The State Prize is awarded annually at the suggestion of the Art Senate and is considered the highest cultural award in the Republic. The 49-year-old Baar succeeds the visual artist Martha Jungwirth, who received the honor last year.
Baar, born on May 25, 1973 in Zagreb, grew up bilingually in Vienna and Klagenfurt and initially studied medicine, which she soon gave up. This was followed by a degree in Slavic studies, journalism, theater studies and media work, which was followed by work as an author after completing her doctorate in 2008.
The general public first became aware of Baar in 2015. At that time, the young author read excerpts from her later published debut novel “The Color of the Pomegranate” about a child between two cultures at the Ingeborg Bachman Prize. And this year she returned to the Bachmann Prize – with the traditional “Klagenfurt Speech on Literature”, which she put at the start of her reading under the motto “The truth is an impertinence”.
Baar had previously received the Theodor Körner Prize in 2017 with the novel “As if they were dreaming” about the life story of a war hero. And her latest novel “Nil”, which was published last year and describes a process of self-discovery in sharp language, made it onto the shortlist for the Austrian Book Prize.
“Anna Baar believes in the power of literature. She is an author who confronts us with the unreasonable demands of truth and who knows how to give a voice to those who are not heard,” said State Secretary Mayer in recognition of the award winner. “Anna Baar is an unmistakable voice on the stage of contemporary literature.” As a language artist, she has mastered the ability to convey authentic experiences and insights about the present, even in the digital age.
The Austrian Art Senate, at whose suggestion Baar has now been chosen as a state prize winner, praised the author’s great sense of language in a statement: “Her texts, composed like pieces of music, which are full of linguistic beauty and repeatedly descend into the oppressive Kafkaesque abyss of nightmare, address the relationship between reality and fiction in an unusual way.”
Source: Nachrichten
