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Nádas and the novel?s German translator Christina Viragh were presented the award at a ceremony in the German capital on Tuesday.
The jury said Nádas's novel presented "with unparalleled precision, tenderness and persuasion how ideologies in the 20th century subjugated the body and the soul."
Literary critic Jörg Plath, a member of the jury for the prize, said he was envious of those who have not yet read Nádas?s novel because they were ?still ahead of a great and wonderful experience.?
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Viragh, who was born in Hungary but moved to Switzerland with her family as a young girl, said the book drew attention to ?a humorous and curious Hungary that rejects authoritarianism and has a cosmopolitan, European and democratic spirit.?
?This Hungary is very strong,? she added.
The prize, awarded by the BHF Bank Foundation in cooperation with the Goethe Institute, the Literary Colloquium Berlin and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, recognises a ?significant contemporary work from the literature of Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe and its outstanding translation into German?. It comes with a 20,000 euro purse that is shared by the author and translator.
