The Czech author and translator Radka Denemarková (56) accepted the European Tolerance Prize for Democracy and Human Rights from the city of Villach on Thursday evening. According to the jury, Denemarková knows how to weave a wide variety of characters and anecdotes into an imaginative literary tapestry like no other political writer. Her uncompromising commitment to the truth is encouraging. Uncompromising engagement to the Truth In her work, Denemarková describes the illnesses of our time, she diagnoses the causes of undesirable developments and laments the immorality and greed of companies as well as the depravity of state institutions, the grotesque consequences of supposedly naive actions, the powerlessness of the individual and the merciless fate of displaced people. She builds her books like an imposing temple; she writes relentlessly and directly, with enormous linguistic power and vivid images that get under your skin. “Uncompromising for the truth, committed against collective guilt and injustice”: This is how the jury justified the award for Denemarková’s political and literary commitment, which began at elementary school and later became a profession with the study of German and Bohemian studies at Charles University in Prague. During her years as a journalist and translator, she dealt with the dark and repressed sides of European history and analyzed patriarchal structures and the violence associated with them. Read more pressetext
