Yasnaya Polyana Prize laureates announced – Kommersant

The Yasnaya Polyana literary prize has announced its winners in 2023. In the “Modern Russian Prose” category, the winner was the writer Sasha Nikolaeva with her novel “The Ant God: Requiem.” The prize in the Foreign Literature category went to the Macedonian writer Venko Andonovski for his book “The Navel of the Light.” The award ceremony took place in the Beethoven Hall of the Bolshoi Theater.

“I will be happy for any of the six (finalists.— “Ъ”), but I’m especially happy for our laureate. Sasha Nikolaenko, “The Ant God: Requiem,” announced the chairman of the award jury, advisor to the Russian President for culture Vladimir Tolstoy (quote from TASS).

The prize winner was also the translator Olga Pankina, who created the Russian-language version of Venko Andonovsky’s novel “The Navel of the Light.” The prize was awarded to translator Irina Doronina for her work on Chinua Achebe’s novel “Everything Falls Apart.” The winner in the Personality category was screenwriter Yuri Arabov, who worked on films directed by Alexander Sokurov. Samsung’s special “Readers’ Choice” prize went to Rahim Jafarov for his work “His Last Days” – the writer won a trip to South Korea.

The Yasnaya Polyana Prize was established in 2003 by the Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate and Samsung Electronics. The jury of the award is headed by the great-great-grandson of the writer Vladimir Tolstoy, the jury includes Russian writers and literary critics. This year the jury included Pavel Basinsky, Alexey Varlamov, Evgeniy Vodolazkin and Vladislav Otroshenko.