Serhij Zhadan will receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2022. The good news came on Monday morning. His “novels, essays, poems and song lyrics” deal with a “world that has experienced great upheavals and at the same time lives from tradition” and find their own poetic expression that “shows in a haunting and differentiated way what many have long refused to see”. Above all, Serhij Zhadan shows “how the people of Ukraine are trying to lead an independent life defined by peace and freedom despite all the violence “.
Author, translator, musician
Who is the author? Serhij Zhadan was born in 1974 in Luhansk/Eastern Ukraine. After studying Ukrainian, German and literary studies, he wrote his doctoral thesis on Ukrainian futurism. Since the 1990s, he has shaped the cultural scene in Kharkiv and organizes literature and music festivals.
His work is published by Suhrkamp Verlag and ranges from poems and essays to short stories and novels, including the award-winning road novel The Invention of Jazz in the Donbass (2012, ed. 2010). Zhadan is also a songwriter for rock bands and performs with the“Sobaki v kosmosi” (Dogs in Space). While he writes his own lyrics in Ukrainian, he also works as a translator from German, English, Belarusian and Russian.
Reward for intensive commitment
But why just write when you can do more? With the Serhiy Zhadan Charitable Foundation, the author is involved in educational and cultural projects in eastern Ukraine. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Zhadan has been providing more humanitarian aid in Kharkiv, where he still lives.
The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is endowed with 25,000 euros and has been awarded by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association since 1950. Past winners include names such as Nelly Sachs, Albert Schweizer and Margaret Atwood. The award ceremony will take place at the end of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2022 (19-23.10.2022).