First-time novelist wins Kafka Prize

Meidav

die Meidav has been awarded the University's Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for her novel The Far Field, the story of an idealistic American's misguided plans to create a utopian village in another country. Meidav will come to Rochester in the fall to accept the award and give a public reading.

"Meidav's writing is rich and stylish: It revels in strange fruit, in the topography of shadows," says Assistant Professor of English Dimitri Anastasopoulos, who chaired the prize selection committee. "A novel full of masterful passages, The Far Field elaborates a metaphysical landscape within the tangible realm of Ceylon."

In The Far Field, Meidav has created protagonist Henry Fyre Gould, who in the 1930s goes to the British colony of Ceylon --now independent Sri Lanka--with visions of creating his own ideal Buddhist world. Ignorant of the culture, the ethnic and religious groups, and the political situation on the island, Gould strains the already existing tensions to the point of disaster with his meddling.

The Kafka Prize, awarded by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies and the Department of English, was established in 1976 in memory of Janet Kafka, a young editor killed in an automobile accident that ended a career many believed would have furthered the causes of women and literature. Previous prize winners include Toni Morrison for Song of Solomon and Gail Godwin for A Southern Family.

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