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British Marina Warner named as winner of Holberg Prize

Xinhua, March 13, 2015 Adjust font size:

British author, scholar and critic Marina Warner was named Thursday as the winner of Norway's annual Holberg Prize, sometimes known as the "Nobel prize" for arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology.

Warner, who was born in London in 1946, will receive the financial award of 4.5 million Norwegian kroner (about 554,700 U.S. dollars) during a formal ceremony at the University of Bergen in western Norway on June 10.

Warner won the honor "for her work on the analysis of stories and myths and how they reflect their time and place. She is known for the emphasis of gender roles and feminism in her literary work," the awards committee said in a press release.

"As a story-teller and novelist in her own right, Marina Warner recognizes and celebrates the alternative forms of knowledge to be found in narrative," Chair of the Holberg Academic Committee Mary Jacobus was quoted as saying.

"In work that is at once dazzling and accessible, she ranges across the fields of comparative literature, mythography and folklore, popular culture and translation, the encounter of east and west, the study of art, symbols, and objects, the history of science, and the role of women," Jacobus said.

Warner's career began as a staff writer for Britain's Daily Telegraph before working as Vogue's features editor, at age 22, from 1969 until 1972. Afterwards, she began a more than 30-year-career as an independent writer and scholar. Since then, she has won numerous international literary accolades including the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

The Holberg Prize, established by the Norwegian Parliament in 2003, is named in memory of Norwegian author and playwright Ludvig Holberg, who lived from 1684 to 1754 and played an important part in bringing the Enlightenment to the Nordic countries.

Warner will be the second British Holberg Prize Laureate. British Historian Michael Cook, a leading expert at Princeton on the history and religious thought of Islam, received the honor in 2014. Enditem