European Union Prize for Literature, ένα προβληματικό βραβείο

Ακούγεται πολύ ευρωπαϊκό ως βραβείο, στην ουσία είναι "εθνικό" αφού προτείνεται από κάθε χώρα από μια μικρή επιτροπή. Απονέμεται στις μισές χώρες μια χρονιά και στις άλλες μισές την επόμενη. Λεπτομέρειες:

European Union Prizes for Literature

       They've announced the winners of the latest batch of European Union Prizes for Literature, for works by: "emerging fiction writers" from the 41 countries participating in the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
       Fourteen countries were to announce winners in this particular cycle but:

After further consideration of the shortlist suggested by the Moldovan jury, the EUPL Steering Committee could not confirm the proposed candidates as emerging authors. Therefore, there will be no Moldovan laureate in 2021.

       Given how little Moldovan literature ever makes it beyond the local borders I'd argue that pretty much anything from there should count as "emerging", but I guess they saw things differently.
       (The books that are in the running, and then the winners, are decided on by national juries -- i.e. each country names its own finalists and then winner, a less than ideal way of doing things ..... See also my recent mention about some of the disqualified finalists for these prizes.)

       There's no question, however, that the European Union Prize for Literature does help get attention for the winning titles; we're fairly certain to be seeing quite a few of these in English translation in the next couple of years. (Some of these authors already have other titles available in translation, e.g. Armenian winner Aram Pachyan.)

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)

EUPL disqualification(s)

       The European Union Prize for Literature announced its shortlists -- 14, for the fourteen countries eligible for the prizes this year -- a month ago, with the winners to be announced next week.
       The shortlists are selected by national juries -- but there's now some outrage over the EUPL having rejected one of the shortlisted titles, Maltese selection Għall-Glorja tal-Patrija ! by Aleks Farrugia; see, for example, Matthew Vella's report in Malta Today, Aleks Farrugia disqualified by EU Literature Prize over SKS’s ‘Labour’ affiliation.
       The issue is apparently that the book was published by a publishing house (SKS) affiliated with a political party, which the prize considers unacceptable. Understandably, they want to keep politics out of it, but it's unfortunate that books can be disqualified just because of who the publisher is -- which can obviously be a problem for smaller markets, where there are very few commercial publishers of any kind.
       (I'd argue the much bigger problem is leaving the selection process in national-jury hands rather than trying to make things truly European, but I do understand the difficulty of finding sufficient outside jurors capable of assessing works in Maltese, etc. .....)

       Almost more interesting to me is what is mentioned in Chris Peregin's Lovin Malta report, Rejected For EU Book Prize, Labour-Published ‘Glory To The Fatherland’ Fuels Debate On Media Ownership, about the Maltese shortlist:

This meant that a book by author Aleks Farrugia, who was one of Malta’s five shortlisted books but is published by SKS, was eliminated from the process, together with another two books that were eliminated for other reasons.

       As you can see from the shortlist, countries each have up to five titles in the running -- but some have considerably fewer (including Malta, with just two). Were they all allowed to shortlist five -- and were numerous titles then eliminated for various reasons ? (I, for one, would love to know what reasons the other two Maltese titles were eliminated for .....)
       It's a shame that there seems to be no transparency here, especially for outsiders; were it not for this kerfuffle I would never have known that there were originally (meant to be) five shortlisted Maltese titles -- and, presumably, five for each country -- and that numerous titles were, without public knowledge (much less explanation), excluded.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)