The Franz Kafka prize was launched in 2001 to honor the German-language writer Franz Kafka. Previous recipients of the award have included eminent writers such as Philip Roth, Harold Pinter, Amos Oz, and Haruki Murakami.
The award is also seen as foreshadowing the Nobel Prize in Literature, as prize winners Elfriede Jelinek (2004) and Harold Pinter (2005) went on to receive the Nobel Prize the same year that they were awarded the Kafka prize.
Prize winners receive US$10,000 and a bronze statue of Kafka. Yan will claim the prize in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, this October.
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