The Phantom of Liberty/Le Fantôme de la liberté literary prize goes to Nenad Popović

The literary prize The Phantom of Liberty/Le Fantôme de la liberté rewards authors who through their unfailing engagement detect human, societal and political failings and deviations.

The first literary prize The Phantom of Liberty/Le Fantôme de la liberté thus for this year 2023 goes to the essayist, translator and publisher, but above all to the humanist Nenad Popović. Indeed, from the very beginning confronted with the tragedy that is the war that Putin's Russia has imposed to Ukraine and the rest of Europe and the world, scrupulously noting week after week in his War Diary in Ukraine/Journal de guerre en Ukraine his observations and reflections, based on rare erudition, intellectual courage and enlightened humanism, he offers to his readers a powerful testimony and an attempt to explain the inexplicable.

The vision of the horror of Ukrainian daily life has haunted the author for more than a year striving to resist the incessant waves of pain, involving himself body and soul when with his wife Slađana he welcomes an Ukrainian refugees family in his home. Intertwining real life with human, literary and intellectual engagement, reading his War Diary in Ukraine/Journal de guerre en Ukraine is as challenging as it is saving.

The literary, cultural, societal and political sites Le Fantôme de la liberté (Paris), Forum.tm (Zagreb) and Radio gornji grad (Zagreb), the magazine The European Messanger/Europski glasnik/Le Messager européen (Zagreb) as well as the Ukrainian monthly published in France since 1933 The Ukrainian Word/Укаїнське слово (Paris), by awarding the literary prize The Phantom of Liberty/Le Fantôme de la liberté to Mr. Nenad Popović salute the man and his literary and intellectual work imbued with a deep humanity and his Journal of war in Ukraine/Le Journal de guerre en Ukraine, a great work.

The diploma of the literary prize The Phantom of Liberty/Le Fantôme de la liberté was created by the designer and illustrator Dubravka Periša, while the drawing offered to the winner is the work of the versatile artist Dimitrije Popović.

Congratulation!