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Imre Kertesz wins Nobel literature prize
Stockholm, Oct 10: Hungarian holocaust survivor and writer Imre Kertesz won the 2002 Nobel literature prize today `for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.`
Stockholm, Oct 10: Hungarian holocaust survivor and writer Imre Kertesz won the 2002 Nobel literature prize today "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the
individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."
"In his writing Imre Kertesz explores the possibility of continuing to live and think as an individual in an era in which the subjection of human beings to social forces has become increasingly complete," the Swedish academy said in its citation. Kertesz' work returns unremittingly to the decisive event in his life, a period spent in Auschwitz to which he was taken as a teenage boy during the Nazi persecution of Hungary's Jews, it said.
For Kertesz, Auschwitz is not an exceptional occurrence, outside the normal history of Western Europe. "It is the ultimate truth about human degradation in modern existence," the academy said. He will take home the prize sum of 10 million Kronor (USD 1.10 million).
He will receive the award, along with the other Nobel laureates, from the hands of Sweden's King Carl Xvi Gustaf at the official ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the awards' creator, Swedish scholar and inventor Alfred Nobel.
Last year, the prize went to Trinidad-born British author V S Naipaul. Bureau Report
"In his writing Imre Kertesz explores the possibility of continuing to live and think as an individual in an era in which the subjection of human beings to social forces has become increasingly complete," the Swedish academy said in its citation. Kertesz' work returns unremittingly to the decisive event in his life, a period spent in Auschwitz to which he was taken as a teenage boy during the Nazi persecution of Hungary's Jews, it said.
For Kertesz, Auschwitz is not an exceptional occurrence, outside the normal history of Western Europe. "It is the ultimate truth about human degradation in modern existence," the academy said. He will take home the prize sum of 10 million Kronor (USD 1.10 million).
He will receive the award, along with the other Nobel laureates, from the hands of Sweden's King Carl Xvi Gustaf at the official ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the awards' creator, Swedish scholar and inventor Alfred Nobel.
Last year, the prize went to Trinidad-born British author V S Naipaul. Bureau Report