Terézia Mora

Terézia Mora ([ˈtɛreːziɒ ˈmorɒ]; born 5 February 1971) is a German Hungarian writer, screenwriter and translator.

Terézia Mora
Terézia Mora (2010)
Born	(1971-02-05) 5 February 1971 (age 54) Sopron, Hungary
Nationality	Hungarian
Alma mater	Humboldt University Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin
Occupation(s)	Screenwriter Translator Writer
Website	Official website

Early life and education

Terézia Mora was born in Sopron, Hungary, to a family with German roots and grew up bilingual.^[1] She moved to Germany after the political changes in Hungary in 1990 in order to study Hungarian studies and drama at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Subsequently, she trained as a screenwriter at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin.^[2]

Career

She is a member of the German PEN Center and the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, to which she was elected as a member in 2015.^[3]

Since 1990 she has lived in Berlin, working as a freelance writer, writing in German,^[3][4] and as a translator from Hungarian.^[5] Among her works, there is a trilogy about an IT specialist, Darius Kopp, and his existential struggle.^[6]

Mora is married and has one daughter.^[2]

Awards and honours

• 1997: Würth Literature Prize for her screenplay The Ways of Water in Erzincan and the Open-Mike-Literary Prize of the Berliner LiteraturWERKstatt for the tale Durst
• 1999: Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for the narration Der Fall Ophelia (The case of Ophelia), contained in her first volume of stories Seltsame Materie (Strange Matter)
• 2000: Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (promotional prize)
• 2001: Island writer on Sylt
• 2002: Jane Scraberd Prize of the Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation for her translation of Péter Esterházy's Harmonia Caelesti
• 2004: Mara Cassens Prize, Prize for the Art Prize of the Academy of Arts (Berlin), Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair for her novel Alle Tage (Category: Fiction)
• 2005: Prize of LiteraTour Nord
• 2006: Villa Massimo scholarship
• 2006/2007: Tübingen Poetry Lecturer together with Péter Esterházy
• 2007: Franz Nabl Prize
• 2010: Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, Erich Fried Prize
• 2011: Translation Prize of the Kunststiftung NRW for her translation by Péter Esterházy's A production novel (two production novels) from the Hungarian and at the same time for her life's work [5]
• 2011: "Grenzgänger-Scholarship" by the Robert Bosch Foundation for research on The Monster2013: German Book Prize for The Monster
• October 2013: German Book Prize for her novel Das Ungeheuer^[7]
• 2013/2014: Frankfurt Poetics Lecturer
• 2017: Bremen Literature Prize for Love Among Aliens
• 2017: Preis der Literaturhäuser
• 2017: Solothurner Literaturpreis
• 2018: Roswitha Prize^[8]
• 2018: Georg Büchner Prize,^[9] announced on 3 July 2018 by the German Academy for Language and Literature; it's one of Germany's highest literary honors and comes with an award of 50,000 euros.^[10]
• 2021: Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2021: Brothers Grimm Poetics Professorship^[11]

Works

Terézia Mora in 2009.

Prose

• Strange matter, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1999, ISBN 978-3-498-04471-8
• Alle Tage, Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-630-87185-1
• The only man on the continent, Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-630-87271-1
• The monster, Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-630-87365-7
• Love among aliens, narratives. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-630-87319-0
• On the rope (Auf dem Seil), Luchterhand, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-630-87497-5^[6]
• Fleckenverlauf. Ein Tage- und Arbeitsbuch. Luchterhand, Munich 2021, ISBN 978-3-630-87669-6
• Muna, or Half a Life (Muna oder Die Hälfte des Lebens). Luchterhand, Munich 2023, ISBN 978-3-630-87496-8^[12]

Poetry lectures

• Do not die, Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-630-87451-7
• The secret text. Salzburger Stefan branch Poetikvorlesung, special number publishing house, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-85449-451-5

Screenplays

• The Ways of Water in Erzincan, feature film, 30 min. (1998)
• Boomtown / End of the City, feature film, 30 min. (1999)
• The Alibi, screenplay for a thriller shown in German TV,^[13] 90 min. (2000)

Plays

• Something like that (2003)

Audiobooks

• Miss June Ruby (2005)

Essays

• About the drastic, in: BELLA triste No. 16 (2006)

Translations

• Als nur die Tiere lebten (2014), translation of Amikor még csak az állatok éltek, (2012), by Zsófia Bán.
• Abendschule – Ein Fibel für Erwachsene (2012), translation of Esti iskola – Olvasókönyv felnőtteknek, (2007), by Zsófia Bán