To Yashar Kemal “the shaman of Turkish literature”, the son of the sources of the Tigris and of the Euphrates, where three continents touch, places that since the times of  Xenophon have been the theater of civil, religious and social fights and at the same time a crucible of great civilizations and cultures. Lands of irremediable conflicts that he narrates with the poetic force of the bard.

An epic narrator that harmonizes, for example in the work “Memed, My Hawk” and in the trilogy “Beyond the Mountain”, the extraordinary and musical oriental memory of One and a thousand nights and of the Book of the Kings with the novel form of the great western tradition.

The creator of a new and at the same time ancient language, an extraordinary man and writer both in his civil commitment and in his narrating, which indicates us how from the bottom of despair it is possible to recreate hope.

The prize will be delivered by Claudio Magris