Journalist to receive award from Portugal

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Turkish Journalist Acar will receive an award in Lisbon in October.

The winner of this year’s “European Cultural Heritage Awareness Raising” award, which was first presented to the deceased female president Helena Vaz da Silva and is named after her, has been announced by the Portuguese National Culture Center. The award has also previously been granted to Cumhuriyet Daily’s Özgen Acar in recognition of his articles that focus on the smuggling of historical artifacts.

This year the jury selected Italian writer Claudio Magris for the special award, which will be given to mark the 50th year of the establishment of the “Europe Nostra” association. Magris is a member of several European academies and served as senator in the Italian Senate from 1994 to 1996.

His first book on the Habsburg myth in modern Austrian literature rediscovered central European literature. His journalistic writings have been collected in Dietro le parole (“Behind Words,” 1978) and Itaca e oltre (“Ithaca and Beyond,” 1982). He has written essays on a range of subjects including E.T.A. Hoffmann, Henrik Ibsen, Italo Svevo, Robert Musil, Hermann Hesse and Jorge Luis Borges. His novels and theatre productions, many translated into several languages, include Illazioni su una sciabola (1984), Danubio (1986), Stadelmann (1988), Un altro mare (1991), and Microcosmi (1997).

His breakthrough was Danubio (1986), which is a magnum opus. In this book (described by the author as a “drowned novel”), Magris tracks the course of the Danube from its sources to the sea. The whole trip evolves into a colorful, rich canvas of the multicultural European.

The award ceremony take place in Lisbon on October 21.