First Swiss Literature Awards

During the Solothurn Literary Festival, Alain Berset presents the first Swiss Literature Awards. Erica Pedretti, Jean-Marc Lovay and Fabio Pusterla are honoured for their life’s work; the Babel festival in Bellinzona receives two awards, for translation and for literary mediation.

He starts from a doubt expressed by Ian McEwan about the point of the novel, in the face of the industrial revolution or the Higgs boson, and quotes Stendhal: politics in the midst of imagination “is a pistol shot in the middle of a concert”. In Italian, to finish: “La pluralità non compromette l’unità. Ne amplia gli orizzonti.”

Speeches on this site

• Premiers Prix suisses de littérature : l’« imaginative Wärme » (in German, French-language page)

Sources

• RSI, 10.05.2013
• Federal Council, press release of 04.04.2013