In her speech during the award ceremony, jury representative Kjersti Bale said:

“This year’s winner keeps the quality of the row of prize winners at a high level. His latest novel, Encircling , consolidates an already solidly established, but still promising young body of work.
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From the very beginning, reviewers have praised Tiller for his psychological insight and his ability to create thrilling psychological portraits. They have also praised him for his scrutiny of art and the role of the artist. But there might also be reason to emphasize how these factors work together to raise certain basic questions concerning subjective experience in our late modern times. If it is true that Tiller’s novels demonstrate that there is no one truth about a human being, that everything depends on the eyes of the beholder, doesn’t that imply that all perspectives and points of view are equally valid? Aren’t we then left in a state of total relativism? Tiller’s indirect answers to such questions is that if truth no can no longer be grasped because it is split into a multitude of truths, then the question of which ways of relating to other people can be termed ethical, is more urgent than ever before.”

Carl Frode Tiller has won numerous prizes in Norway, among them the Brage Prize for Encircling and Tarjei Vesaas’ First Book Award for The Slope . Encircling was also nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize

The Hunger prize (Sultprisen) is handed out by Gyldendal Publishing House, after an independent jury has elected a winner. It is named after Knut Hamsun’s much admired, ground-breaking debut novel from 1890 Hunger (Sult).