A Russian poet, Maria Stepanova has been awarded the prestigious Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding in 2023.

The Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding is one of the most prestigious literature prizes in Germany. It has been awarded annually since 1994 and comes with prize money of 20,000 euros.

The prize committee includes the Free State of Saxony, the City of Leipzig, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V. (The German Publishers and Booksellers Association) and Leipziger Messe. Cooperation partner is the Federal Agency for Civid Education.

The prize will be awarded to Maria Stepanova at the opening ceremony of the Leipzig Book Fair on the evening of 26 April 2023 at the Gewandhaus Leipzig. The event starts at 7pm and will be streamed live on our homepage.

Maria Stepanova, a Jewish author from Russia who was born in Moscow in 1972 and is currently living in exile in Germany, will be awarded the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding 2023 for her volume of poetry entitled "Mädchen ohne Kleider" (Girls Without Clothes).

These cycles of poems with their melodious narratives constitute an impressive example of how an attentive awareness of history can be captured in modern poetry. The poems were published by Suhrkamp in May 2022.

The highly acclaimed translation from Russian is by Olga Radetzkaja. The final statement from the jury also refers to the poetry collection "Der Körper kehrt wieder" (The Body Returns) and the novel "Nach dem Gedächtnis" (In Memory of Memory), which were both published in 2020...

Source : Leipziger