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| György Dalos |
Dalos was picked for the prize above all in acknowledgement of his book Der Vorhang geht auf - Das Ende der Diktaturen in Osteuropa (The Curtain is Opened - The End of the Dictatorship in Eastern Europe), published in Germany in 2009.
The book describes "in detail and in a fascinating way" the fall of communism in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Eastern Germany, the prize jury said.
The Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding has been presented since 1994. It pays tribute to personalities who in their book publications have rendered outstanding services towards the advancement of mutual understanding in Europe, particularly with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Dalos, born in 1943, studied history at Lomonosov University in Moscow, and worked as a museologist. His first volume of poetry was published in 1964. He was a member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party until 1968, but was arrested and accused of conspiracy against the state, after which he was banned from publishing.
Dalos joined Hungary's dissident movement in the 1970s. He received a scholarship in Germany in the second half of the 1980s, then worked as a correspondent for Hungarian newspapers in Vienna. He headed the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin between 1995 and 1999 and now works as a freelance writer in the German capital. His best known works in Hungary are Guest from the Future and The Circumcision.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
