The German Book Prize, which is the most high-profile literary prize in the German-speaking world, has announced a shortlist of six books for the 2022 edition.
Often compared to the British Booker Prize, the French Prix Goncourt or the US’s Pulitzer Prize, DW reports that the shortlist, announced on September 20, represents the panorama of contemporary German-language literature: from the anecdotal to the art novel to the feminist working-class novel to post-migration literature.
Whether set in the Hunsrück uplands in southwestern Germany, Istanbul, Switzerland, or elsewhere, the outlet adds, the stories tell of human folly, gender fluidity and the history of the German republic from the perspective of the people who have built it, namely the guest workers.
See the finalists below.
- Fatma Aydemir: Dschinns (Djinns)
Fatma Aydemir’s Dschinns joins the “post-migrant literature” genre
- Kristine Bilkau: Nebenan (Next Door)
Putting the German middle-class under the microscope
- Daniela Dröscher: Lügen über meine Mutter (Lies About My Mother’)
Daniela Dröscher’s book looks at weighty subjects such as social class and misogyny
- Jan Faktor: Trottel (Idiot)
An anecdotal novel that holds up a mirror to society
- Eckhart Nickel: Spitzweg
Art, a love triangle and revenge make up Spitzweg
- Kim de l’Horizon: Blutbuch (Blood Book)
With a nonbinary protagonist, Blutbuch explores gender identity among other themes.
