Writer Hodrová receives 2012 Franz Kafka Prize

Prague, Oct 25 (CTK) - Czech writer and literary theoretician Daniela Hodrova, 66, was presented with the 2012 Franz Kafka Prize for her literary work Thursday.

The international jury selected her as the 12th laureate of the award.

In her literary studies, Hodrova is primarily preoccupied with the theory of the novel and the phenomenon of the city. These themes also penetrate her fiction, which is closely connected with her theoretical works.

In her speech at the award-giving ceremony, Hodrova thanked not only people but also the city of Prague where she has been living the whole life and which became "a protagonist" of her books.

Prague is a location with a mystery that figures in the novels by her probably most popular writers, Gustav Meyrink and Franz Kafka, Hodrova said.

The winner of the Kafka prize receives a statuette shaped as the Franz Kafka monument by sculptor Jaroslav Rona in Prague's former Jewish town. The award also carries 10,000 dollars

Hodrova studied the Russian, Czech and French languages and comparative literature at Charles University in Prague. Afterwards she worked as an editor at the Odeon publishing house.

Since the mid-1970s she has been researching into literary theory. Now she works at the Czech Literature Institute of the Science Academy. She is the author of a number of monographs, studies as well as translations.

Her books of fiction and essays, in particular the novel trilogy Tryznive mesto (The Agonising City) from the 1990s, have been translated into French, German and Polish.

In 2011, she received the State Prize for Literature of the Culture Ministry.

The international Franz Kafka Prize for literature has been awarded by the Franz Kafka Society since 2001 to the authors whose work is exceptional in terms of its artistic quality and it can appeal to readers irrespective of their origin, ethnicity and culture as Kafka's work.

The previous laureates are U.S. writer Philip Roth, Czech Ivan Klima, Hungarian Peter Nadas, Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek and U.S. playwright Harold Pinter who both received the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jelinek in 2004 and Pinter in 2005, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, French poet Yves Bonnefoy, Czech-Jewish author Arnost Lustig, Austrian playwright Peter Handke, Irish John Banville and playwright, thinker and former Czech president Vaclav Havel who received the award in 2010.