Ian McEwan, the Booker Prize winning author of Amsterdam, Atonement, and On Chesil Beach, will accept the Jerusalem Prize, Israel’s highest literary honor for foreign writers, at a ceremony to be held in February.
The Jerusalem Prize is steeped in controversy with past winners, including Haruki Murakami in 2009, urged to boycott the ceremony in order to show solidity with Palestine.
Murakami chose to accept the prize and in doing so said: 'Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. '
McEwan has announced that he will accept the prize at a ceremony held to coincide with the Jerusalem International Book Fair. McEwan told the UK’s Guardian newspaper: 'I think one should always make a distinction between a civil society and its government. It is the Jerusalem book fair, not the Israeli foreign ministry, which is making the award. I would urge people to make the distinction – it is about literature.'
The Jerusalem Prize, which carries the full title The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, was first awarded in 1963 to Bertrand Russell. The prize is given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society and carries with it a prize of US$10,000, a sum which is described by the Prizes’ organizers as 'modest' and nothing ‘more than symbolic’.
The 2011 Chairman of the Jerusalem Prize jury is Professor Menahem Ben-Sasson, a politician who currently serves as President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The jury’s report which accompanied the announcement said that 'McEwan’s protagonists struggle for their right to give personal expression to their ideas, and to live according to those ideas in an environment of political and social turmoil. His obvious affection for them, and the compelling manner in which he describes their struggle, make him one of the most important writers of our time.’
McEwan joins an illustrious list of Jerusalem Prize winners, including Nobel Laureates Octavio Paz, V.S. Naipaul, J.M Coetzee and Mario Vargas Llosa. When Coetzee accepted the prize in 1987 he used his acceptance speech to his native South Africa's system of apartheid.
Cate Allan - Cate Allan is a Melbourne-based writer and editor. She has published widely on language, travel and the arts.
