Norman Manea wins the big prize at the Guadalajara Book Fair

Norman Manea has won the 2016 Literary Award of the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Romance Languages.

The Romanian writer was previously Romania’s nomination for the Nobel prize for literature in 2014.

This is the first time a Romanian author has been given this award. The prize was generous, as he received 150,000 dollars at the opening ceremony of the book fair in Mexico.

According to Romania Insider the judging panel stated:

He is the author of an extensive body of work that cannot be defined by traditional literary genres.

The competition had 54 candidates from 23 countries. The judges were Alberto Manguel and Ottmar Ette who represented Spanish literature, Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha and Jeronimo Pizarro who represented Portugese literature, Mercedes Monmany for Romania, Louis Chevaillier for Italy and Philipe Daros represented France.

Romanian writer Norman Manea was born in Suceava in 1936 and his literary work was heavily influenced by his childhood experiences in a concentration camp and by the communist era.

Manea has worked as a hydraulic engineer and he first published in 1966. Since then, he has published ten volumes of short fiction, essays and novels. His literary works have been translated in over 20 languages and he has received many awards, such as the Italian International Nonino Prize, the French Medicis Etranger Prize, the German Nelly Sachs Prize. His most famous works are: The Hooligan’s Return (2003), Compulsory Happiness (1999), The Black Envelope (1986), On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist (1997), The Fifth Impossibility (2012), The Trenchcoat (1990), and his collected stories in the volume Proust’s Tea (2010).

source:romania insider