By Edward Nawotka
Professor Menahem Ben-Sasson, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has announced that Ian McEwan will be awarded the Jerusalem Prize during this year’s Jerusalem International Book Fair, which takes place from February 20-25.
The Jerusalem Prize is awarded biennially to a writer whose work best expresses and promotes the idea of “freedom of the individual in society.” It is considered Israel’s top literary award for foreign writers and carries a cash prize of $10,000.
Previous winners include: Bertrand Russell (first winner, 1963), Simone de Beauvoir (1975), Milan Kundera (1985), Mario Vargas Llosa (1995), Susan Sontag (2001), Arthur Miller (2003), Haruki Murakami (2009) and several more who were awarded the Jerusalem Prize later received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Among them include: Bertrand Russell , Octavio Paz, V. S. Naipaul, Mario Vargas Llosa and J. M. Coetzee.