Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen was awarded the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade on October 18. The ceremony took place i...
Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen was awarded the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade on October 18. The ceremony took place in Frankfurt, Germany without any invited guests due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Sen participated in the gathering through a live video transmission from the United States.
In his acceptance speech, Sen emphasised the importance of freedom of expression and debate as prerequisites for freedom, peace and progress, noting that these values are facing increasing threat today. He asserted that books play an important role in fostering a democratic culture of discussion and argument: “Reading books – and talking about them – can entertain, amuse, excite and engage us in every kind of involvement. Books also help us to argue with each other. And nothing, I believe, is as important as the opportunity to argue about matters on which we can possibly disagree.”
Excerpts from the speech:
Books and freedom
The Peace Prize is closely connected with reading and writing, which makes it particularly attractive to me. My life would have been much poorer if my passion – from my earliest days – for reading whatever I could find, as well as my temptation to write down the thoughts that came to...
