Irish author Banville wins international award

Irish author Banville wins international award

Irish writer John Banville recently won the Franz Kafka Prize for literature. This honor is awarded each year by the Prague-based Franz Kafka Society and it recognizes “exceptional literary creation.”

Banville, a native of Co. Wexford, is the eleventh writer to receive the award, which consists of a smaller version of the Prague monument to Kafka and a cash prize of $10,000.

The Irishman was chosen from a list of fifteen writers by the society which was established in 1989 shortly after the fall of communism. The aim of the group was to promote Kafka’s works and awareness of other German and Jewish authors from Prague, drawing attention to their influence on subsequent literature. They are working “to make Kafka's heritage a natural component of the Czech cultural context.”

Banville told the Irish Times , “I’m thrilled of course and it’s a great honor to get this truly international prize. The list of past winners is very distinguished and I’m glad to be listed amongst them…I like to think of myself as an international author as well as an Irish author and I take this prize as a recognition of that fact.”

Previous winners include English playwright Harold Pinter, American author Philip Roth, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and the recipient of last year’s award, Czech writer and former president Václav Havel.

Banville also writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black and has had 18 novels published, including The Sea , for which he won the 2005 Booker Prize.

PowellsBooks.Blog – John Banville: The Powells.com Interview ...

Kleist's play is one of the great dramas of western literature. It's hardly known at all in the English-speaking world. In fact, Kleist is hardly known in the English-speaking world. Kleist, who died in the early 1800s, died very young, I believe at the age of 32. His ambition was to blend Greek drama with Shakespearean burlesque, which was quite a task, but he succeeded, I think, in Amphitryon . It's a very good play — wonderfully entertaining and a very dark comedy. It is a comedy of errors, in which Zeus comes to Earth because he has fallen in love with the wife of Amphitryon and spends the night with her in the form of Amphitryon, so she thinks it's her husband. The next day, Amphitryon himself comes back unexpectedly, and so there follows a wonderful comedy of errors. It's very dark, but a great piece of literature.