Marko Vidojkovic Named Finalist for Vaclav Havel Prize

Since August 2, the name Marko Vidojkovic has sat on a list that reads like a map of prison cells and forced relocations. The same list, compiled by New York’s Vaclav Havel Center, includes Ma Tida, sentenced in Myanmar in 1993 to twenty years on charges of distributing banned literature, Turkish writer Asli Erdogan, arrested in 2016 over her work for a pro Kurdish newspaper, and Belarusian lawyer Maksim Znak, who wrote a cycle of a hundred short stories titled “Zekameron” while sitting in a prison cell.

For now, Vidojkovic is one of six finalists in that company. The Vaclav Havel Center published the shortlist for this year’s Disturbing the Peace award on August 2, and the news reached Serbia on August 3. Competing alongside him are Ali Asadolahi (Iran), Gui Minhaj (China and Sweden), Davit Isak (Eritrea and Sweden), Marijam Sodzaei (Iran and Canada) and Fam Doan Trang (Vietnam).

The criterion the center cites leaves little room for a diplomatic reading. According to its statement, the award goes:

to outstanding works of fiction, nonfiction, biography, memoir, drama or poetry, by authors who are courageous in defiance and endure unjust persecution for their vocal defense of democracy and human rights

The portion of the citation devoted to Vidojkovic describes him as the author of several novels translated into multiple languages, a columnist and public intellectual, and notes that he faced serious threats over his open criticism of the authorities. The center adds a detail the domestic public already knows, though rarely states this plainly: that in 2023 he was forced to leave Serbia and has lived and worked in exile ever since.

Why isn’t a name from Serbia on this list routine news?

Because the award isn’t decided by literary merit in the narrow sense. The center’s description asks first for courage in defiance and endured persecution, with the quality of the writing a condition that comes after that. When Vidojkovic, a columnist for Danas and co host of the podcast “Dobar, los, zao” (Good, Bad, Evil), turns up in the same sentence as Eritrea, Vietnam and Iran, that’s a classification, not a compliment. Past laureates have come from Myanmar, Turkey, China, Cuba, Belarus, Ukraine, Egypt, India and Iran, a geography in which Serbia has never before had a name of its own.

The range of what the center treats as persecution shows in the laureates themselves. Andrej Kurkov, the Ukrainian novelist and president of Ukrainian PEN, was honored as a chronicler of a war still under way. Egyptian blogger Ala Abd el Fatah has been arrested under several different governments in his own country. Iranian rapper Tomadz Salehi, the 2024 laureate, was sentenced to death that April over charges tied to the protests, a verdict overturned that June. The center draws no distinction there between a poet, a blogger and a rapper. What it measures is the consequence of public speech.

This is a round year for the center itself. The award was established in 2016, and 2026 marks a full decade since, while the $5,000 prize money is symbolic next to what it marks. The center itself says its purpose is to draw attention to writers fighting against human rights violations.

A comment that arrived before the congratulations

Less than a day after the shortlist was announced, ANEM said on August 3 that it had reported to the competent prosecutor’s office a threat posted in a comment on the Facebook page of the IN Medija outlet from Indjija, under the news of the nomination. Veran Matic, chairman of ANEM’s Managing Board, said it was the third threat against Vidojkovic reported to the prosecutor’s office within a week.

It is hard to imagine faster proof that a nomination is warranted. The New York center’s citation describes a writer who endures persecution over his public statements, and the first domestic echo of that news was a fresh report to the prosecutor’s office. The winner has not been named yet, and the citation the center has already written needs no further confirmation.