The International Literature Award ‘Haus der Kulturen der Welt 2013’, now in its fifth year, goes to Teju Cole for his novel Open City (Suhrkamp 2012), while the prize for the first German translation of the novel goes to Christine Richter-Nilsson. The author receives €25,000 and the translator €10,000.

Teju Cole, born in 1975, grew up in Nigeria and moved to the US in his teens. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he works as an art historian, writer and photographer, and is the present Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He is currently working on a book about Lagos. He received the PEN Hemingway Award in 2012 and the New York City Book Award in 2011.

Christine Richter-Nilsson is a dramatic advisor and literary translator from English and Swedish into German. From 2002 to 2010 she worked as a dramatic advisor in Dresden, Bremen and Bielefeld, curating the theatre festival Voices from Undergroundzero and editing the anthology of the same name (Theater der Zeit, 2008). Open City by Teju Cole is her first translation of a novel. She is currently working on a new translation of August Strindberg’s plays.

The awards ceremony on 12 June 2013 will be preceded by the newly-established Long Night of the Short List, a literature festival in which the nominated writers and translators will be introduced and take part in readings and discussions. Those reading will include shortlisted authors Andrei Bitov, Valeria Luiselli, Jean Rolin and Zakhar Prilepin, and nominated translators Holger Fock, Erich Klein, Susanne Macht, Sabine Müller, Grete Osterwald, Dagmar Ploetz and Rosemarie Tietze.

The International Literature Award – Haus der Kulturen der Welt is jointly presented by Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Stiftung Elementarteilchen (Hamburg).

For more information, please click here (http://hkw NULL.de/en/programm/2013/internationaler_literaturpreis_2013/internationaler_literaturpreis_2013_83189 NULL.php?fly=1).