Romanian writer Mircea Cartarescu (in picture) recently won the Spycher - Literaturpreis Leuk prize in Switzerland, one of the most important literary prizes in Europe. The winners of the prize get a scholarship and the right to stay two months a year at the Leuk castle in Switzerland, for five years. The awards ceremony will take place in the beginning of September, when Ernest Wichner, a German writer with Romania origins will give a laudatio speech for Mircea Cartarescu.

The Spycher - Literaturpreis Leuk prize is granted by the Swiss foundation Stiftung Schloss Leuk- the foundation of the Leuk Castle.

The Romanian writer landed the prize for his trilogy Orbitor, and the jury said Cartarescu “masters all registers and tonalities and uses with artistry all the means taken from classics such as Swift and Proust, to elements or fantasy and horror to create an artistic universe centering on a great language eloquence, at the core of which the young man from the past stands.”

This will be the second prize for Cartarescu this summer, after the grand prize of the International Poetry festival in Novi Sad in August. The Romanian writer is no stranger to international awards – he won the Giuseppe Acerbi award in Italy in 2005, the International Literature Prize in Vilenica in 2011 and the International Literature Prize Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2012.

More about the famous Romanian writer here.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Humanitas publishing house on Facebook)