Mircea Cărtărescu has won the 2024 Ceppo Racconto Internazionale prize for his 2019 work Melancolia, published in Italian by the publishing house La Nave di Teseo in 2022.

He is one of the seven winners in various categories of the award, granted in the Italian city of Pistoia since 1956.

The jury praised his stories where “everything is always overwhelmed by an unstoppable metamorphosis, and there is no time, space, body and matter that does not constantly change state.”

Cărtărescu is one of the most translated and awarded Romanian authors. A lot of his work is available in English, French, Spanish or German and can be read overall in more than 20 languages.

In 2018, he received the Thomas Mann Prize, jointly awarded by the Hanseatic City of Lübeck and the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and the Prix Formentor (Premio Formentor de las Letras). In 2016, he won the Premio Gregor von Rezzori for best foreign fiction work translated in Italy at the Festival degli Scrittori organized in Florence. He received the award for the second volume of the trilogy Orbitor (Blinding). In 2015, he received two international literary distinctions: the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in recognition of his entire work and the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his trilogy Blinding.

In 2014, he received the Euskadi de Plata award in San Sebastian, and the Spanish Tormenta en un vaso award, granted to works presented the previous year at the Madrid Book Fair (Feria del Libro de Madrid). In 2013, Cărtărescu received two other awards: the Grand Award of the Novi Sad International Poetry Festival and the Swiss Spycher — Literaturpreis Leuk award. In 2012, he was awarded the Haus der Kulturen der Welt International Literature award in Berlin, while a year earlier, in 2011, he received the Vileniča International Award for Literature. In 2005, he received the Italian literary award Giuseppe Acerbi.

In 2022, he was granted the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages, awarded during the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL).

(Photo: George Calin/ Inquam Photos)

simona@romania-insider.com