Nobel laureate Imre Kertész was awarded the €12,000 (US$17,047) Jean Améry Prize for essay writing, according to Hungarian Literature Online. Imre Kertész is the ninth to receive the 12 thousand euro prize – sponsored by the Austrian Erste Bank and the Stuttgart publisher Klett-Cotta – which is conferred every second year at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The previous prize was given to Slovenian writer Drago Jančar.
The jury, headed by Austrian writer and essayist Robert Menasse, stated: "The oeuvre of Kertész as an essay-writer works on the basis of Enlightenment thinking, which has learnt the lessons of the barbarism of Fascism and Communism, and works for a Europe that will either become an enlightened and free Europe or it will not exist at all." (via Words Without Borders).
Jean Améry (b. Hans Mayer, 1912–1978) was an essayist of Austrian origin who, as Kertész, survived the Nazi concentration camps. He became known after the publication of his book translated into English as At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (1966), in which he explored the nature and the methods of Nazism.
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