"My work is a form of commitment to myself, to memory and to humanity." Imre Kertesz
The year's Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian author who spent time in Aushwitz. The Prize (always appropriate to the overall state of the world as it stands at prize time)has been awarded the Kertesz "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."
His own experiences as a teen in Auschwitz in 1944 are the focus of most of his work, The Swedish Academy singled out his first novel Sorstalansag (Fateless) in which he writes about a young man who is arrested and taken to a concentration camp and survives the ordeal. Fateless took 10 years to get published, and is the first book in a semiautobiographical trilogy.
Kertesz's works are about survival and perseverance when people are subjected to "barbaric" forces. The Nobel citation states: "The refusal to compromise in Kertesz's stance can be perceived clearly in his style, which is reminiscent of a thickset hawthorn hedge, dense and thorny for unsuspecting visitors."
Imre Kertesz is the very first Nobel Laureate from Hungary, and has received congratulations from the country's president Ferenc Madl, and prime minister Peter Medgyessy. Kertesz has told reporters that winning the prize is a 'great tribute to Hungarian literature.' He told reporters that he plans a big party with some of his close friends. Now that is one party I would like to be at!
YANN MARTEL WINS THE PRESTIGIOUS BOOKER PRIZE
Canadian writer Yann Martel feels like he just won the lottery. With the announcement of the winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize, Canada is celebrating that its own carefully fostered talent is once again in the literary spotlight.
Martel's book Life of Pi, is a highly original story of a 16-year-old boy cast adrift on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra and a Bengal Tiger. The 39-year old author praised Canada as the 'greatest hotel on earth'. Martel was born in Spain in 1963, and has traveled the world extensively. He currently lives in Berlin where he lectures at the Free University.
Literary genes run deep in his family, Martel's father Emile won the Governor General's Award for poetry in 1995, and his mother Nicole is a literary translator. Despite his win, Martel is maintaining that he is still a novice when it comes to writing novels. True to his Canadian nature, this author is obviously very humble about his incredible talent as a writer.
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