Iran’s “Colonel” wins Swiss literary prize

TEHRAN,Nov.16(MNA) – The celebrated Iranian novelist Mahmud Dowlatabadi won Switzerland’s 2013 Jan Michalski Prize for his poignant novel “The Colonel” on Wednesday. The book, which was published by Haus in Germany in 2009, is a powerful novel about the life of an Iranian colonel who recalls his memories of families and friends in solitude. The Bulgarian-German writer Ilija Trojanow, who was also among the members of the jury, described Dowlatabadi as “the greatest living prose author of Iran.” Commenting on the novel, he said, “Rarely have violence and power been portrayed with such unsparing vehemence”. “‘The Colonel’ is a page-turning panorama of Iranian mental anguish, producing visions and nightmares like dark exotic blossoms,” the Swiss book critic Angela Schader wrote in the Swiss German-language daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’Ecriture et la Littérature was created in 2004 at the initiative of Vera Michalski-Hoffmann in memory of her husband Jan Michalski. The Jan Michalski Prize for Literature is awarded each year by the Foundation to crown a work of world literature. An original feature of the Prize is its multicultural nature. Serge Gruzinski’s “L’Aigle et le Dragon: Démesure européenne et mondialisation au XVIe siècle” from France and Steve Sem-Sandberg’s “The Emperor of Lies” from Sweden were two other finalists. The three authors are invited for a three-month period of residence in the Maison de l’Ecriture of the foundation.