Honorary Award for a “Barricade-Breaker of the Mind”: Dacia Maraini Honored in Austria
Italian bestselling author and intellectual Dacia Maraini has been awarded the 2026 Austrian Booksellers’ Honorary Prize for Tolerance in Thought and Action.
Italian author Dacia Maraini at Buch Wien 2025. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / C.Stadler/Bwag / CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
Italian author Dacia Maraini has been awarded this year’s Austrian Booksellers’ Honorary Prize for Tolerance in Thought and Action. Benedikt Föger, president of the Austrian Booksellers’ Association (HVB), and representatives of the Austrian bookselling industry made the announcement. Since it was first awarded in 1990, the Honorary Prize has been regarded as the highest distinction bestowed by the Austrian book trade and honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to diversity, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence in Europe.
A Life Shaped by Resistance and Commitment
Born in 1936 in Fiesole, Tuscany, Maraini spent her early childhood in Japan, where her family had fled to escape Italian fascism. Because of her parents’ anti-fascist stance, the family was interned in a prison camp—formative years marked by hunger, persecution, and deprivation. These early experiences laid the foundation for her deep understanding of freedom, human dignity, and social responsibility.
For over six decades, Dacia Maraini has been one of Italy’s most influential literary voices and is regarded as a feminist pioneer. In numerous novels, poetry collections, short stories, and plays, she gives a powerful voice to marginalized people, victims of sexual violence, and the disadvantaged. In addition to her work as a writer and screenwriter, she was involved in experimental theater projects and traveled to Africa with Pier Paolo Pasolini, among others, for film projects.
High Praise for Her Life’s Work
“In 2026, with Dacia Maraini, we are honoring a writer who has given the European ideal an unmistakable voice through her life and work,” HVB President Benedikt Föger emphasized. “Her texts transcend the boundaries of language, nation, and origin. They remind us that tolerance means an active willingness to understand others.”
Throughout her career, Maraini has already been honored with prestigious awards such as the Premio Strega for her literary work and has repeatedly been cited by experts as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Among her best-known works, published in German by Folio Verlag, are “The Silent Duchess”, “Days in August”, and her autobiographical account “Half a Spoonful of Rice” about her childhood in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
Award Ceremony in Krems
Maraini will receive the award on Sunday, November 22, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. as part of the European Literature Days at the “Klangraum Krems Minoritenkirche”—just a few days after her 90th birthday on November 13. Maraini thus joins a list of prominent award recipients, including Milo Dor, Viktor Frankl, Christine Nöstlinger, Elif Shafak, Philippe Sands, and Eva Menasse.