© Rosa CunhaJosé Eduardo Agualusa //
We are proud to announce that José Eduardo Agualusa has won the renowned Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize in the Foreign Literature category for his novel The Creole Nation (“Nação Crioula”), published in Russia by Inostrannaya Literatura and translated by Varvara Makhortova.
The prize was established in 2003 by the Leo Tolstoy Estate Museum and Samsung Electronics. The jury of the award, which is headed by Leo Tolstoy’s great-grandson, includes well-known Russian writers, literary critics and public figures. Former prize recipients in the Foreign Literature category include Mo Yan, Orhan Pamuk, Mario Vargas Llosa, Amos Oz, Julian Barnes, Yu Hua, Patricia Duncker and Hernán Rivera Letelier.
The jury highlights how The Creole Nation is “a rare example of a novel free from artificiality and premeditated literary devices. Despite the complexity of the themes it addresses — the slave trade, the capriciousness of human fate and the power of history over the individual — the book is written with surprising vigour and an almost festive quality. Behind its epistolary form lies a rich, multifaceted and profoundly powerful narrative about the unpredictable paths a human life can take. […] Agualusa is, without a doubt, an extraordinary writer”.
The awarded author receives 1,200,000 RUB (~15,000 USD) and the translator 500,000 RUB (~6,000 USD).
