Protests organisers receive prestigious award for literature

The award winning book contains crucial moments of the initiative and the protests that were held after the murder of a journalist and his fiancée.

Some of the laureates of the Dominik Tatarka Award.Some of the laureates of the Dominik Tatarka Award. (Source: TASR)

The organisers of the nation-wide protest gatherings that followed the murder of investigative reporter Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, the For a Decent Slovakia initiative, have received the prestigious Dominik Tatarka Award for literature.

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They received it for a book entitled My sme tí, na ktorých sa čakalo (We are those you have been waiting for), issued by Artforum.

It contains extracts of the speeches made by people who were speaking in the squares across Slovakia during the gatherings held between March 2 and June 22, 2018.

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“For the first time, we are granting the Dominik Tatarka Award to a book that is a text about an event,” said Peter Zajac, chair of the jury and head of the M. R. Štefánik Conservative Institute, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

Crucial moments captured

Read also: UPDATED: Protest gatherings will return to Slovakia one year after the murders of Kuciak and Kušnírová Read more 

The book, among other things, features, via texts and pictures, how the For a Decent Slovakia initiative was created. It also describes the critical moment when the initiative decided to cancel one of the gatherings that had already been announced. The dust jacket features one of the first texts written by Kuciak about the murder of lawyer Ernest Valko.

The jury granted the award to young people for the first time, too.

The laureates received the portraits of Kuciak and Kušnírová, painted by Daniel Fischer as a gift, which they subsequently gave to the parents of the engaged couple.

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“We decided to place the painting at the place where they were murdered,” said Jozef Kuciak, father of the killed journalist.

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