The lofty, historic hall of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy is packed with journalists, TV cameras and microphones. The occasion is the prize-giving for the BBC Ukrainian Service Book of the Year Competition. The prize, worth #1,000, is in my pocket. Several of the five short-listed authors are present, one via Skype from Washington. Five distinguished commentators summarise the short-listed novels. I then announce the winner. It is Sergiy Zhadan for his book “Voroshylovgrad”.
You can read all about the prize, and the competition, at the excellent BBC Ukrainian Service web-site. So I won’t say much about it here. But congratulations to the BBC for organising such a successful and prestigious competition, and to all the shortlisted authors for producing such terrific and interesting work.
NB you can see a video of the presentation, including my massacring my few words in Ukrainian, here.