French Writer Sylvie Germain Awarded This Year's Park Kyung-ni Literature Prize

October 24 Awards Ceremony... 100 Million Won Prize Awarded
October 26 Meeting with Writers at Wonju Park Kyung-ri Literature Park Event

Wonju City (Mayor Won Kang-su) announced on the 26th that French writer Sylvie Germain has been selected as the recipient of the 13th Park Kyung-ni Literature Award in 2024. This year’s Park Kyung-ni Literature Award was jointly hosted by the Toji Cultural Foundation and Wonju City, with support from Mirim Syscon.

French writer Sylvie Germain, selected as the winner of the 13th Park Kyung-ni Literature Award in 2024.

The Park Kyung-ni Literature Award, established in 2011 by the Toji Cultural Foundation (Chairman Kim Se-hee), is the first global literary award in Korea. It is awarded to “the most writerly writer of our time who preserves the intrinsic value of literature and has had a significant impact on world literary history,” targeting novelists worldwide in honor of writer Park Kyung-ni.

The award ceremony for the 13th Park Kyung-ni Literature Award will be held at 11 a.m. on October 24 at Signiel Seoul. The recipient, Sylvie Germain, will receive the Park Kyung-ni Literature Award certificate, a plaque, and a prize of 100 million won.

On October 23, a day before the ceremony, a press conference will be held at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, and on the 26th, the award-winning author will give a lecture at the Park Kyung-ni Literary Park in Wonju. Subsequently, on the 29th, a dialogue with the award-winning author will take place at the Kyobo Building in Gwanghwamun, Seoul.

The Park Kyung-ni Literature Award Recommendation Committee selected 27 candidates through four rounds of preliminary screening from 116 novelists worldwide to determine the awardee.

Based on this, the judging panel reviewed the candidate authors and their works over about a year and selected Sylvie Germain as the final candidate. After the final approval by the Park Kyung-ni Literature Award Committee, she was confirmed as the recipient of the 13th Park Kyung-ni Literature Award in 2024.

French writer Sylvie Germain, selected as the winner of the 13th Park Kyung-ni Literature Award in 2024.

Sylvie Germain, born in 1954 in Ch?teauroux, France, earned a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in 1976, a master's degree in philosophy and aesthetics from Paris X-Nanterre University in 1978, and a doctorate in philosophy in 1981.

From 1981 to 1986, she worked at the Paris Department of Culture and debuted in 1985 with her first novel Le Livre des Nuits (The Book of Nights), which won multiple literary awards.

She also lived in Prague, Czech Republic, from 1987 to 1993, teaching philosophy at a school, before returning to France in 1993. Following her debut novel Le Livre des Nuits (The Book of Nights) in 1986, she published Nuit d'Ambre (Amber Night), Jours de col?re (Days of Anger) in 1989, and later works including La pleurante des rues de Prague (The Weeping Woman of the Streets of Prague, 1992), Ateliers de lumi?re (Workshops of Light, 2004), Les personnages (Personae, 2004), Magnus (2005), and L'inaper?u (The Unnoticed, 2008), among many others.

Meanwhile, the past recipients of the Park Kyung-ni Literature Award are ▲2011 1st Choi In-hoon (South Korea) ▲2012 2nd Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia) ▲2013 3rd Marilynne Robinson (USA) ▲2014 4th Bernhard Schlink (Germany) ▲2015 5th Amos Oz (Israel) ▲2016 6th Ng?g? wa Thiong'o (Kenya) ▲2017 7th Antonia Susan Byatt (UK) ▲2018 8th Richard Ford (USA) ▲2019 9th Ismail Kadare (Albania) ▲2020 10th Yoon Heung-gil (South Korea) ▲2022 11th Amin Maalouf (France) ▲2023 12th Christoph Ransmayr (Austria).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.