The laureate of the 2022 NIN Award is Stevo Grabovac for the novel “After the Party,” announced the jury of this prestigious literary prize.
Out of five titles that made it to the finals for the NIN Award, as revealed at a press conference at the “Moskva” hotel, the expert jury decided to award the 70th edition of this recognition to the writer from Banja Luka, Stevo Grabovac, for the novel “After the Party.” The winner’s name was announced following a minute of silence for the late writer Goran Petrović, who passed away on Friday.
The jury for the best novel, consisting of Milena Đorđijević, Žarka Svirčev, Violeta Stojmenović, Tamara Mitrović, and Goran Korunović (president), initially made a broader selection from 188 novels submitted, narrowing it down to 38 titles and then further to 12 in the final selection. Finally, they chose among the top five novels: “The Song of Three Worlds” by Vladimir Pištala (Agora), “After the Party” by Stevo Grabovac (Imprimatur), “Pakrac” by Vladan Matijević (Laguna), “Autosection” by Srđan Srdić (Partizanska knjiga), and “In the Land of Franz Joseph” by Ljubomir Koraćević (Književna opština Vršac).
For the winning novel, the votes were cast by three jury members: Žarka Svirčev, Violeta Stojmenović, and Tamara Mitrović, while the other two, Milena Đorđijević and Goran Korunović, voted for “Pakrac” by Vladan Matijević, as announced at the press conference.
The previous laureate of the NIN Award was Danica Vukićević in January for her work “Inner Sea.”
The NIN Critics’ Award for the Novel of the Year has been awarded since 1954. Initially, it was given to writers from the entire former Yugoslavia, and after the breakup of the country, to Serbian writers. The original intention of the NIN editorial team was to encompass two literary genres – novels and dramas – with this award, but the jury in its first composition suggested to limit the award only to novels. The establishment of the NIN Award for the Novel was a significant event in the literary culture of that time.
It still holds significance as the most important literary recognition in Serbia today, and over the decades, many have compared it to the French Goncourt Prize.
The editorial team of the renewed NIN, led by editor-in-chief Antonije Isaković, included a significant part of the editorial staff of the first post-war youth magazine “Mladi borac”: literary critic Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz, art critic Miodrag B. Protić, and the most esteemed writers of the youngest generation. NIN was considered the most liberal newspaper in the Yugoslav press during the mid-1950s, alongside the Slovenian magazine “Mladina.” The award initially had a Yugoslav character, and the jury members were the most respected critics and representatives of literature in the Serbo-Croatian language, as reported by nova.rs.
The NIN Award was first presented in 1954, and the inaugural recipient was Dobrica Ćosić for the novel “Roots.” The only three-time laureate was Oskar Davičo, who also received the award two years in a row for the novels “Concrete and Owls” (1956), “Hunger” (1963), and “Secrets” (1964).
Double laureates include Dobrica Ćosić, Živojin Pavlović, Dragan Velikić, and Svetislav Basara.
So far, only seven female writers have been honored with the NIN Award: Dubravka Ugrešić (1988), Svetlana Velmar-Janković (1995), Grozdana Olujić (2009), Gordana Ćirjanić (2010), Ivana Dimić (2016), Milena Marković (2021), and Danica Vukićević (2022).
Photo: B.Brezo
Source: nova.rs
