NOS Literary Prize

Concept, aims and objectives of the Prize

The annual NOS literature prize was established in 2009, in the year of the 200th anniversary of N. V. Gogol by the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation to reveal and support new trends in modern Russian literature.

In accordance with the Foundation’s overall strategy the concept for this Prize combines both promotional and educational aspects.

The Prize organisers look at modernity and originality in current prose, above all else, from the standpoint of “the new sociality” of a literary text: as the creation of new meanings, a new system of artistic coordinates, new mental and metaphorical map of the world.

The Prize was envisioned as an important intellectual arena for critical discussions about an artistic experiment in modern literature, about the modernisation of the critic’s tools for assessment, about the new relations between writing and visualizing, art and society, the ethical and the aesthetic, the artistic and the political, and about the very boundaries of what constitutes art.

The project’s main objective is to improve Russian criticism by bringing the genre of literary prizes up to date. The key feature of the NOS Prize is the transparency of its decision making process. An indispensable condition of the jury’s work is the necessity to discuss in public its choice of the finalists and the winner in a talk show with the active participation of journalists, writers and cultural community.