International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz goes to the publicists and writers Slavenka Drakulić and Richard Swartz in 2020

The International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz will be awarded in 2020 to the Croatian writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulić and the Swedish author and journalist Richard Swartz. The Board of Trustees for the International Stefan Heym Prize honours the married author couple's many years of literary and journalistic work with the award. The decision of the Board of Trustees was announced today by Lord Mayor Barbara Ludwig. The literary prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, will be awarded on 3 April 2020, traditionally around the time of Stefan Heym's birthday (10 April 1913).

The Croatian writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulić, born in 1949, became known for her novels "Das Prinzip Sehnsucht" (1989), "Das Liebesopfer" (1997), "Marmorhaut" (1998), "Als gäbe es mich nicht" (1999), "Frida" (2007), "Dora und der Minotaurus" (2016) and "Mileva Einstein und die Theorie der Einsamkeit" (2018).

Her work repeatedly centres on the role of women in society and in gender relations - a topic that has not lost its topicality and is one of the defining discourses of the present day. She often locates these questions in the biographies of famous women. Often, however, war also forms the cruel backdrop for the negotiation of universal questions. In 2005, Slavenca Drakulić received the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding for her book "Keiner war dabei. War Crimes in the Balkans on Trial."

Richard Swartz, born in 1945, is an internationally renowned Swedish writer and journalist who has worked for a number of well-known newspapers. In his reportages and reports as well as in his novels - including "Room Service" (1996), "Notlügen" (1998), "Ein Haus in Istrien" (1999), "Adressbuch" (2005), "The Other Next Door" (2007), "Oysters in Prague" (2019) - reflects the intellectual and political life of Western and Eastern Europe. His literary work is always about the individual and their relationship to society. Like Stefan Heym, he sees the task of literature as accompanying people in their search for answers in contemporary life.

Slavenka Drakulić and Richard Swartz are European voices in the best sense of the word, they deal with the big European questions, which are discussed using the example of individual fates. War and peace, democracy, dictatorship, war crimes and responsibility, equality and justice: as chroniclers, they are characterised by their astute literary observation of history and the present, which conveys incorruptible truths with equal parts brilliance and poetry.

By awarding the International Stefan Heym Prize 2020 to Slavenka Drakulić and Richard Swartz, the Board of Trustees is honouring two publicists and writers whose work is relentlessly enlightening, but at the same time gives the public the task of forming their own judgement. Their work consistently opposes collective forgetting and thus sends a clear signal in favour of intercultural understanding and reconciliation.

Mayor Barbara Ludwig: "Stefan Heym has shaped the cultural and intellectual heritage of our city. He was considered a lateral thinker, sometimes even a troublemaker. He took nothing for granted. On the contrary: he sought discourse. He questioned and scrutinised, put his finger in the wound in order to encourage people and society to reflect, think and rethink. He lived and embodied "Opening minds", the credo of our Capital of Culture application. Slavenka Drakulić and Richard Swartz are two publicists and writers who, like Stefan Heym, are convincing with their analytical acuity and deal with the big European questions in their works."

Regula Venske, President of the PEN Centre Germany: "It is exemplary how the city of Chemnitz honours and preserves Stefan Heym's legacy and makes it productive for the present. Slavenka Drakulić and Richard Swartz are two authors who have each dealt with European issues and the relationship between the individual and society in their own unique way. While Swartz does this in an amusing way, very much in the spirit of Heym, Drakulić has ventured into oppressive topics in her reportages and novels, which are often suppressed and ignored. Her novel 'Als gäbe es mich nicht' about the systematic rapes, here by Serbian soldiers, during the Yugoslavian war is the most oppressive anti-war novel I know."

Dr Ulrike Uhlig, Chair of the Board of the International Stefan Heym Society "Both authors combine literary storytelling with journalistic writing and use their work to intervene in current debates of our time. A Croatian and a Swede, an East-West relationship quasi living European integration. They combine literary class with socio-political responsibility, an excellent choice!"

International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz
The International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz is awarded in memory of the life, work and achievements of Stefan Heym, the son and honorary citizen of our city. The International Stefan Heym Prize is intended to honour contemporary and courageous personalities who, like Stefan Heym, have made outstanding and lasting achievements as writers and publicists. The prize was first awarded to Amos Oz in 2008. Bora Ćosić received the award in 2011. On the occasion of Stefan Heym's 100th birthday, the prize was awarded to Christoph Hein in 2013. In 2017, the Polish writer and journalist Joanna Bator received the International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz.

The Board of Trustees, which decides on the awarding of the prize, includes the Mayor of the City of Chemnitz, the President of the P.E.N. Centre Germany, the President of the Goethe-Institut, the Director of C. Bertelsmann Verlag, the Chair of the International Society for Human Rights (IGFM) - German Section, the Chair of the International Stefan Heym Society, Prof. Dr Bernadette Malinowski, holder of the Chair of Modern and Comparative Literature at Chemnitz University of Technology, and two councillors from the City of Chemnitz Cultural Committee.

Further information
Information on the International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz, the Stefan Heym Sponsorship Prizes and the previous prize winners can be found on the website
www.stefan-heym-preis.de.