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Aegon Művészeti Díj
Hungary · Since 2006 · For books in Hungarian
Awarded each spring from 2006 to 2020 by the insurer Aegon Hungary to a living Hungarian writer for an outstanding literary book of any genre first published the year before. A jury chose a shortlist of about ten books, five in 2020.
Aegon Hungary founded the award in 2006, on a concept by Erzsébet Eszéki, who led it, to honour outstanding literary achievement and draw public attention to writers. It went to a living Hungarian writer, poet or playwright for a book first published the year before, so novels, story collections, poetry and drama competed together. A jury of five, later seven, critics and writers named a shortlist, capped at ten books from 2009, and the winner was announced each spring. From 2006 to 2012 each winner also chose an artist from another field for a companion award. Renamed the Aegon Literary Award in 2020, it ended after that year, when Aegon's Hungarian business was sold to the Vienna Insurance Group.
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Aegon 2018 · Shortlist
Omerta
Andrea Tompa · 46 when first published
Novel · 724 pages · Historical, Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:In 1950s Cluj, under a tightening Communist dictatorship, a peasant woman, a young city girl, a nun and a rose breeder tell how their lives cross, and how they fall into a love triangle.
Also: Libri 2018 winner
Aegon 2018 · Shortlist
Egy dadogás története
Novel · 412 pages · Family, Autofiction, Historical
AI-generated summary:A writer growing up near Arad in Romania tells his own life and his parents', and those of earlier generations, between the Hungarian border and the Székely Land, to invent himself a homeland.
Also: Libri 2018 shortlist
Aegon 2017 · Shortlist
A lélek legszebb éjszakája
Sándor Jászberényi · 36 when first published
Short stories · 200 pages · War
AI-generated summary:Stories narrated by a disillusioned Hungarian war correspondent who escapes a dishonest world into war zones, alcohol, opium and brief love affairs across the Middle East and Africa.
Also: Libri 2017 winner
Aegon 2016 · Shortlist
A vége
Attila Bartis · 47 when first published
Novel · 600 pages · Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:In a small town in Communist Hungary, a boy loses his mother and moves to Budapest with his father, where he grows up to become a photographer whose life is driven by images and by love.
Also: Libri 2016 shortlist
Aegon 2015 · Shortlist
Máglya
György Dragomán · 41 when first published
Novel · 480 pages · Coming of age, Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:After the dictator has been shot, thirteen-year-old Emma, who has lost her home and her parents, is taken in by a grandmother she has never known, in a country where the unburied past is still painfully alive.
Aegon 2014 · Shortlist
Megy a világ
László Krasznahorkai · 59 when first published
Short stories · 288 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories and speeches in three parts, in which a narrator speaks, then tells, then takes his leave, encountering Gagarin, a flightless Okinawan rail, a homeless man in the Berlin metro and Nietzsche in Turin.
Also: International Booker 2018 shortlist
Aegon 2014 · Shortlist
Nincstelenek
Szilárd Borbély · 50 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:A boy grows up in a poor village where his family must always keep silent, never say who they are and never mix with the peasant children, because they will always be the scapegoats.
Aegon 2012 · Shortlist
Verhovina madarai
Ádám Bodor · 75 when first published
Novel · 255 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:In Verhovina, a remote place where the train runs irregularly and the timetable has been abolished, Brigadier Korkodus's foster son waits at the run-down station for a barefoot boy sent over from a reformatory.
Aegon 2012 · Shortlist
Pixel
Krisztina Tóth · 44 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Chapters that work like pixels, each a whole in itself and each devoted to one part of the body, gradually reveal links between people and couples who collide and meet by chance across time and place.
Aegon 2010 · Shortlist
Egy angyal önéletrajzai
Gábor Schein · 40 when first published
Novel · 234 pages · Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:An angel tells two lives far apart in time and place: that of Johann Klarfeld, a German of the eighteenth century, and that of Berta Józsa, born in Hungary in 1943, through four generations of her family.
Aegon 2009 · Shortlist
Seiobo járt odalent
László Krasznahorkai · 54 when first published
Short stories · 451 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories ranging across ages and cultures, from biblical times to the present, whose true heroes are works of beauty, made by people or by nature, perfect, purposeless and impossible to resist.
Aegon 2008 · Shortlist
Esti iskola
Zsófia Bán · 50 when first published
Short stories · 270 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:A mock textbook for adults whose lessons cover self-help, geography, chemistry and French, among them young Flaubert's journey to Egypt and a last message from the dog Laika before her launch into space.
Aegon 2007 · Shortlist
A kilencedik
Ferenc Barnás · 47 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:In 1968, in a quiet village outside Budapest, a boy born ninth into a large, poor and devoutly Catholic family grows up under a tyrannical father and a Communist state, knowing hunger and fear.
Aegon 2007 · Shortlist
Vonalkód
Krisztina Tóth · 39 when first published
Short stories · 226 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Stories that return to a childhood shaped by the 1970s, when a barcode marked everything that came from the West, and to the fears and reflexes the era left behind: anxiety, exclusion, and still, a childhood that was not all bad.
Also: Warwick Prize 2023 shortlist