Second Press Release 2003

Berlin, 9 September 2003

International Jury Agrees on Seven Finalists

At the beginning of September in Paris the international jury of the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage chose the finalists for the first world prize for reportage literature. Transcending the boundaries of language and culture and after intensive discussion and translation processes, the jurors came to an agreement on the reportage works that they would like to place in the center of worldwide attention. The seven nominated texts come from Africa, China, India, Europe, Russia and the USA. They paint a personal and at the same time profound picture of everyday life and politics in very different countries and cultures.

As eyewitnesses to history and detectives of the unknown, "literary reporters" made their way through supposedly familiar and through forgotten regions of the world. They tell stories of creation and destruction, hope and despair, fanaticism and cold calculation, of the hardship and the beauty of life. Their passion is the reality of a multiform world.

With their talent for perception and their power of expression, with their courage and curiosity, the seven authors chosen document and develop the following topics:

- a multi-faceted panorama of the Indian subcontinent

- life in the Bronx poverty, drug trafficking and the laws of the street

- poaching and the exploitation of nature in Inner Mongolia

- the war in Chechnya a close-up of a tragedy

- the Somalian Diaspora after the disintegration of a state

- Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda and others United Nations crisis interventions

- democracy and exile the lives of Chinese dissidents

Both famous and less well-known representatives of the genre are included among the authors.