Hanif Kureishi wins the PEN Pinter Prize 2010
20th october 2010

Hanif Kureishi, playwright, novelist and short story writer, has won the PEN/Pinter Prize 2010 which was awarded on 20th October at the British Library, the home of Harold Pinter's archive. The judges this year were Lisa Appignanesi, Lady Antonia Fraser, Mariella Frostrup, Nicolas Kent, and Ronald Harwood. Widely recognised as one of the UK's most talented writers and filmmakers, Hanif Kureishi was awarded the CBE in 2007 in recognition of his services to literature and drama and in 2008 The Times listed him as one of 'The 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945'.

Lady Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter's widow, said, "Hanif Kureishi courageously and irreverently speaks the truth about life in our multicultural world, beyond any platitudes of political correctness. Harold Pinter would have been proud that Hanif was chosen for the prize in his name and that of PEN."

The PEN/PINTER Prize was established in 2009 by the writers' charity English PEN in memory of the Nobel-winning playwright Harold Pinter. The Prize is awarded annually to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Harold Pinter's Nobel speech, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world, and shows a 'fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies'.

The prize is shared with an international writer of courage selected by English PEN's Writers in Prison Committee. The prize is awarded to someone who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs and will be presented this year to Mexican journalist and human rights activist Lydia Cacho. Following the publication, in 2005, of a book exposing a child pornography ring, Lydia Cacho was illegally detained, harassed and tortured. In 2007 she was cleared of defamation charges but she is still subject to harassment and death threats due to her ongoing investigative journalism. She is currently a columnist for the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.