Martin Pollack is awarded the Leipzig Book Prize
for European Understanding 2011 for his memorable
and groundbreaking oeuvre, which, in the
services of enlightened historical policies, focuses
above all on the peripheral and long-neglected
regions of Eastern Europe. In his historical reportages,
which time and again revolve around Galicia
as a starting point and emigrational epicentre of
European catastrophes, Martin Pollack consistently
casts an illuminating light on our contemporary
world, drawing on equally unpretentious and
painstaking research and archive work. In Kaiser
von Amerika, for instance, his latest volume of
creative non-fiction, he describes the mass exodus of
Jews, Poles and Ukrainians from Galicia and
identifies this wave of refugees as a prototype of
modern-day migratory patterns with their
insidious traffickers and human slavery. Honed as
a translator of Ryszard Kapuściński, Martin Pollack
cultivates reportage as an artistic form on the
precarious tightrope between essay writing and
documentation – constantly focusing his empathy
on lending a name and honour to history’s nameless
victims.

The Jury’s Verdict