Czech writer Jan Nmec is among 13 young European authors who have won the 2014 European Union Prize for Literature. Nmec was recognized for his unusual debut novel about the renowned Czech photographer Frantiek Drtikol. Entitled A History of Light, the novel captures Drtikols complex personality, and follows his path from photography to eastern spirituality and Buddhism.

'A History of Light' A History of Light, an acclaimed novel by Jan Nmec, came out last October. It has since been nominated for several Czech awards including the prestigious Magnesia Litera for best novel. But the EU prize is the first the young Czech writer has received for his debut work.

Im glad of course, mainly because of the book, because the award should help it. The purpose of the prize is to facilitate translation of the book.

Its great for any work written in a language with not so many speakers such as Czech, and it might help it reach a much larger numbers of readers.

Frantiek Drtikol remains one of the best-known Czech photographers. Born in 1883 in the central Bohemian mining town of Pbram, he rose to international acclaim in the first three decades of the 20th century. But in 1935, he suddenly retired and spent the rest of his life studying eastern spirituality and particularly Buddhism.

Jan Nmec says Drtikols fascinating story has great potential to appeal to an international audience.

I hope it could. When I was writing the novel, I realized that Drtikols fate was in fact non-Czech, that he differed from the mood and taste of the time.

He and was discovering things which were not that known here in the 1930s, such as eastern religions and Buddhism, at a time when only a few people were interested in this. His advantage was that he spoke German and he learned a lot from German sources.

Drtikols photographic work has been the subject of study for a number of art historians, while his spiritual followers focused on Drtikols Buddhist teachings. But in his novel A History of Light, Nmec aspired to capture Drtikols life and career in its entirety.

My input was looking at his life from a new perspective, enabled by the genre. I could write about things that historians cannot because they cannot be verified, and so on. I wanted to capture his life in its complexity.

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Young Czech wins EU literature award for novel on photographer Drtikol