Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai will receive the Formentor Prize for Literature in Marrakech next Friday

Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai will receive the Formentor Prize for Literature on Friday 27 September in Marrakech (Morocco), in a ceremony that will take place at the Barceló Palmeraie Hotel in the city, according to the Formentor Foundation, the promoter of the awards.

The award ceremony, whose winner this year was announced last March, is part of the 17th edition of the Formentor Literary Conversations, which will be held until 29 September in Marrakech under the motto ‘Geniuses, nomads and Bedouins’.

A colloquium on Spanish cultural magazines will open the conference on Thursday 26 September, with the aim of addressing the dilemmas, challenges and issues that editors in the media of information, analysis and criticism of culture have to resolve. The journalist and writer Xavi Ayén will be the speaker of the colloquium.

On Friday, the day will be dedicated to the figure of the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai (5 January 1954, Gyula), a writer who was recognised by the jury last March “for maintaining the narrative power that envelops, reveals, hides and transforms the reality of the world, for expanding the novelistic version of the enigmatic human existence, for calling for the vigorous reading of a complex fable and for constructing the fascinating labyrinths of the literary imagination”.

“The work of our prizewinner encompasses in its elliptical and slow evocation the sombre, beautiful and melancholic landscapes of the soul, the abrupt cartography of the sinuous human pilgrimage and the secret murmurs of a self-absorbed premonition,” added the jury.

In the morning, there will be a session with the participation of the members of the jury of this edition, such as Dulce María Zúñiga, Berta Vias Mahou, José Enrique Ruiz-Domènech, Andrés Ibáñez, and Basilio Baltasar, who is the president; and later there will be a meeting with some of its international editors such as Sandra Ollo (Barcelona), Aleksi Siltala (Helsinki), Aurore Touya (Paris), Barbara Epler (New York), Adan Kovacsiscs.

This will be followed by an official press conference and, finally, the Award ceremony with the subsequent gala dinner, accompanied by a concert of Gnaoui and Andalouse music, an event that will close the celebration of the Prix Formentor 24, an award that since its beginnings has recognized writers such as Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Dacia Maraini, Jorge Semprún, Gisela Elsner, Nathalie Sarraute, Saul Bellow, Witold Gombrowicz, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Javier Marías, Enrique Vila-Matas, Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Calasso, Alberto Manguel, Mircea Cartarescu, Annie Ernaux, Cees Nooteboom, César Aira, Liudmila Ulítskaya or Pascal Quinard.

Over the weekend, on 28 and 29 September, the same garden setting of the Barceló Palmeraie Oasis Resort Hotel will host the 17th edition of the Formentor Literary Conversations, whose guiding thread will focus on discovering and revealing the ends of the earth, which will weave a journey through literature and reading, accompanied by Geniuses, Nomads, Bedouins, Wanderers and Lost Worlds.

The conversations will be attended by Esther Bendahan, Jordi Esteva, Carlos Varona, Karima Ziali, Rocio Rojas-Marcos, Luisa Castro, Tito Vivas, Xavier Güell, Albert Lladó, Maria Belmonte, David Castillo, Marta Carnicero, Toni Iturbe, Miguel Angel Hernandez, Jacinto Anton, Sara Barquinero, Coral Bracho (FIL Guadalajara Prize 2023), Miquel Molina, Juan Manuel de Prada, Pola Oloixarac, Quim Barnola, Diego Garrocho, Mey Zamora and László Krasznahorkai, Prize Formentor 2024.

TRIBUTE TO JUAN GOYTISOLO

In addition, a tribute will be paid to one of the writers who has built the most bridges in favour of knowledge between Morocco and Spain, Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, ​​1931-Marrakech, 2017), who chose the city of Marrakech to settle down, and lived there for decades.

His literary and essayistic work, whose stylistic, aesthetic and moral integrity has enriched the Spanish literary heritage, bears witness to the author’s efforts to unite Moroccan culture and civil society with current Spanish affairs.

In 2012, the jury for the 2024 Formentor Prize for Literature highlighted Juan Goytisolo’s contribution to the rapprochement of European and Maghreb culture and highlighted his intellectual contribution to the awareness of the Mediterranean.

The panel will feature writer Vicente Molina Foix and Aline Schulmann, translator of Juan Goytisolo’s works into French, in an event presented by journalist Joseba Elola.

CHARACTERS AND STYLE OF LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI

As the jury of the awards pointed out, in the plot of these surprising fictions, László Krasznahorkai’s characters are distinguished by their languid, hidden and twisted personality. In his narrative itinerary, conscience and adventure, irony and sadness, madness and the sacred flow to the rhythm of a meditated rumination. The characters are always dense, unpredictable and on the verge of a delirious redemption.

László Krasznahorkai’s narrative structures and his slow, drawn-out, detailed style reveal the creative energy of a literature completely removed from the industrial influence of entertainment. Over the decades, his work has brought together an international community of readers committed to the artistic tradition of the European novel.

“The works of László Krasznahorkai restore to us the virtuous phlegm of reading and contemplation of the strange, solemn, lethargic, dark and voluptuous that beats in the heart of man. Our author thus renews the aesthetic authority of great literature. For all this, for making readers aware of the legacy of the Hungarian language, for restoring the unnoticed dimensions of the imagination and for the virtuosity of his elegant writing, the jury awards the 2024 Formentor Prize for Literature to the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai,” it highlights.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

László Krasznahorkai was born on 5 January 1954 in Gyula, Hungary. He studied law and Hungarian language and literature, and after a few years as an editor, he became a writer. He left communist Hungary in 1987, when he went to West Berlin on a scholarship.

In the early 1990s, he spent long periods of time in Mongolia and China, and later in Japan, settings that brought aesthetic and stylistic changes to his writing. While writing the novel War and Warfare (1999), he travelled around Europe and lived in Allen Ginsberg’s flat in New York. He now lives in seclusion in the hills of Szentlászló.

His first novel, Satantango (1985), translated as Satanic Tango, brought him to the centre of Hungarian literary life and remains his best-known work. Also notable is Melancholy of Resistance (1989), both adapted to film by his friend, director Béla Tarr.

Other works of his that have been translated into Spanish include: ‘War and War’; ‘To the North the Mountain, to the South the Lake, to the West the Road, to the East the River’; ‘Isaiah Has Arrived’; ‘And Seiobo Descended to Earth’; ‘Merciful Relations’ and ‘The Last Wolf’.

In March 2004, the author received the Kossuth Prize from the Hungarian Government, one of the most prestigious in the country, for his entire body of work; in May 2015, the Man Booker International; in April 2021, the Austrian Prize for European Literature and, in 2024, he was awarded the Formentor Prize for Literature.