Jean-Claude Mourlevat wins literary prize Astrid Lindgren 2021
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) is considered one of the most prestigious international awards dedicated to literature for the youngest and to the promotion of reading, and has a monetary value of SEK 5 million (about 487 thousand euros).
Among the 263 authors, illustrators and reading promoters nominated for the prize were the Portuguese Bernardo P. Carvalho, Cristina Carvalho, Luísa Ducla Soares, António Jorge Gonçalves, Maria Teresa Maia Gonzalez, André Letria and Catarina Sobral.
Of these seven Portuguese authors, only Cristina Carvalho was nominated for the first time. All the others had already been nominated one or more times in previous editions of ALMA.
Mourlevat, who had been a recurring candidate for this literary award, is the author of works for young people such as “Jefferson“, “L’enfant Océan” and “Le combat d’hiver“, translated into more than 20 languages, but unheard of in the market Portuguese.
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was created in 2002 by the government of Sweden, in honor of the writer Astrid Lindgren, popular for creating the character “Pippi Longstocking“.
The prize will be awarded to Jean-Claude Mourlevat on 31 May. At the same time it will also be handed over to the South Korean author Baek Heena, distinguished in 2020, but unable to receive it because of the covid-19 pandemic.
