Fiston Mwanza Mujila, author of The Villain’s Dance, has been awarded this year’s Erich Fried Prize for his body of work. Awarded by the International Erich Fried Society and endowed by Austria’s Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport, the prize is one of Austria’s most prestigious literary awards and carries a €15,000 prize.
We published Roland Glasser’s English-language translation of The Villain’s Dance in April of this year, with our friends at Deep Vellum handling the novel’s publication in North America. A ‘raucous and fevered novel’, in the words of the Irish Times’ Catherine Taylor, The Villain’s Dance was also praised in the TLS, where the author was celebrated for his ‘powerful imagination, humour and creative use of language’.
Mwanza Mujila will receive the award at Literature House in Vienna on Sunday 15 November 2026.