The novelist, screenwriter, translator and dramatist, Radka Denemarková, received the award on 18th December in Prague’s Rudolfinum. The organisers praised the outstanding literary quality of the author’s novels, in which she deals with unpleasant historical and social topics. The award is presented annually by the Wald Press publishing house.

Denemarková is one of the most widely read and translated contemporary Czech authors and has been awarded the Magnesia Litera Award three times. Her best-known novel, Money from Hitler (Peníze od Hitlera), tells the story of Gita Lauschmanová, who grew up in a German-speaking, assimilated Jewish family in Czechoslovakia. As a young girl in 1945 she returns from a concentration camp as an orphan to face the stunning realization that there is in fact nowhere to return, and that the oppression and savagery of the holocaust are far from over. Money from Hitler has been translated into several languages including English, German and Spanish.