Drago Jančar, arguably Slovenia’s leading contemporary writer, has been awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature 2020.
The life-time achievement award, handed out each year, comes with a check of EUR 25,000. “Taking an individual to penetratingly render understandable the delusions of our history: this is one of the big strengths of his literature,” the jury wrote about the 71-year-old.
Listing a number of Jančar’s works that have been translated into German, the Austrian Press Agency highlights the 2017 novel And Love Itself (In Ljubezen tudi).
Set in Jančar’s home town of Maribor during occupation in 1943, it said it reaffirmed Jančar as “a great narrator, chronicler and humanist”.