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Honored: Esther Kinsky
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Georg Hochmuth / dpa
This year's Kleist Prize goes to the writer and translator Esther Kinsky.
The 65-year-old is to receive the award, which is endowed with 20,000 euros, on November 27 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, according to the Heinrich von Kleist Society.
Traditionally, one person decides on the Kleist Prize – this year the author and critic Paul Ingendaay.
In his view, Kinsky stands for “a literary work of impressive stylistic brilliance, thematic diversity and stubborn originality”.
Kinsky's storytellers see human stories "only as part of the natural history that surrounds them."
Unusual attention is paid to earth movements, geology, flora and fauna.
»Far from any eco-dreaming, without complaint or criticism, Kinsky's novels and poems place man in a relationship to the ruins he has created and to the residual nature that still surrounds him.«
Kinsky has already received several awards, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (2018).
Her latest novel »Rombo« was published by Suhrkamp-Verlag in February.
Bertolt Brecht, Robert Musil and Anna Seghers have already received the Kleist Prize.
After it was re-established in 1985, the prizewinners included Alexander Kluge, Monika Maron, Herta Müller and Yoko Tawada.
sak/dpa