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MOSCOW, October 4 Writer Sasha Nikolaenko was named the laureate of Russia's largest literary award «Yasnaya Polyana» in the main category «Modern Russian Prose» for her work «The Ant God: Requiem», the correspondent reports.
The awards ceremony for the winners of the Yasnaya Polyana literary prize is taking place at the Bolshoi Theater on Wednesday.
«I would be happy for any of the six, but I am especially happy for our laureate. Sasha Nikolaenko “The Ant God: Requiem,” announced the adviser to the President of the Russian Federation on culture and chairman of the jury of the award Vladimir Tolstoy.
The author thanked the jury members and readers for choosing her work.
“I want to say thank you to each of you for finding the strength in yourself and reading my book, because I know how hard it is,” Nikolaenko noted.
The winner in the Foreign Literature category was the Macedonian writer Venko Andonovski with his novel “The Navel of Light” about the spiritual conflict between the European West and the European East.
The award was presented to Andonovsky and the translator of his novel, Olga Pankina, by the director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate, Ekaterina Tolstaya.
“Dear Vladimir Ilyich Tolstoy, members of the jury: Pavel Basinsky, Alexey Varlamov, Evgeny Vodolazkin and Vladislav Otroshenko, dear present, connoisseurs of the artistic word, with great gratitude and immeasurable gratitude I accept today the Yasnaya Polyana literary prize, which connects us with the name of the ruler of the world literature, who throughout his life was sovereign in the kingdom of meanings called literature. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy constantly sought the answer to the main question not only of literature, but of every person: “Is there meaning in life or not?” Andonovsky noted when receiving the award .
Before the ceremony, Vladimir Tolstoy told reporters that this year the Yasnaya Polyana literary award had a new category, “Overlooked Masterpieces.” The award in this category recognized a work of world literature that went unnoticed by Russian critics and translators at the time the book was published and was opened to Russian readers after the death of the author. The prize was awarded to translator Irina Doronina for her translation from English into Russian of the novel “Everything Falls Apart” by Chinua Achebe.
“I am happy. Of course, I warmly thank the organizers and jury of the award. I am very glad that I had the opportunity to contribute to this outstanding novel giving our Russian reader real pleasure, which is not so often visited by us,” said Doronina, receiving the award.< br />In addition, this year, for the first time, a laureate who made a special contribution to the development of domestic literature was chosen in the “Personality” nomination. The winner was Yuri Arabov.
The award was announced by writer and prize jury member Pavel Basinsky. “This is perhaps the most important screenwriter of our days, the man who wrote scripts for Alexander Sokurov. A very sincere, subtle person. This is Yuri Arabov… I know that when any director starts some serious project based on the classics, he turns to Arabov , and then it depends whether he agrees or not,” Basinsky emphasized.
Arabov was unable to attend the ceremony, but expressed gratitude for the award in a video message.
Winner of the special Samsung “Readers’ Choice” prize became Rahim Jafarov with the work “His Last Days”. As a prize, the winner received a trip to South Korea.
The Yasnaya Polyana Prize is an annual all-Russian literary prize established in 2003 by the Leo Tolstoy museum-estate. It is awarded to authors whose works inherit the traditions of classical literature, while defining the range of literary trends of the present time. Bringing together key experts in the field of literature, the prize selects the best Russian and translated books for the reader and becomes a navigator through modern literature. The prize fund for the prize in 2023 is 6.7 million rubles, which makes it the largest literary prize in Russia.
Previous winners of the prize were writers Narine Abgaryan, Dmitry Danilov, Guzel Yakhina, German Sadulayev, as well as foreign authors Julian Barnes, Orkhan Pamuk, Patricia Danker, Mario Vargas Llosa.