The Ukrainian author Serhij Zhadan will receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels announced today. Zhadan is an alumnus of the Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The writer spent a year in Berlin in 2010 as a fellow of the programme.

"I am very pleased that Serhij Zhadan, one of the most important voices in Ukrainian literature at the moment, is being honoured. With this award, the Börsenverein is sending a strong signal of solidarity with a country torn apart by war," says DAAD President Prof Dr. Joybrato Mukherjee. The Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme, which is part of the DAAD, is once again demonstrating its outstanding flair in selecting artists for funding.

Serhij Zhadan is one of the most important voices in contemporary Ukrainian literature and is known far beyond the borders of Ukraine. Born in 1974 in Starobilsk in eastern Ukraine and raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, Zhadan began writing poetry at an early age and publishing it himself. In his multifaceted work, which includes novels and poems as well as essays and reportages, he deals in particular with the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as with the war that has been raging in Ukraine since 2014. Zhadan is active both as a writer and as a musician.

The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme

The DAAD's Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme is a highly respected international scholarship programme for artists in the fields of visual arts, literature, music and film. Since 1963, it has awarded around 20 scholarships annually and worldwide, most of them for a one-year stay in Berlin. In addition to many international stars of the art scene, its alumni in the field of literature include six Nobel Prize winners in literature: Peter Handke (2019), Olga Tokarczuk (2018), Svetlana Alexievich (2015), Mario Vargas Llosa (2010), Imre Kertész (2002) and Gao Xingjian (2000).