Hello Gentle Reader
As well as the Booker Prize Shortlist being announced so have the six finalists of the German Book Prize. Three men and three women. The prize’s previous contenders include Nobel Laureate in Literature Herta Müller for her novel “Atemschaukel,” – published in English as “The Hunger Angel,” and “Everything I Posses I carry With Me,” or “Everything I won I carry With me.” Austrian writer, Clemens J Setz for his novels “Indigo (Translated as “Indigo,”) and “Die Frequenzen,” Translated as “The Frequencies.” Stephan Thome for “Fliehkräfte,” or “Centrifugal Forces,” and “Grenzgang,” translated as “Border Walk.” Austrian Marlene Streeruwitz for her novel “Die Schmerzmacherin,” translated as “The Huntress,” or “The Painmaker.”
Previous winners include:
Eugen Ruge – “In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts,” translated as “In Times of Fading Light.”
Kathrin Schmidt – “Du stirbst nicht,” translated as “You’re Not Going to Die.”
Melinda Nadj Abonji – “Tauben fliegen auf,” translated as “Falcons without Falconers,”
Ursula Krechel – Landgericht Translated as “Regional Court,” or “Court of Justice.”
This year’s shortlisted authors are as follows; along with a slight blurb about author and their respective novel. Each author is in the running for the most prestigious German language literary award.
Mirko Bonné – “Nie mehr Nacht,” translated as “Never Again Night.”
According to the German Book Prize website, only serious literary readers will recognize Mirko Bonné’s name. Bonné, the forty-eight year old author; writes about a man, who takes a trip to the French coast, with his nephew. The character is sent by a magazine to do a report on the bridges of Normandy, which was a decisive victory for the allies. Yet the main character flees the tragic death of his sister – one who he shared a relationship beyond, the confides of platonic sibling love. In this novel Bonné writes about the personal and historical.
Reinhard Jirgl – “Nichts von euch auf Erden," translated as “Nothing of You on Earth.”
Life on mars, may not be a pipe dream or science fiction concept after all. With an independent Dutch company, looking to put people on Mars to start a colony, it would appear space colonization maybe in our futures. Reinhard Jirgl writes about our desire for conquest – over the odds, over the elements, the environment and ourselves. In this dystopian novel, Jirgl writes about, a drugged populace left on earth; others enslaved on Mars in an underground city run by higher and more influential and wealthy people. The goal? To make Mars an inhabitable space. Jirgl writes a novel that forces us to look into the mirror and question everything.
Clemens Meyer – “Im Stein,” translated as “In Stone.”
The Austrian writer Meyer is often called the Enfant Terrible of Austrian Literature. Meyer’s is literature that breaks free from constraints. He creates a collage of inner monologues, and dreams, detailed descriptions, and a vast overload of information. In his novel “In Stone,” Meyer writes about the shadowy and morally incompetent world of prostitution and pimps. What he creates, is a novel that is ripe and full novel about love and romantic endearment.
Terézia Mora – “Das Ungeheuer,” translated as “The Monster.”
Terézia Mora is a Hungarian writer, whose literary language is German. She is one of this year’s favourites to win. Mora writes about, the personal tragedy of Darius Kopp an IT specialist, whose wife has committed suicide, after he loses his job. What Kopp discovers via his wife’s diary a world of loneliness, and humiliation, along with volatile affairs. Kopp travels to Hungary (where his wife grew up) and seeks answers and dredges up memories.
Marion Poschmann – “Die Sonnenposition,” translated as “The Position of the Sun,”
Marion Poschmann, was primarily a poet. According to the German Book Prize website, it shows with this novel. It’s a slim down refined language, with an economy of precise words. The book turns on the axis of a rundown castle. Its populated by a group of bizarre characters. With bold free association of language and imagery, Marion Poschmann shows the poets affinity with language in a novelistic form.
Monika Zeiner – “Die Ordnung der Sterne über Como,” Translated as “The Order of the Stars above Como,”
Monika Zeiner has written a six hundred page debut. It concerns itself with the intricate romantic triangle of three people living in an apartment. Monika Zeiner has a PhD in medieval poetry and is a singer in an Italian swing band. Her language is melodic; as is the speech that melds with the music that hangs over the novel. (Again according to the German Book Prize website). A novel of youth and lightheartedness.
There you have it Gentle Reader, The German Book Prize shortlist. From the personal to the historical. Poets turning to prose; and different ways of using language. The writers contemplate our potentially doomed futures, and our scared and tragic pasts. It’s a fascinating and diverse shortlist. It’ll be exciting who wins.
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M. Mary
