South Africa’s Zukiswa Wanner, Bolivia’s Elvira Espejo Ayca and Britain’s Ian McEwan will be awarded the 2020 Goethe Medals, Germany’s official honour for outstanding contribution to international cultural exchange.
Wanner is a writer, journalist, publisher and curator.
She is being awarded because of “her conception of herself as an African writer leads her to range far beyond national frontiers in her writing, whilst at the same time bringing the diversity of African culture into her artistic work”, says the jury.
They added that “Her detailed knowledge of South African literature and her nuanced understanding of regional discourses and female identity in Africa mean her expertise is internationally sought after; she is also a role model for an entire generation of African writers”.
Ayca is the Director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore (MUSEF) in La Paz. He is also a poet, essayist, musician and weaver.
The Goethe Medal Committee honours Ayca as a “true builder of bridges, whose work constitutes invaluable cultural mediation: between Latin America and Europe, between Bolivia and its colonial past, between countries’ own indigenous traditions and other cultures, between artistic disciplines and generations.
McEwan studied English Literature at the University of Sussex in Brighton and the University of East Anglia in Norwich. He is a renowned contemporary author and has won numerous literary prizes, including the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Twelve of his stories have been turned into films, including Atonement (2007), which was nominated for seven Oscars. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000. In 2011 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society.
He has also been the recipient of prestigious awards in the German-speaking world, such as the Alfred Toepfer Foundation Shakespeare Prize for his life’s work (1999) and the German Book Prize (2003). Over 20 of his works have been published in German by Diogenes Verlag.
The theme of this year’s awards is ‘Accepting Contradiction – the fruits of contradiction.’
President of the Goethe-Institut, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, emphasised that “it is a plea for engagement with ambivalence, even in difficult circumstances”.
He said “It is precisely out of contradiction that productive vitality grows, vitality that promotes diversity and provokes reflection and new insights.”
The Goethe Medal is traditionally awarded in Weimar on August 28, Goethe’s birthday, with accompanying events held in collaboration with the Kunstfest festival.
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