'The Empusium' wins European Literature Prize 2024

The European Literature Prize is awarded for the best contemporary European novel published in Dutch translation in the preceding year. The award goes to both the author and the translator of the winning novel, each of them receiving € 10,000 in prize money. On Saturday 2 November, Tokarczuk (who previously won the Nobel Prize for Literature) and Lesman will receive the prize from jury chair Niña Weijers at the Crossing Border Festival in The Hague.

From the jury report

'The jury has unanimously chosen The Empusium as the winner of the European Literature Prize 2024: a novel like a root system that branches and deepens, and becomes increasingly rich during reading and rereading. Tokarczuk is in dialogue not just with The Magic Mountain but with a plethora of concepts that have permanently influenced and perpetuated the self-image of the European intellectual. Venomous and funny, with a great eye for the absurdity of the human (male) tendency to create order and to demarcate, Tokarczuk shows the disastrous path of hardline opposition and definitive worldviews. The meandering Tokarczuk sentences, in which she navigates the mysterious region between knowing and not knowing, have been translated with great mastery by Karol Lesman. He deserves the greatest compliment any translator can receive: there isn’t a moment when you feel you are reading a translated novel.’

On The Empusium

In September 1913 Mieczysław Wojnicz, a student, travels from Lemberg to a renowned sanatorium in the mountains of Prussian Silesia. He moves into a gentlemen's boarding house, where patients from all over Europe incessantly philosophize with one another, just as they do in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Meanwhile, Mieczysław becomes fascinated by the many disturbing events that occur in the area. What he does not yet know is that dark forces have targeted him too.

Olga Tokarczuk (b. Poland, 1962) is considered the most important Polish author of her generation. In 2018 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, having previously won the Man Booker International Prize (in 2008) and Poland's most prestigious literary prize, the Nike Award (in 2015). In addition to The Empusium, the following books by her have been published in Dutch translation: Bieguni (Flights), Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob), Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times), Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead) and Czuły narrator (The Tender Narrator).

Karol Lesman (b. 1951) studied Slavic languages and literature at the University of Amsterdam. As a translator from Polish, he has dozens of titles to his name in addition to those of Olga Tokarczuk. They include work by Wisława Szymborska and Zbigniew Herbert. He has received multiple awards for his translation oeuvre, which spans five decades, including the Aleida Schot Prize and the Martinus Nijhoff Translation Prize.

European Literature Prize

The European Literature Prize is awarded by the Dutch Foundation for Literature for the best contemporary European novel published in Dutch translation in the preceding year. The award goes to both the author and the translator of the winning novel, each of them receiving €10,000 in prize money.

As well as chair author Niña Weijers, the jury for the prize consists of Ronnie Terpstra (Van der Velde bookstore), Astrid Bamberg (Hijman Ongerijmd bookstore), author and reviewer Ilse Josepha Lazaroms and Karina van Santen, the translator of last year's winning book. They selected the shortlist from a longlist compiled by booksellers from all over the country.