The culmination of Frankfurt Book Fair in many ways is the annual ceremony and lecture of the Friedenspreis of the IPA member, the German Booksellers and Publishers Association.
Past winners have included Herman Hesse, Victor Gollancz, Yehudi Menuhin, Octavio Paz, Amos Oz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Sontag, Liao Yiwu, Svetlana Alexievitch and Jaron Lanier.
This year, on Sunday 22 October 2023, the prize was awarded to Salman Rushdie, who accepted it with a scintillating speech that highlighted the importance of publishers in the fight for freedom to publish. In part he said :
What do we do about free speech when it is so widely abused? We should still do, with renewed vigor, what we have always needed to do: to answer bad speech with better speech, to counter false narratives with better narratives, to answer hate with love, and to believe that the truth can still succeed even in an age of lies. We must defend it fiercely, and define it as broadly as possible, so yes, we should of course defend speech that offends us, otherwise we are not de fending free expression at all. Publishers are among the most important guardians of freedom. Thank you for doing your job, and please do it even better and more bravely, and let a thousand and one voices speak in a thousand and one different ways.
IPA President, Karine Pansa, Vice-President, Gvantsa Jobava, and Secretary General, José Borghino, were all honoured to be present at the award ceremony that is conducted at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt and is televised live every year on German television.