Alana Reyes

At the inaugural Central European Literary Prize, two jurors are tasked with choosing the best novel of the year. Adéla Horácková, a fiercely precise editor from Prague, believes literature is about what it does to the reader. Stefan Brandt, a German novelist, believes it is about what the writer gives. Across six weeks of deliberations - through arguments about form, memory, and meaning - their disagreement becomes something deeper: a sustained encounter between two ways of seeing the world.
As they debate the shortlisted books - each raising questions about grief, history, and the limits of art - the line between professional judgment and personal recognition begins to blur. Set against the shifting light of Prague, The Prague Debate is a novel about ideas, attention, and the rare intimacy of being understood by someone who reads as carefully as you do.