Jan Michalski Prize

Jan Michalski Prize for Literature (French: Prix Jan Michalski) is a Swiss literary prize for any work of fiction or non-fiction published anywhere in the world in any language.^[1][2] It is meant to recognize authors from around the world and world literature in general. The jury is multicultural and multilingual in composition.

The award was launched October 2009^[1] and the first winner was announced November 2010. The winner receives CHF 50,000. The authors of finalists are invited for a three-month period of residence in the Maison de l'écriture.^[3]

The prize was created by the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature (Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’Ecriture et la Littérature), founded in 2004 at the initiative of Vera Michalski-Hoffmann in memory of her husband Jan Michalski.^[4] It is located in Montricher, Switzerland.^[5]

Honorees

Year	Author	Original title	English, French or German translation	Result	Ref.
2010	Aleksandar Hemon	The Lazarus Project		Winner	[6]
	Yousef Al-Mohaimeed	فخاخ الرائحة	Wolves of the Crescent Moon	Finalists
	Tim Flannery	The Weather Makers
	Laurent Binet	HHhH		Nominee
	Péter Esterházy	Harmonia cælestis	Celestial Harmonies
	Alois Hotschnig	Im Sitzen läuft es sich besser davon
	Viktor Malakhov	Уязвимость любви
	Frédéric Martinez	Claude Monet, une vie au fil de l’eau
	Klaus Merz	Der Argentinier
	Pavel Sanaev	Похороните меня за плинтусом
2011	György Dragomán	A fehér király	The White King	Winner	[7]
	Miguel Syjuco	Ilustrado		Finalists
	Sjón	Skugga-Baldur	The Blue Fox
	Liu Xiaobo	—	No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems	Nominee
	Peter Fröberg Idling	Pol Pots leende	Pol Pot’s Smile
	Mark Kharitonov	Проект Одиночество
	Antoni Libera	Godot i jego cień
2012	Julia Lovell	The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China		Winner	[8]
	Martin Pollack	Kaiser von Amerika: Die große Flucht aus Galizien		Finalists
	Timothy Snyder	Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
	Philippe Cassard	Franz Schubert		Nominee
	Patrick Deville	Kampuchéa
	Mark Gevisser	Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred
	Donald Ray Pollock	The Devil All the Time
	Maria Rybakova	Острый нож для мягкого сердца	Couteau tranchant pour un cœur tendre
	Bruno Smolarz	Hokusaï aux doigts d’encre
2013	Mahmoud Dowlatabadi	زوال کلنل	The Colonel	Winner	[9][10]
	Serge Gruzinski	L’aigle et le Dragon: Démesure européenne et mondialisation au XVIe siècle		Finalists	[11]
	Steve Sem-Sandberg	De fattiga i Łódź	The Emperor of Lies
	Robert Macfarlane	The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot		Second selection
	Uday Prakash	—	The Walls of Delhi
	Janusz Głowacki	Good night, Dżerzi		First selection
	Chan Koonchung	盛世：中國，2013年	The Fat Years
	Charu Nivedita	ஸீரோ டிகிரி	Zero Degree
	Tiphaine Samoyault	Bête de cirque
	Enrique Vila-Matas	Chet Baker piensa en su arte
	Chris Ware	Building Stories
2014	Serhiy Zhadan	Ворошиловград	Voroshylovhrad	Winner	[12][13]
	Mark Gevisser	Dispatcher: Lost and Found in Johannesburg		Finalists
	Marci Shore	The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe
	Rana Mitter	China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival		Second selection
	Jaume Cabré	Confiteor	Confessions
	Maxime Raymond Bock	Atavismes	Atavisms	First selection
	Camille de Toledo	Oublier, trahir puis disparaître
	Paul Harding	Enon
	Fanny Howe	Second Childhood
	Wojciech Nowicki	Salki
	Dragan Velikić	Bonavia
	Najem Wali	ملائكة الجنوب	Engel des Südens
2015	Mark Thompson	Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kiš		Winner	[14]
	Navid Kermani	Zwischen Koran und Kafka: West-östliche Erkundungen	Between Quran and Kafka: West-Eastern Inquiries	Finalists
	Najem Wali	بغداد مالبورو، من أجل برادلي مانينك	Bagdad Marlboro: Ein Roman für Bradley Manning
	Jean-Noël Orengo	La Fleur du Capital		Second selection
	Ari Shavit	My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel
	Philipp Ther	Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent: Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa	Europe since 1989: A History	First selection
	Lucian Dan Teodorovici	Matei Brunul	L’histoire de Bruno Matei
	Frédéric Badré	La grande santé
	Valentin Retz	Noir parfait
	Hermione Lee	Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life
	Lisa Jarnot	Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography
	Gansel Mireille	Traduire comme transhumer	Translation as Transhumance
2016	Georgi Gospodinov	Физика на тъгата	Physics of Sorrow	Winner	[15][16]
	Dževad Karahasan	Što pepeo priča	The Solace of the Night Sky	Finalists
	Aatish Taseer	The Way Things Were
	Julian Barnes	Levels of Life		Second selection
	Navid Kermani	Ungläubiges Staunen: Über das Christentum	Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity
	Ada Limón	Bright Dead Things		First selection
	Alberto Mangel	Curiosity
	Iván Sándor	Az éjszaka mélyén, 1914	Husar in der Hölle, 1914
	Andrea Bajani	La vita non è in ordine alfabetico
	Fariba Hachtroudi	Le colonel et l’appât 455	The Man Who Snapped His Fingers
	Stefan Banz	Louis Michel Eilshemius: Peer of Poet-Painters
	Patrick McGuinness	Poetry and Radical Politics in fin de siècle France: From Anarchism to Action française
	Víctor del Árbol	Un millón de gotas	A Million Drops
	Ulrike Guérot	Warum Europa eine Republik werden muss! Eine politische Utopie	Why Europe Should Become a Republic! A Political Utopia
2017	Thierry Wolton	Une histoire mondiale du communisme		Winner	[17]
	Lawrence Liang et al.	Invisible Libraries		Finalists
	Liao Yiwu	輪迴的螞蟻	Die Wiedergeburt der Ameisen
	Paul Kalanithi	When Breath Becomes Air		Second selection
	Wioletta Greg	Guguły	Swallowing Mercury
	Yuriy Vynnychuk	Танґо смерті	Tango of Death	First selection
	Eugénie Paultre	L’état actuel des choses
	Alvar González-Palacios	Solo ombre: Silhouettes storiche, letterarie e mondane
	Peter Frankopan	The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
2018	Olga Tokarczuk	Księgi Jakubowe	The Books of Jacob	Winner	[18]
	Yuval Noah Harari	ההיסטוריה של המחר	Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow	Finalists
	Jean Rolin	Le traquet kurde
	Norman Ohler	Der totale Rausch: Drogen im Dritten Reich	Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich	Second selection
	Patrick McGuinness	Other People’s Countries: A Journey into Memory
	Maggie Nelson	The Argonauts		First selection
	Virginie Despentes	Vernon Subutex
	George Szirtes	Bad Machine
	Preti Taneja	We That Are Young
2019	Zeruya Shalev	כאב	Pain	Winner	[19]
	Francesca Melandri	Sangue giusto		Finalists
	Patrik Ouředník	La fin du monde n’aurait pas eu lieu	The End of the World Might Not Have Taken Place
	Antonio Iturbe	La bibliotecaria de Auschwitz	The Librarian of Auschwitz	Second selection
	Morgan Sportès	Le ciel ne parle pas		First selection
	Long Litt Woon	Stien tilbake til livet: Om sopp og sorg	The Way Through the Woods: Of Mushrooms and Mourning
2020	Mia Couto with David Brookshaw (trans.)	As Areias do Imperador	Sands of the Emperor	Winner	[20][21]
	Fran Ross	Oreo		Finalists
	Philippe Sands	East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
	Érik Orsenna	Briser en nous la mer gelée		Second selection
	Bernard Quiriny	Vies conjugales
	Roland Schimmelpfennig	An einem klaren, eiskalten Januarmorgen zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts	One Clear, Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century	First selection
	Vigdis Hjorth	Arv og miljø	Will and Testament
	Wojciech Nowicki	Cieśniny
	Nastassja Martin	Croire aux fauves	In the Eye of the Wild
	Yurii Andrukhovych	Коханці юстиції	Die Lieblinge der Justiz
	António Damásio	The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
	Catherine Meurisse	La Légèreté	Lightness
	Sergei Lebedev	Предел забвения	Oblivion
	Sorj Chalandon	Le jour d’avant
	Viet Thanh Nguyen	The Sympathizer
	Ruth Zylberman	209 rue Saint-Maur, Paris Xe: Autobiographie d’un immeuble	The Department of Missing Persons
2021	Memorial International (Alena Kozlova, Nikolai Mikhailov, Irina Ostrovskaya, and Irina Scherbakova) with Georgia Thomson (trans.)	Знак не сотрется: Судьбы остарбайтеров в письмах, воспоминаниях и устных рассказах	OST: Letters, Memoirs and Stories from Ostarbeiter in Nazi Germany	Winner	[22]
	Frank Huyler	White Hot Light: Twenty-five Years in Emergency Medicine		Finalists
	Eduardo Halfon with Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn (trans.)	Duelo	Mourning
	Sophy Roberts	The Lost Pianos of Siberia		Second selection
	Sergei Lebedev with Antonina W. Bouis (trans.)	Дебютант	Untraceable
	Daniel Mendelsohn	Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate		First selection
	Mário Cláudio	Tríptico da Salvação
	Ksenia Buksha	Открывается внутрь
	Maria Stepanova	Памяти памяти	In Memory of Memory
	Judith Schalansky	Verzeichnis einiger Verluste	An Inventory of Losses
	Édouard Louis	Qui a tué mon père	Who Killed My Father
	Mathieu Sapin	Gérard: Cinq années dans les pattes de Depardieu	Gérard: Five Years with Depardieu
	Lisa Mandel	Une année exemplaire
	Patrice Jean	L’homme surnuméraire
	Claude Hunzinger	Les grands cerfs
	Carmen Boullosa	El libro de Ana	The Book of Anna
2022	Taina Tervonen	Les fossoyeuses		Winner	[23]
	Eliane Brum with Diane Grosklaus Whitty (trans.)	A vida que ninguém vê	The Collector of Leftover Souls: Dispatches from Brazil	Finalists
	Untold Narratives	—	My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women
	Perrine Lamy-Quique	Dans leur nuit		Second selection
	Laurent Binet	Civilizations
	Nathacha Appanah	Le ciel par-dessus le toit	The Sky Above the Roof	First selection
	M. John Harrison	The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again
	Georgi Gospodinov	Времеубежище	Time Shelter
	Cat Jarman	River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
	Tanguy Viel	La fille qu’on appelle	The Girl You Call
	Stéphanie Coste	Le passeur
2023	Karina Sainz Borgo	El Tercer País		Winner	[24]
	Suzanne Simard	Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest		Finalists
	Hamid Ismailov with Donald Rayfield (trans.)		Manaschi
	Emanuele Trevi	Due vite		Second selection
	Stefan Hertmans with David McKay (trans.)	De opgang	The Ascent
	Hélène Frappat	Trois femmes disparaissent		First selection
	Michel Houellebecq	Anéantir	Annihilation
	Eva Baltasar	Boulder
	Anna Badkhen	Bright Unbearable Reality
	Agustín Fernández Mallo	El libro de todos los amores	The Book of All Loves
	Sara Stridsberg	Kärlekens Antarktis	The Antarctica of Love
	Aslak Nore	Havets kirkegård	The Sea Cemetery
	Sally Hayden	My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route
	Sigrid Nunez	What Are You Going Through?
2024	Kate Beaton	Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands		Winner	[25]
	Mathieu Belazi	Attaquer la terre et le soleil		Finalists
	Irene Solà	Canto jo i la muntanya balla	When I Sing, Mountains Dance
	Iman Mersal	في أثر عنايات الزيات	Traces of Enayat	Second selection
	Fabienne Radi	Une autobiographie de Nina Childress
	Carlos Fonseca	Austral		First selection
	Sylvain Tesson	Avec les fées
	Byung-Chul Han	Infokratie: Digitalisierung und die Krise der Demokratie	Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy
	Yasmina Reza	James Brown mettait des bigoudis
	Cecile Pin	Wandering Souls
	Hisham Matar	My Friends
	Fernanda Melchor	Páradais	Paradais
	Gaëlle Obiégly	Sans valeur
	Adam Thirlwell	The Future Future