All prizes Croatia
Književna nagrada tportala
Croatia · Since 2008 · For books in Croatian
Awarded each year in Zagreb by the news portal tportal.hr to the best novel of the previous year whose first edition was published in Croatian by a publisher registered in Croatia. A jury picks eleven semifinalists and then five finalists before naming the winner.
The news portal tportal.hr, owned by Hrvatski Telekom, founded the award in 2008 as roman@tportal.hr to recognise the best Croatian novel regardless of its author's fame or sales. Publishers and authors submit novels first published in Croatian during the previous calendar year, usually around fifty a year. A jury of critics, writers, translators and other cultural figures narrows them down to eleven semifinalists and then five finalists, and names the winner at a ceremony in Zagreb, in recent years in June. The award cannot be shared. The prize, once 100,000 kuna, has been 15,000 euros since 2025, and since 2022 the winning novel has also been recorded as an audiobook. The award carries the year of the ceremony, so the 2026 award went to a novel published in 2025.
Showing 17 of 95 books. 78 aren’t in English yet: show all.
tportal 2023 · Winner
U kasno ljeto
Magdalena Blažević · 40 when first published
Novel · 165 pages · War, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Fourteen-year-old Ivana, killed by an enemy unit, tells of the childhood she shared with her friend Dunja in a Bosnian village before the war swept their world away.
tportal 2023 · Shortlist
Mater Dolorosa
Jurica Pavičić · 57 when first published
Novel · 336 pages · Crime, Family
AI-generated summary:In Split in autumn 2022, inspector Zvone Carev investigates the murder of schoolgirl Viktorija Zeba, while the killer's mother Katja and sister Ines cope in their own way with what he has done.
tportal 2021 · Shortlist
Radio Siga
Ivan Vidak · 39 when first published
Novel · 208 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:Kalman Gubica, born in 1920 in a remote village in Bačka and raised as an orphan, becomes the village drummer and crier, until just before the Second World War he is struck by lightning.
tportal 2021 · Shortlist
Sinovi, kćeri
Ivana Bodrožić · 38 when first published
Novel · 262 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:Three voices unlock their private lives: a young woman paralysed in a hospital bed, the person she is in love with, and her unhappy mother.
tportal 2020 · Winner
Proslava
Damir Karakaš · 52 when first published
Novel · 116 pages · War, Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:At the end of a war a man from the losing side hides in a forest in Lika, waiting to surrender; four chapters reach ever deeper into the past of three generations of his poor family.
tportal 2018 · Winner
Lisica
Dubravka Ugrešić · 68 when first published
Novel · 308 pages
AI-generated summary:The fox, a figure of cunning, runs through six loosely linked chapters in which a first-person narrator reflects on storytelling, writers and the line between the real and the invented.
tportal 2018 · Shortlist
Crvena voda
Jurica Pavičić · 52 when first published
Novel · 345 pages · Crime, Family
AI-generated summary:Seventeen-year-old Silva Vela vanishes one September weekend in 1989 in a small Dalmatian town, and her parents and brother spend the next 27 years looking for her as Croatia passes through war and transition.
tportal 2017 · Shortlist
EEG
Daša Drndić · 70 when first published
Novel · 412 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Andreas Ban, the cynical hero of an earlier novel, survives a suicide attempt and goes on dissecting society and his own past, uncovering the hidden horrors of everyone around him.
tportal 2016 · Winner
Doba mjedi
Slobodan Šnajder · 67 when first published
Novel · 365 pages · Historical, War, Love
AI-generated summary:From the hungry Germany of the 18th century, when families emigrated east, to the expulsion of the Germans from Yugoslavia in 1945, the story of the Danube Swabians through the wartime love of Georg and Vera.
tportal 2016 · Shortlist
Oblak boje kože
Nebojša Lujanović · 34 when first published
Novel · 381 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:Young Enis Selmanić flees Zagreb after being accused of starting a fire in the café where he worked, while his sister Sanda tries to escape a Roma ghetto and their father Fabo belongs to neither world.
tportal 2016 · Shortlist
Područje bez signala
Robert Perišić · 46 when first published
Novel · 424 pages · Satire, Politics
AI-generated summary:Two men, Oleg and Nikola, bring the engineer Sobotka back to restart a ruined factory in a remote town during the post-socialist transition, in a story that reaches from Siberia to the Maghreb and London.
tportal 2015 · Shortlist
Brdo
Ivica Prtenjača · 45 when first published
Novel · 156 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Dismissed as head of public relations at Zagreb's Museum of Contemporary Art, a burnt-out man flees the city to spend a summer alone as a fire lookout on top of an Adriatic island.
tportal 2014 · Winner
Črna mati zemla
Kristian Novak · 34 when first published
Novel · 293 pages
AI-generated summary:A successful young writer who has long woven his memories from scraps of other people's stories decides to face what really happened in the village of his childhood, events he has buried deep.
tportal 2013 · Shortlist
Božanska dječica
Tatjana Gromača · 41 when first published
Novel · 218 pages · Family, War
AI-generated summary:A daughter tells of her mother's mental illness, of the family around her and of a society poisoned by war, hatred and intolerance, where it is hard to say who is sick and who is well.
tportal 2011 · Winner
Adio kauboju
Olja Savičević Ivančević · 36 when first published
Novel · 175 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:A small Dalmatian town stands in for the Wild West in a story of a family facing a death, of growing up, of going back to one's roots and of a search for a truth that sets one free.
tportal 2011 · Shortlist
Voda, paučina
Nada Gašić · 60 when first published
Novel · 517 pages · Crime, Family
AI-generated summary:The story starts with the Zagreb flood of 27 October 1964 and follows a family tragedy and a crime story in today's Trešnjevka, a world of death, prostitution, police and mafia.
tportal 2009 · Shortlist
Baba Jaga je snijela jaje
Dubravka Ugrešić · 59 when first published
Novel · 327 pages
AI-generated summary:A retelling of the myth of Baba Yaga, the old witch of Slavic folklore, in three parts that mix autobiography, fiction and a mock-scholarly study of what it means to grow old as a woman.