European Union Prize for Literature

05/08/2026

In the fourth and final episode of Bound by Heritage, German author Deniz Utlu discovers the Sisters’ House Ensemble in Kleinwelka, Germany, listed among Europe's 7 Most Endangered heritage sites in 2023.

Built in the mid-18th century in Kleinwelka, Germany, the five-building Sisters’ House Ensemble housed a self-sufficient Moravian women’s community. The sisters operated a school, pharmacy, and health system, raising future missionaries. But following a 20th-century decline, the historic, abandoned complex now suffers severe structural decay.

“The Sisters’ House may be an intervention into fantasies of purity, cultural ethnic, and other fantasies of purity, when we imagine that multilingual sisters of faith, themselves refugees, taught children from all over the world here,” Deniz reflects.

He connects his experience there with the themes of his novel,“Vaters Meer” (My Father’s Ocean), in which he reconstructs his father’s origins in a Turkish-Arabic family in the Anatolian town Mardin, describing or imagining how his parents came to meet each other, how his father managed to find his feet in a new country.

🎥 Watch Episode 4: https://youtu.be/ZZGYdThjC2k

Bound by Heritage is a joint initiative by Europa Nostra and the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), co-funded by the EU's Creative Europe Programme, bringing together award-recognised authors and endangered heritage sites across Europe.

29/07/2026

In the third episode of Bound by Heritage, Montenegrin author Vladimir Vujović visits the Cultural Landscape of Sveti Stefan in Paštrovići, listed among Europe's 7 Most Endangered heritage sites in 2023.

Often regarded as the symbolic image of Montenegro, Sveti Stefan is a unique cultural landscape where nature, architecture and centuries of local traditions come together. Today, uncontrolled tourism development, privatisation and restricted public access threaten not only the site's cultural and natural values, but also the community's connection to its own heritage.

Describing Sveti Stefan as "a symbol of unity, independence, resilience and the ideal combination of natural and architectural beauty," Vladimir reflects on the relationship between people and place. Drawing on the themes of his short story collection “Slobodni udarci” (Free Kicks), he reads a passage that resonates with the challenges facing Sveti Stefan today, showing how literature can help us reflect on the future of endangered heritage sites.

As he reminds us, the stories of Sveti Stefan and the nearby Miločer park, located just north of the islet of Sveti Stefan, are “a treasure made of salt", a testament to who we were and a reminder of what we could become again.

🎥 Watch Episode 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRYOwicrcsE

Don’t miss the last episode, out next Wednesday!

Bound by Heritage is a joint initiative by Europa Nostra and the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), co-funded by the EU's Creative Europe Programme, bringing together award-recognised authors and endangered heritage sites across Europe.

22/07/2026

In the second episode of Bound by Heritage, Italian author Nicoletta Verna visits the Synagogue of Siena, Italy, one of the sites featured in Europa Nostra's 7 Most Endangered Programme.

A place of worship for Siena's Jewish community for more than two centuries, the synagogue also bears witness to centuries of persecution and to the trauma of the Holocaust. Following structural damage caused by the 2023 earthquake, and subsequent successful campaigning for its restoration, the synagogue reopened to the public in 2025.

Drawing on the themes of her novel “I giorni di Vetro”, Nicoletta reflects on the importance of memory and on how both places and literature can keep difficult histories alive. As she reminds us, places and novels tell stories, we only need to let them speak.

🎥 Watch Episode 2: https://youtu.be/5KpgsTEBB3E

Discover a new episode every Wednesday.

Bound by Heritage is a joint initiative by Europa Nostra and the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), co-funded by the EU's Creative Europe Programme, bringing together award-recognised authors and endangered heritage sites across Europe.



Europa Nostra

15/07/2026

The first episode of the Bound by Heritage series is out!

Our journey begins in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the European Union Prize for Literature author Mihaela Šumić visits the Partisan Memorial Cemetery, one of the sites featured in Europa Nostra's 7 Most Endangered Programme.

Through the encounter between the author and the place, the episode explores how cultural heritage can inspire contemporary storytelling and why preserving Europe's endangered heritage remains more important than ever — especially when a monument and the memory it safeguards are under threat of vandalism and misinterpretation.

Bound by Heritage is a joint initiative by Europa Nostra and the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), co-funded by the EU Creative Europe Programme, bringing together award-recognised authors and endangered heritage sites across Europe.

🎥 Watch Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNoPJWt1edc&t=103s

Discover a new episode every Wednesday.



Creative Europe Kreativna Europa BiH - Creative Europe Desk Bosnia and Herzegovina

13/07/2026

🎥 Bound by Heritage is coming!

Europa Nostra and the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) are pleased to announce Bound by Heritage, a new four-part documentary video series exploring the connections between Europe's endangered cultural heritage sites and contemporary literature.

Bringing together authors either shortlisted or awarded by the European Union Prize for Literature and heritage sites from Europa Nostra's 7 Most Endangered Programme, the series explores how literature can help shed light on the importance of preserving cultural heritage.

Filmed across Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Montenegro and Germany, Bound by Heritage intertwines both tangible and intangible cultural heritage – the backbone of Europe’s historic memory, vibrant democracy, and thriving cultural ecosystem.

📅 First episode out this Wednesday. Stay tuned!

Don’t miss it, and for more information, head on over to our site: https://euprizeliterature.eu/en/various-media/european-union-prize-for-literature-and-europa-nostra-launch-series-of-short-documentary-videos-bound-by-heritage/

13/07/2026

06/07/2026

Long summer days and a little too much heat? ☀️📖

Stay cool indoors and let a good book take you somewhere else.

Here's our monthly reading list. 📚 📚 📚

1️⃣ L’Uomo lupo, Mihaela Šumić, Botega Errante Edizioni (Italy) – translated from Bosnian by Marijana Puljić

In the remote town of Selvanto, on the edge of the forest, a legend has been passed down for generations: lurking beneath the trees is the Wolf Man, a dark and mythical creature. As the years pass, new clues emerge, exposing long-buried secrets and hidden culpability, until a disturbing truth finally comes to light. A gripping novel that paints a chilling portrait of a superstitious community trapped by violence, corruption, and a code of silence.

2️⃣ La hermana del río, Laura Vinogradova, La Tortuga búlgara (Spain) – translated from Latvian by Rafael Martín Calvo

This haunting novel unfolds around a river that embodies the passage of time and memory, a place where the past is as vivid as the present. Sheltered by the river and transformed by a series of pivotal encounters, Rute gradually pieces together the fragments of her troubled past and begins to glimpse the possibility of a life beyond pain.

3️⃣Hagabula, Todor Todorov, Gondolat (Hungary) – translated from Bulgarian by Kovács Gergely Lajos

Hagabula is a utopian alternate history of the West. Set in the early 16th century, it follows Hernan Cortes’s expedition to a mystical black mountain, the navel of the Earth, somewhere in the West Atlantic, beyond the “meridian of fear.” The protagonists traverse an enchanting, dreamlike reality, which leads them to unpredictable discoveries and an ending of cosmogonic scale.

4️⃣A peninsula das casas baleiras, David Uclés, Rinoceronte Editora (Galicia) – translated from Spanish by Moisés Barcia

This novel tells the demise of a whole family during the Civil War, starting in Jándula, an Andalusian imagined village, and crossing throughout a bleeding Iberia. A story where the real and the imaginary, the epic and the everyday intermingle to form a rich and surreal, yet vivid and credible tapestry.

🎨 Marta Cartu

18/06/2026

🟡 We are thrilled to share the official after movie of the EUPL Award Ceremony 2026, that took place at the Warsaw Musem of Modern Art, as part of the International Warsaw Book Fair.

Dive into the highlights, emotions, and inspiring stories that made this year's edition truly unforgettable.

02/06/2026

☀️Longer days, warmer weather, and plenty of books to discover.☀️

Here's our monthly reading list. 📚 📚 📚

1️⃣ Los días de Vidrio, Nicoletta Verna, Duomo (Spain) – translated from Italian by Maribel Campmany

Set in a small Italian town under dictatorship, the novel follows Redenta, a young woman marked by superstition and misfortune, whose life becomes intertwined with Iris, an educated woman involved in the resistance. As war, fear, and political repression shape their world, their alternating stories reveal hidden secrets, silent resilience, and the quiet strength of two women navigating a violent era.

2️⃣ Teo od 16 do 18, Raluca Nagy, Pauza (Polish) – translated from Romanian by Olga Bartosiewicz-Nikolaev

A subversive fairy tale, a thrilling coming-of-age adventure, and an irreverent reimagining of the Gospels, Teo from 16 to 18 boldly confronts biopolitical and patriarchal forms of oppression. One of the standout achievements of recent Romanian fiction, it is a fresh, complex, and visionary novel destined to become a contemporary classic.

3️⃣ The Minister, Stefan Bošković, Sandorf Passage (USA) – translated from Serbian (Montenegro) by Will Firth

There is nothing easy about being the Minister of Culture of Montenegro, but the next nine days for Valentin Kovačević will be especially difficult. Participating in an artist’s performance, he has accidentally killed her, and now, if Kovačević is to maintain both his position and his sanity, he must successfully navigate the murky corridors of government bureaucracy, cultural customs, and family pressures.

4️⃣ Η αρχαιολογία του αποχαιρετισμού, Raquel Martinez-Gomez, Vakxikon Publications (Greece) – translated from Spanish by Tina Terzioti

A novel about a writer who attempts to discover her own path through the ruins of the lives of others. Through memories, historical documents, joys and disappointments, a course is traced from Paris in World War I to Cuba and Mexico in the 20th century.

🎨 Marta Cartu

29/05/2026

We’re delighted to announce the laureate and special mentions of the European Union Prize for Literature 2026, revealed today at the Warsaw International Book Fair 📚✨

🏆 2026 Laureate
Dora Kaprálová (Czechia) for Mariborská hypnóza (Maribor Hypnosis)

✨ Special Mentions
🇫🇷 Hélène Frédérick for Lézardes (Rivers of White)
🇲🇪 Vladimir Vujović for Slobodni udarci (Free Kicks)

Congratulations to all shortlisted authors whose work showcases the richness, diversity, and creativity of contemporary European literature.