TEHRAN – Children’s Book Council of Iran has announced author Jamshid Khanian and illustrator Alireza Golduzian as its nominees for the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Golduzian received the nomination for his personal and diverse views in each of his works, and his skill for illustrating and designing a vast variety of forms, places and characters inspired by Iranian and the world’s illustration arts.

He is the winner of a silver prize at the 9th edition of the Flying Turtle Awards for his illustrations for a Persian translation of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “Think of Others” by Hossein Mottaqi.

Khanian is a researcher and a playwright. Among his credits are “A Half Day in the Interrogation Room” and “Compass”. He is also the author of several stories, including “Money” and “Where Is My Joseph”, which have been translated into English, Russian and Polish.

Khanian was a nominee for the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen Award. He was also nominated for IBBY’s long list by the Children’s Book Council of Iran, and then shortlisted for the honor along with 60 other candidates from 32 countries, according to a press release published by the IBBY last Wednesday.

Both Rahimizadeh and Khanian have previously been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a prestigious Swedish honor to promote children’s and youths’ literature in the world.

The Hans Christian Andersen Award, nicknamed the Nobel Prize for children’s literature, is the highest international distinction given biennially to the creators of books for young people by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) in Basel, Switzerland.

The awards recognize lifelong achievement and are given to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made a significant and lasting contribution to literature for young people.

Each winner receives the Hans Christian Andersen Medaille, a gold medal with the bust of Andersen. Medals are presented at the biennial IBBY congress.

French author Marie-Aude Murail and South Korean illustrator Suzy Lee were the winners of the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Photo: An illustration by Alireza Golduzian.

MMS/YAW