We are proud to announce that Ioanna Bourazopoulou won this year’s Hellenic National Literary Award for her book The Memory of Ice: The Dragon of Lake Prespa III.

This volume can be read independently

Polar conditions ravage the Albanian shore. A polyphonic narration about the catastrophe the dragon has inflicted.

The researchers of this shore—archers and dragonologist priestesses—struggle to solve the riddle of the haunted lake, unaware that they are part of it. The Memory of Ice is simultaneously the end and the beginning of the trilogy, as it transports us to the origin of the phenomenon, where the solution also lies. The triptych of the dragon unfolds in its entirety, and consciousness is called to confront the five senses.

The Trilogy of Lake Prespa can be read as a contemporary allegory about ecology, geopolitics and the harms of capitalism.

“In the novel The Dragon of Prespa III: The Memory of Ice, Ioanna Bourazopoulou reformulates, on an allegorical level, the terror induced by a catastrophic climate change, expressing her anguish for understanding and interpreting a dystopian future while attempting to exorcise an ominous political reality. Her language is exquisitely crafted, and her style is both sharp and refined. The author suggests seeking salvation in our imagined reality and personal resistance of poetic consciousness to reality and human coexistence in a world dominated by irrational, metaphysical forces.” Reasoning of the National Literary Award 2024 Jury

Her book What Lot’s Wife Saw has already been translated in English, French and Bulgarian.