The winner of the 66th NIN award for the novel of the year is Saša Ilić for the work "Dog and double bass" published by "Orfelina", the jury was informed today.
In the shortlist were the novels of Milenko Bodirogić "Po šumema i gorama" ("Orfelin"), Slobodan Tišma "Grosota ili..." ("The Magical Book"), Stevo Grabovac "Mulat albino komarac" ("Imprimatur") and Ana Vučković "Yugoslav" ("Partisan book").
In addition to the president Teofil Pančić, the jury of the NIN award for the best novel of the year included Branko Kukić, Ivan Milenković, Marjan Čakarević and Marija Nenezić.
The award has been awarded since 1954, and the first winner was Dobrica Ćosić for the novel "Roots".
During the past years, it was awarded to writers from the former Yugoslavia, and among the winners were Oskar Davičo, Živojin Pavlović, Dragan Velikić, Branko Ćopić, Meša Selimović, Borislav Pekić, Miloš Crnjanski, David Albahari and others.
On the eve of the award, a group of writers sent an open letter asking their publishers to "no longer submit their works for the NIN award" and called for a "boycott" of it because of, as they stated, the composition of the jury that decides on the award winner and who are "professionally, morally, and most often both professionally and morally incompetent people".
Among the signatories of the open letter are Vladimir Tabašević, Emir Kusturica, Vladimir Kecmanović, winner of last year's NIN award for the novel "The Delusion of Saint Sebastian", as well as academician Miro Vuksanović, who won the award in 2005 for the novel "Semolj zemlja".
Bonus video:
