Nepalese won the prize in Berlin!

On 30th september Manjushree Thapa won the prize in Berlin!
for her Manjushree Thapa, Nepal: Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy, Penguin Viking India, New Delhi, 2005

Last night, Saturday 30th September, at an award ceremony in Berlin, with 500 international guests from the world of literature, art, culture, media, politics and diplomacy, the jury of the Lettre Ulysses Award, a prize initiated by the cultural journal Lettre International in association with the Aventis Foundation, and in partnership with the Goethe-Institut , meant to reward extraordinary "reportage literature", announced the winner of this year's awards.

The first prize of $50,000 and a trophy designed by the German artist Jakob Mattner were awarded to the British journalist and writer Linda Grant, for her book "The People on the Street. A Writer's View of Israel" .

Grant, a non-religious Diaspora Jew, travelled to Tel Aviv in 2003, with the intention of writing a novel. However, instead her visit becomes an opportunity for a systematic and in-depth exploration of Jewish identity and its relationship with the state of Israel.

Her book is a journey through an extraordinary and troubled society determined to defend its existence, and ensnared in a conflict that seems to promise few peaceful prospects, through the languages and biographies of its inhabitants, their archetypes and histories, their doubts and their hopes. The people she meets include teenage soldiers, Tunisian-born settlers, Russian scientists and Iraqi shopkeepers, kibbutz dwellers and street traders, writers and taxi drivers, caf¨¦ owners and pedestrians.
The other finalists, listed below, received prizes in the form of a working residencies in Berlin, endowed by the Goethe-Institut, and valuable handmade watches by the company Nomos.