KATHMANDU:

Manjushree Thapa has been nominated for the prestigious Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage, according to a press statement issued by the award foundation.

Thapa is one of the seven finalists named for the award. She has been nominated for her work Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy.

The other finalists are Karl-Markus Gauss of Austria for Die Hundeesser von Svinia (The Dog Eaters of Svinia), Linda Grant of Great Britain for The People on the Street. A Writer’s View of Israel, Juanita Léon of Colombia País de plomo. Crónicas de guerra (Country of Bullets. War Diaries), Li Datong of China for The Story of “Freezing Point”, Erik Orsenna of France for Voyage aux pays du coton. Petit précis de mondialisation (Journey to the Lands of Cotton. A Brief Manual of Globalisation), Zhou Qing of China for Min Yihe Shi Wei Tian. Zhongguo Shipin Anquan Xianzhuang Diaocha (What Kind of God. A Survey of the Current Safety of China’s Food).

The Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage will be conferred for the fourht time. Three pieces of reportage will be awarded with cash prizes amounting to $50,000, $30,000 and $20,000 respectively. Working grants will be awarded to other finalists.

The awards will be conferred at a public ceremony on September 30.

The idea of developing a worldwide form of recognition for literary reportage motivated Foundation Lettre International Award to present the first global prize for this genre in 2003: the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. The goal is to provide, symbolic, moral and financial support for reporters whose courage, curiosity and integrity drives them to create in-depth, well-researched texts bringing unknown, forgotten and hidden realities to light. It is also intended to publicly honour and highlight the extraordinary achievements of literary reportage.