The Guardian reported a new literary prize to honor the spirit of the late Harold Pinter. Launched by English PEN, the prize will look, in Pinter’s own words, to reward a writer who casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world, and who shows a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.
The PEN/Pinter prize will be awarded annually to a creative writer of outstanding literary merit, in any genre, whose body of work “exemplifies the spirit of Harold Pinter through his or her engagement with the times.”
The first prize will be judged by Pinter’s widow and former president of English PEN Antonia Fraser, the playwright Tom Stoppard, English PEN president Lisa Appignanesi, broadcaster Mark Lawson and National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner.
Fraser said she was “delighted” to support the prize in Pinter’s name, saying that it would recognise “the courage of writers, both in this country and overseas, who, like him, have made a principled stand for writers’ freedoms.” Appignanesi added that Pinter was not only a “writer of genius,” but also one who was “actively engaged in defending the value of the whole enterprise of literature, too often threatened by those who would silence the always unpredictable force of words and ideas.”
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel prize for literature in 2005, Pinter spoke out for the importance of confronting the truth in writing. “When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us,” he said. “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.”
The award will be presented on 14 October at the British Library, home to Pinter’s archives, where the winner will make a speech inspired by Pinter’s life and work.
Feature Image of Harold Pinter courtesy of The Guardian
