The German Book Prize will be awarded on October 17th, 2022.
After 20 titles on the longlist, six authors can now hope for the award.
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It will be exciting.
After 20 titles on the longlist for the German Book Prize 2022, the jury has now announced the shortlist.
There are six novels on this list whose authors can hope for the great award.
The award ceremony will take place on October 17, 2022 at the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair in the Kaisersaal of the Römer in Frankfurt.
Which of the six authors will receive the prize will not be announced until the evening itself.
Not on the shortlist did not make it u. a.
Heinz Strunk "A Summer in Niendorf" and Marie Gamillscheg "Uproar of the Sea Creatures".
These six titles are on the shortlist
Fatma Aydemir: "Jinns" (Carl Hanser)
Kristine Bilkau: "Next door" (Luchterhand)
Daniela Dröscher: "Lies about my mother" (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)
Jan Factor: "Idiot" (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)
Kim de l'Horizon: "Blood Book" (DuMont)
Eckhart Nickel: "Spitzweg" (Piper)
Fatma Aydemir: "Jinns"
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Cover of Fatma Aydemir's novel Djinns
© Carl Hanser Verlag
Hüseyin worked in Germany for thirty years, and now he is finally fulfilling his dream: a condominium in Istanbul.
Only to die of a heart attack on move-in day.
His family is traveling to his funeral from Germany.
Fatma Aydemir's great social novel tells the story of six fundamentally different people who happen to be related to each other.
They all have their own baggage with them: secrets, desires, wounds.
What unites them, however, is the feeling that someone is watching them in Hüseyin's apartment.
Full of power and beauty, "Dschinns" asks about the structure of the family, looking deep into the history of the past decades and far ahead.
Hanser Verlag
Fatma Aydemir: "Jinns"
2022, Carl Hanser Verlag, ISBN-13 978-3-446-26914-9
Price: hardcover €24, e-book €17.99, 366 pages (different format) – Order now (promotional link)
Kristine Bilkau: "Next door"
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Cover of Kristine Bilkau: "Next Door"
© Luchterhand
A small town on the Kiel Canal, between nature, district town and industry, shortly after the turn of the year.
In the middle of everyday life, a family disappears without a trace.
The abandoned house becomes the focal point of the neighbors' thoughts: Julia, in her late thirties, who wishes in vain for a child, who recently moved from the big city with her boyfriend and runs a small ceramics shop with an online shop.
Astrid, in her early sixties, who has been running a practice in the nearby district town for decades and worries about her aging aunt.
And then there is the mysterious child who appears in the garden of the missing family.
Luchterhand literary publisher
Kristine Bilkau: "Next door"
2022, Luchterhand, ISBN-13 978-3-630-87519-4
Price: hardcover €22, e-book €14.99, 288 pages (different format) – Order now (promotional link)
Daniela Dröscher: "Lies about my mother"
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The novel "Lies about my mother" by Daniela Dröscher
© Kiepenheuer & Witsch
"Lies about my mother" is two things at the same time: the story of a childhood in the Hunsrück in the 1980s, which is increasingly dominated by the father's obsession that his wife's overweight is responsible for everything that is denied him: promotion, the social Rise, recognition in the village community.
And it is a questioning of what happened from today's perspective: what really happened back then?
What was hidden, what was lied about?
And what does all this tell us about the bigger picture: society, which is constantly affecting us, whether we like it or not?
Kiepenheuer & Witsch
With “Lies about my mother”, Daniela Dröscher presents a haunting novel that brings the world of the 1980s back to life.
Where in rural Rhineland-Palatinate, a well-kept single-family home with a car and at least one holiday a year are all part of it.
And the wife had to match the male ideal: slim to make a “good companion”.
Here is the detailed discussion.
Daniela Dröscher "Lies about my mother"
2022 Kiepenheuer & Witsch, ISBN-13 978-3-462-00199-0
Price: Hardcover €24, e-book €19.99, 448 pages (differs to the format) – order now (promotional link)
Jan Factor: "Idiot"
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Jan Factor's novel "Trottel"
© Kiepenheuer & Witsch
The story of the idiot begins in Prague, after the Soviet invasion.
On the advice of an aunt, the young idiot studies computer science, but doesn't last long.
But he has his first grotesque experiences with love, gets bored in an office for lying statistics and finally delivers army rolls.
After a memorable encounter with the “Teuton horde”, to which his later wife also belonged, he “emigrated” to East Berlin, immersed himself in the weird, political underground scene in Prenzlauer Berg, founded a family, and equipped his squatted apartment against all the rules of art with a bathtub, wonders about the "ideologically morphinized" GDR, the reunification and finally discovers his passion for Rammstein.
Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Jan Factor: "Idiot"
2022, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, ISBN-13 978-3-462-00085-6
Price: hardcover €24, e-book €19.99, 396 pages – order now (promotional link)
Kim de l'Horizon: "Blood Book"
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Cover of "Blood Book" Kim de l'Horizon
© Dumonat Verlag
The narrator in 'Blood Book' does not identify as either a man or a woman.
Having grown up in a seedy Swiss suburb, she now lives in Zurich, has escaped the narrow structures of her origins and feels comfortable in her non-binary body and in her own sexuality.
But then the grandmother falls ill with dementia and the ego begins to grapple with the past: Why are there only fragmentary memories of one's own childhood?
Why is it that the grandmother can hardly distinguish herself from her sister, who died young?
And what happened to the great aunt who disappeared as a young woman?
The narrator fights against the mothers' culture of silence and searches for the non-traditional female blood line. This novel is a stylistically and formally unique act of liberation from the things
that we pass on without being asked: gender, trauma, class affiliation.
Kim de l'Horizon goes in search of other forms of knowledge and transmission, storytelling and incarnation, subverting the linear forms of the family narrative and approaching a fluid and flowing way of writing that does not define but opens.
DuMont
The novel "Blutbuch" is written with a powerful voice and directly attacks any emotions.
Here for a discussion with us.
Kim de l'Horizon: "Blood Book"
2022, DuMont, ISBN-13 978-3-832-18208-3
Price: Hardcover €24, e-book €19.99, 336 pages (different format) – Order now (promotional link)
Eckhart Nickel: "Spitzweg"
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Cover of Eckhart Nickel: "Spitzweg"
© Piper
Art theft out of love "I've never cared much for art." The narrator reveals himself as a satisfied art philistine at the beginning and reports how Carl, his admired friend, convinces him of the opposite with his Spitzweg enthusiasm.
In the middle of the action: a love triangle, a highly gifted girl and the treacherous theft of a painting.
The student friendship is put to its severest test through ingenious plans for revenge.
piper
Eckhart Nickel: "Spitzweg"
2022, Piper, ISBN-13 978-3-492-07143-7
Price: Hardcover €22, e-book €16.99, 256 pages (different format) – Order now (promotional link)
The German Book Prize is endowed with 25,000 euros – that much goes to the winner.
The other authors on the shortlist 2500 euros each.
In 2021, the prize went to Antje Rávik Strubel for her novel "Blaue Frau" (promotional link).
List of rubrics: © vntr.media/Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels/dpa
