The Nike Literary Award (, pronounced ) is a literary prize awarded each year for the best book of a single living author writing in Polish and published the previous year. It is widely considered the most important award for Polish literature. Established in 1997 and funded by '' Gazeta Wyborcza'',

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

's second largest daily paper, and the consulting company NICOM, it is conferred annually in October. It is open for nominees from all

literary genre A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by List of narrative techniques, literary technique, Tone (literature), tone, Media (communication), content, or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from mor ...

s, including non-fiction essays and autobiographies. Each year, a nine-member jury selects the laureate in a three-stage process. Twenty official nominees are accepted in May, out of which seven finalists are declared in September. The final decision does not take place until the day of the award ceremony in October. The award consists of a statuette referring to the Greek goddess Nike, designed by the prominent Polish sculptor Kazimierz Gustaw Zemła, and a cash prize of currently PLN 100,000 (ca. $25,000). In addition to the main jury award, there is an audience award based on the outcome of a vote on the seven official finalists conducted by ''Gazeta Wyborcza''. The verdicts of the audience and jury have converged only occasionally (2000, 2001, 2004, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2021). Two laureates of the award have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature:

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz ( , , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish Americans, Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in Polish language, Polish. Regarded as one of the great poets of the ...

(1980) and Olga Tokarczuk (2018). Tokarczuk and Wiesław Myśliwski are the only individuals to date to have received the Nike Award twice.

Laureates

Title and details of English translation stated where available.

Jury award

Audience award

Most nominations (1997–2022)

* 10 nominations –

Jerzy Pilch Jerzy Pilch (; 10 August 1952 – 29 May 2020) was a Polish writer, columnist, and journalist. He is the winner of the 2001 Nike Award for his novel ''Pod Mocnym Aniołem''. Critics have compared Pilch's style to Witold Gombrowicz, Milan Kunde ...

* 9 nominations – Andrzej Stasiuk * 7 nominations – Tadeusz Różewicz * 6 nominations – Julia Hartwig, Ewa Lipska, Olga Tokarczuk * 5 nominations –

Jacek Dehnel Jacek Maria Dehnel (born 1 May 1980 in Gdańsk, Poland) is a Polish people, Polish poet, writer, translator and painter. Life and work He graduated from the Stefan Żeromski High School No. 5 in Gdańsk, where he excelled in Humanities. Dehnel ...

, Piotr Matywiecki,

, Jacek Podsiadło, Ryszard Przybylski, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, Magdalena Tulli * 4 nominations – Marek Bieńczyk, Michał Głowiński, Henryk Grynberg, Ignacy Karpowicz, Urszula Kozioł, Marcin Świetlicki, Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, Krzysztof Varga, Adam Zagajewski * 3 nominations – Justyna Bargielska, Joanna Bator, Wojciech Bonowicz, Sylwia Chutnik, Włodzimierz Kowalewski, Zbigniew Kruszyński, Dorota Masłowska, Wiesław Myśliwski, Joanna Olczak-Roniker, Tomasz Różycki, Małgorzata Szejnert,

Wisława Szymborska Maria Wisława Anna SzymborskaVioletta Szostagazeta.pl, 9 February 2012. ostęp 11 February 2012 (; 2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish people, Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Liter ...

, Adam Wiedemann, Michał Witkowski

References

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External links