Italian writer and translator Caludio Magris receives Franz Kafka prize

Italian writer, translator, German studies scholar and essayist Claudio Magris will receive this year’s Franz Kafka prize. Mr Magris, has become the sixteenth recipient of the international literary award which is given to authors whose work appeals to readers across different cultures. Among the previous winners were Austria’s Elfriede Jelinek and British playwright Harold Pinter, both of whom went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature the same year. Claudio Magris, who was born in Trieste in 1939, has received a number of Italian and European literary awards and many of his books have also appeared in Czech. He will collect the prize at the award giving ceremony in October.