Yevgenia Belorusets received the Horst Bingel Literary Prize

The Ukrainian writer Yevgenia Belorusets became one of the three laureates of the Hornst Bingel Literary Prize. This was reported on the official website of the award. Belorusets received the award for her Kyiv military diary, which was recently published in German under the title “Anfang des Krieges” (“Beginning of the War”) by Matthes & Seitz.

 In October, it was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The diary shows the daily life of Kyiv citizens in the first weeks after the start of the full-scale invasion of russia and reflects the unbearable nature of the war. According to the author, she actually made each entry in the diary as if it were the last – with the hope that the world would not allow this war to last even a second more.

«”It was a spring day, sun spots were playing on the walls of houses and on the white walls of St. Sophia Cathedral”. From the beginning of the russian-Ukrainian war, Yevgenia Belorusets kept a diary in which she reported on the war. She talks about her parents, about bomb shelters, about insults in the media and on the street. Terrible images which are also familiar: because everyday life can be found even in the most horrifying things. The author and photographer Belorusets rejects the omnipresent language of war and opposes a loving, attentive look to military rhetoric, and philanthropy to polarization», says the abstract of the German publication.

The Horst Bingel Prize is awarded for poetry, short stories, short prose, essays, reports, or other literary works combined with social activism. The award owes its name to Horst Bingel, a German poet, writer and publisher who founded the “Frankfurt Forum of Literature”, which became a landmark institution in the field of literature in the 1960s and 1970s. After Bingel’s death in 2008, his wife founded a literary fund that supports writers.

Yevgenia Belorusets is a Ukrainian artist, journalist, photographer, translator, and writer. Co-founder of the literary-artistic journal “Prostory”, member of the curatorial group “Hudrada”.

Recall that in 2020 Belorusets received the German International Literature Award.

Photo: produkciia