Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan is the recipient of the 2026 International Vilenica Prize, an accolade that recognizes outstanding achievements in literature and essay writing by Central European authors.

Announcing the prize on 20 May, the jury praised his work for a pronounced linguistic rhythm and a blending of poetry, social critique and humour.

Lives of ordinary people

Born in 1974, Zhadan is an award-winning novelist, poet, translator, musician and social activist whose works have been translated into many languages.

His oeuvre, including the 2010 novel Voroshilovgrad, focuses on the lives of ordinary people in post-Soviet Ukraine, especially in eastern industrial regions.

The Orphanage, published in 2017, tells a story about war in Donbas in 2015, about what war does to ordinary people trying to survive inside it.

It is set in eastern Ukraine, in a fictionalised industrial city that is very similar to real cities like Donetsk or Luhansk.

In his works, Zhadan creates a tense atmosphere in which he explores themes of identity, freedom, war, migration, memory and the problems of contemporary society, according to the jury.

After Russia started a war in Ukraine in 2022, he became an important voice of Ukraine’s civil society and works as a humanitarian organiser on the frontline in and around Kharkiv.

Prize about literature, not politics

The jury’s president Gregor Podlogar stressed that Zhadan was not picked because of politics but because of his work.

He said Zhadan’s literature was the voice of Central Europe rising from the bottom up, and thus also an advocacy of the innocent. He is an author whose work encapsulates the spirit of the Vilenica Festival.

He will receive the prize in person at the 41st Vilenica International Literary Festival, which takes place between 1 and 5 September.

Zhadan has become the second Ukrainian author to win the prestigious prize since its inception 1986. In 2017, it went to Yurii Andrukhovych.

The festival, a showcase of Central and Eastern Europe’s literary prowess, will focus on the fluidity of identities, a broad concept the organisers say expands the boundaries of literary creation to previously unimaginable dimensions of multiple forms of expression, not only national ones.