Anna Bikont wins European Book Prize
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
08.12.2011 16:34
Anna Bikont is the recipient of the 2011 European Book Prize in the ‘Non-Fiction Category’.
Bikont received the accolade for her book My z Jedwabnego (We from Jedwabne), which was published last year in a French translation under the title Le Crime et le Silence, Jedwabne 1941, la memoire d’un pogrom dans la Pologne d’aujourd’hui.
The book is a reconstruction of the events in the village of Jedwabne, eastern Poland, on 10 July, 1941, leading to the murder of several hundred of its Jewish inhabitants by their Polish neighbours.
It took Anna Bikont four years to complete the book, which is the result of painstaking archival research as well as many hours of conversations with perpetrators of the murder, eye-witnesses and surviving Jedwabne residents.
The book had its first Polish edition in 2004. An English translation is planned.
The European Book Prize is a EU award which aims to promote European values, and to contribute to European citizens' better understanding of the EU as a cultural entity. In 2009, the prize went to Poland’s Mariusz Szczygieł for Gootland. (mk)