Korean American author Chang-Rae Lee will be awarded the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction for his novel The Surrendered, the organization announced on Monday.
“History shows that all nations eventually decline, governments shall fall, great structures will crumble to dust; yet literature endures — because in order to thrive we need our own voices to tilt against intolerance, ignorance, callousness; to make ourselves vulnerable to the difficult and beautiful truths of our humanity; to remind us we are one,” Lee said, in a release. “This is what the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation so rightly supports and celebrates; that my work has been thusly recognized is a deeply humbling — and inspiring – honor.”
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Lee’s epic novel follows three survivors of the wars in East Asia over the course of 50 years.
It is perhaps ironic that Lee’s biggest book—469 pages—may be his most personal. June Han, one of the novel’s main characters, is dying of stomach cancer, the disease which took Lee’s mother’s life while he was in his 20s.
The book opens with a horrific accident inspired by Lee’s father’s experience (his younger brother’s leg was severed by the wheels of a train) as he fled Pyongyang during the Korean War.
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States and is inspired by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords which ended the war in Bosnia, according to the organization. Winners receive a $10,000 honorarium while runners-up receive $1,000.
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