Darvasi won the prize for The Flower Eaters (Virágzabálók), published by Magvető, a novel that looks at every-day life during the 1848-49 war for independence. He was presented the prize, which comes with a HUF 3 million purse, at a ceremony on Friday broadcast live on Duna Television.
A secret, eight-member jury was given the task of picking the best five works from 25 authors. The prize's board picked three finalists, then decided on a winner. The board's members are Zoltán Sumonyi, the writer and deputy managing director of the Hungarian P.E.N. Club; György Gömöri, the Hungarian poet who teaches at Cambridge; and the literary historian Mihály Ilia.
The other two finalists were Attila Balázs, who was picked for a historical novel about Vojvodina, the area in Serbia where the author was born, called For Some it's North, For Others it's South (Kinek Észak, Kinek DélI), and Ildikó Boldizsár, who was chosen for a richly illustrated fairy tale about the princess in all little girls called Born to be a Princess (Királylány születik). Boldizsár won the Duna TV special prize: a trip to Transylvania.
Last year, the poet László Lator received the Rotary Literary Prize for a collection of poems.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / Photo: Dániel Kováts
