Author Arundhati Roy has won the 45th European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement on the occasion of the French translation of her essay Azadi.

The prize given by Switzerland’s Charles Veillon Foundation for work in French, German and Italian awards authors “who, through their writings, contribute to nourishing and spreading the evolution of thought”.

A note from the Foundation says: “The jury of the Prix Européen de l’Essai wishes to highlight an enriching work in terms of reflection on the construction of the world and the relationship with language. Arundhati Roy uses the essay as a form of combat, analysing fascism and the way it is being structured. This is an issue that is increasingly occupying our lives. Her essays offer shelter to a multitude of people. In awarding the prize for her literary work, the jury is also acknowledging the author’s commitment to political action.”

Roy won the Booker Prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things in 1997. Other recipients of the European Essay Prize include Alexandre Zinoviev, Edgar Morin, Tzvetan Todorov, Amin Maalouf, Siri Hustvedt, Alessandro Baricco, Jean Starobinski, Iso Camartin and Peter von Matt.

An excerpt from Azadi mentioned in the Foundation’s announcement reads: “We know what happened in Europe when an organisation with a similar ideology imposed itself first on a country and then sought Lebensraum (living space). We know that it happened because the rest of the world did not pay heed to the early warnings from those who saw and heard enough to know what was coming. Perhaps those warnings did not sound sufficiently balanced and moderate to a masculine, Anglo-Saxon world, suspicious of any overt display of distress or emotion.”