Chair of the panel of judges, writer, critic, and cultural journalist Maya Jaggi has told the media: “Set in a tuberculosis sanatorium on the eve of the First World War, Olga Tokarczuk’s masterfully paced, sharply satirical The Empusium, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is a suspense-filled murder mystery of the mind, propelled by mysterious forces of nature and natural justice, that guards its secrets until the end.”
The novel's main protagonist is a young Pole suffering from tuberculosis who arrives for treatment in a health resort in the Silesian mountains. According to Fitzcarraldo Editions, the publisher: “A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling”.
The other two finalists are Sons, Daughters by Croatian writer Ivana Bodrožić, and Forgottenness by Ukraine’s Tanja Maljartschuk. The winning book will be announced on 24 June at a public awards ceremony. The prize will be shared equally between the author and translator. Six finalist authors and translators are all women for the first time in the history of the prize.
Launched in 2018, the EBRD Literature Prize is an annual award for a work of literary fiction originally written in the language of a country where the Bank invests, translated into English, and published in the past year.
(mk/aj)