Jozef Banáš was one of the prize winners at the festive award ceremony of Panta Rhei Awards on March 20th, 2014. For the fifth time, the largest bookstore chain in Slovakia awarded the bestselling books and most successful authors.

Jozef Banáš was presented a special prize and his novel Code 1 ranked in fifth place among 50 top titles.

During the festive gala evening in Bratislava´s hotel Crowne Plaza, it was the interest of customers and readers, and not the quality of the books, but their sales results and authors´ popularity which decided about the ten award recipients. Besides the readers´ poll…

The TOP award Panta Rhei was presented to Jozef Banáš for his novel Code 1. This prize was the first of its kind awarded for an exceptional deed in literature – the Slovak literary Oscar. The nominees were: Peter Krištúfek, Atlas zabúdania (The Atlas of Oblivion), Lajo Slimák, Výkladový slovník pezinčiny (The Dictionary of Pezinok´s Dialect), Jozef Banáš: Kód 1 (Code 1) and Július Satinský, Listy Oľge (Letters to Oľga).

Jozef said:
“I have accepted this TOP award with deep emotion, because the instant the founder of Panta Rhei, Ladislav Bödök, presented it to me, I saw all the moments and situations, when the book had slowly been brought into being, in my mind´s eye. Thousands of pages read in four languages, three journeys to India, sometimes under extreme conditions in Kashmir, countless interviews with people from Slovakia and India as well, three years of hard work.
The minute you receive such a prestigious award, naturally, your emotions take hold. I want to thank everyone reading the novel Code 1, supporting it, commenting on it positively. I appreciate each vote in the readers´ poll; to end up on second place among domestic authors is encouraging as well as reassuring that topics I deal with are of interest to the readers. I would like to thank the publishing house Ikar and the bookstore chain Panta Rhei as well as my friends in India who helped me with the book tremendously. And I give my biggest thanks to the readers.”

Yes, Jozef Banáš scored in the readers´ poll as well
Dan Brown´s Inferno became the TOP book of 2013. The fifth place was taken by Jozef Banáš´s Code 1 which left such names as Paulo Coelho, Dominik Ján, Jo Nesbo, Maxim E. Matkin, or even E L James and her trilogy 50 Shades of Grey behind. The remarkable fact is that this award is presented for the whole-year sales and the novel Code 1 was put on the market in the middle of September. Nearly 20,000 Slovak readers took part in the poll and they were choosing among 50 top titles of the year 2013.