Terezia Mora Wins Georg Büchner Prize 2018

On Tuesday (July 3), the German Academy for Language and Literature announced that Hungarian-born author Terezia Mora had won the 2018 Georg Büchner prize. It is considered to be the most significant prize in German literary society.

The Georg Büchner Prize is named after the author of the revolutionary stage drama Woyzeck. The prize was first awarded back in 1923. It has been awarded by the Academy to an author writing in German every year since 1951.

The Prize

Mora, a German language writer, will receive the €50,000 along with the award on October 27 in a ceremony in the southwest German city of Darmstadt. The Georg Büchner Prize is a prestigious award given to an author of German-language “who has made a significant contribution to contemporary German cultural life".

Mora's Work

The German academy highlighted Mora's focus on glaring issues: "In her novels and stories, Terezia Mora focuses on outsiders and people who have lost their homelands, precarious existences and people searching for something. With these topics she directly hits the nerve of our era" they stated.

The board described Mora's work as "powerful" and "intensively visual”, and praised it for its "iconic accents" and "analytical sharpness"

The author Terezia Mora was born in 1971 in Sopron, Hungary. She grew up speaking both German and Hungarian. She moved to Berlin in 1990, where she still resides. She first made her literary debut in 1999 with her collection of short stories in the highly celebrated Strange Material.

Her well-known works include All Days, The Only Man on the Continent and The Monster. Her book, The Monster, has also been awarded the German Book Prize for the best German-language novel of the year. Mora is also a part of the German Academy for Language and Literature.

Former winners of the prize consist of the elite of German-language literary society, including Erich Kästner , Günter Grass and Thomas Bernhard. More recent awardees have included Elfride Jelinek and Jan Wagner.

Picture Credit: Solothurner Zeitung

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Apoorva Lamba is an intern with SheThePeople.Tv