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Book cover of the winning titles
Photo: Pantheon / Liveright / AP
The "Awards Season" of the US American literary scene usually begins with a dinner gala in the Cipriani restaurant on Wall Street, when the National Book Award is presented.
Because of the corona pandemic, the prestigious book prize was awarded virtually for the first time last night.
Charles Yu won in the fiction category with his novel "Interior Chinatown".
The satire, about the prejudice faced by Asian-born actors on the set of a fictional police television series, is written in script form.
The father-daughter team Tamara and Les Payne won the non-fiction category for their work “The Dead are Arising.
The Life of Malcom X «award.
The author Don Mee Choi received the award in the poetry category for the book "DMZ Colony", while Kacen Callender was honored in the youth literature category for "King and the Dragonflies".
The Hamburg-born writer Anja Kampmann came away empty-handed at the award ceremony.
Kampmann was nominated in the category for translated literature with her debut novel "Wie hoch die Wasserstieg", published in German in 2018 by Carl Hanser Verlag. The novel was translated this year by Anne Posten in the USA released.
At the online gala on Thursday night, she had to admit defeat to Japanese Yu Miri and her book "Tokyo Ueno Station".
Alongside the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award is considered the most important book award in the USA.
The award has already gone to authors such as William Faulkner, John Updike, Thornton Wilder, Don DeLillo, Susan Sontag and Jonathan Franzen.
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hpi / dpa / AP