Verhaeghen donates prize money to ACLU

Paul Verhaeghen, the man who translated his own book into English and won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize yesterday, has decided to donate his prize money to the ACLU. From his blog:

In the light of all this, and to avoid supporting the regime with more tax dollars than I already owe them, I have asked the Arts Council England to donate the money associated with the Prize, all 10,000 pounds of it, to the American Civil Liberties Union. Withholding the tax portion of those 10,000 pounds from the US Treasury will shorten the war by a mere eye-blink – its cost is currently 3,810 dollar per second — but the ACLU can use that money to great effect in their legal battles against torture, detainee abuse, and the silence surrounding it.

We are not immune to history. But neither is history immune to us.