Ever since Johannes Gutenberg started playing around with an olive press and discovered the modern printing process in 1439, Europe has been at the centre of the literary world.
EU Book Prize: Bunfight of the Vanities?
Even today, the UK produces more new titles per year than either the US or China.
The European Commission has decided to capitalise on this literary legacy by spending € 227.874 on introducing the European Union Prize for Literature, in partnership with booksellers, publishers and writers organisations. According European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Mr Ján Figel, the prize “will help publicise and promote Europe’s richness and cultural diversity”.
At first glance there seem to be a plethora of awards already existing such as the Jean Monnet European Literature Prize, for a book translated into French, The Europe Book Prize, for non-fiction and the European Union Literary Award, for a South African novel, believe it or not. This prize is different the EC claim, because it is set up to encourage reading of contemporary authors outside their national or linguistic boundaries.
Over a three year period, national juries will confer a prize on an emerging talent and the winners will have themselves and their books promoted throughout the continent. The first twelve national juries for this year’s tranche have been announced and they are also creating a “European Ambassador for Literature”, who is not expected to be Salman Rushdie.
It does seem incongruous that the prizes aren’t annual, or that there isn’t a winner picked from the national selections, for there are many national awards for books, some would say too many, and it will take energy and focus to make this new award stand out in a crowded field with some longstanding names already there.
It’s less clear how the books are going to be promoted, what languages are they going to be translated into? Who pays? The end result may see more of the smaller language books being translated into the major languages, but will they also be produced in Lithuanian or Maltese?
