Hungarian Author Wins German Book Prize

The Hungarian Author Peter Esterhazy has scooped up this year's German Book Trade Association's Peace Prize. The announcement, which was made in Frankfurt on Wednesday, said the 53-year-old writer had not only redefined the position of his Hungarian homeland in the center of Europe, but also the position of Europe in the center of literature. Born in 1950, the author belongs to the post-modern generation of Hungarian literature. His main work, 'Celestial Harmonies', which tells the story of his family history, was at the top of the best seller list in Hungary for months, and won him several awards. Esterhazy was one of just a handful of authors to begin writing about the absurdities of every day life in a Socialist state before the political transition in Eastern Europe. He first gained recognition in Germany in the mid 1980s, with the publication of 'Little Hungarian Pornography', in which he uses anecdotes and fragmented accounts to describe the perversions of daily life in Hungary.