Writer Iva Procházková receives German Luchs Prize

Leipzig, Germany, March 15 (CTK) - Czech writer Iva Prochazka received the Luchs Prize 2012 for children and youth's literature for her book Orangentage at the Leipzig book fair Friday.

Prochazkova, 59, published the book first in Czech (Uzly a pomerance, 2011). The German version was issued last year.

The prestigious Luchs Prize is awarded by the German daily Die Zeit and Radio Bremen. Prochazkova is the second Czech winner of the prize. In 1990 it was won by illustrator Kveta Pacovska.

Prochazkova is a daughter of Czech author and screenwriter Jan Prochazka. Her sister Lenka is a writer, too.

Iva Prochazkova lived several years in Germany after emigrating from the communist Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s.

In 2007, she won the Friedrich Gerstaecker prize for children and youth's books. In 2010, she was nominated for the German prize for youth's literature.

In the category of children and youth's literature, she won the Czech Magnesia Litera prize twice.

Orangentage is a story of a teenage boy from a small village in a remote Czech mountain region whose life changes when his mother dies.

According to the organisers of the Luchs Prize, accompanied with 8000 euros, about 8000 books for children and youths were published in Germany in 2012.