Robert Menasse's The Capital Wins Kakehashi Literary Prize 2024
News22.08.2024
This year’s Kakehashi Literature Prize has been awarded to Robert Menasse and the Japanese translator Tomoko Fukuma for Menasse’s novel The Capital. The award, worth a total of €20,000, will be presented in October 2024 at the European Literature Festival in Tokyo.
The jury had the following to say about their decision: »With his novel The Capital, Austrian author Robert Menasse has managed to create a vivid illustration of the diverse issues confronting contemporary Europe, narrated by way of several parallel storylines. The events depicted – such as the failure of the plan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the EU at the memorial site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the enthusiasm of an emeritus professor for a post-national European republic, or even the daily fears of an elderly Jewish survivor of Auschwitz – are sketched out with both irony and sensitivity, and arranged into mosaic-like whole. The jury awarded the highest recognition to this unique European novel, which makes the contradictions and possibilities of the unfinished project of »Europe« tangible with a sense of spatial breadth and temporal depth. The translator Tomoko Fukuma has already demonstrated her comprehensive and nuanced understanding of literary texts through her numerous studies of the Jewish authors of the Holocaust, making her the ideal person to convey this novel to Japanese readers.
The jury had the following to say about their decision: »With his novel The Capital, Austrian author Robert Menasse has managed to create a vivid illustration of the diverse issues confronting contemporary Europe, narrated by way of several parallel storylines. The events depicted – such as the failure of the plan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the EU at the memorial site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the enthusiasm of an emeritus professor for a post-national European republic, or even the daily fears of an elderly Jewish survivor of Auschwitz – are sketched out with both irony and sensitivity, and arranged into mosaic-like whole. The jury awarded the highest recognition to this unique European novel, which makes the contradictions and possibilities of the unfinished project of »Europe« tangible with a sense of spatial breadth and temporal depth. The translator Tomoko Fukuma has already demonstrated her comprehensive and nuanced understanding of literary texts through her numerous studies of the Jewish authors of the Holocaust, making her the ideal person to convey this novel to Japanese readers.