productivity and diversity

Important literary prizes, not least those tailored to and awarded at book fairs, can be awarded without any problems despite the pandemic and the canceled fairs.

The Leipzig Book Fair is canceled again this year, but its prize, the so-called Leipzig Book Fair Prize (and also the European Understanding Prize), will also be awarded in 2022: on March 17th at the time of the fair and also in the planned framework, the Glass hall of the exhibition halls, only without an audience and streamed digitally.

The respective shortlists for the three categories of fiction, non-fiction and translation have now been determined.

The announcement had been expected with some excitement because of the sometimes violent criticism of the selection last year. In 2021, the jury was accused of not doing justice to the diversity in current book production and, for example, of having disgracefully and wrongly ignored authors such as Sharon Dodua Otoo with her novel “Adas Raum” or Asal Dardan with her life story “Reflections on a Barbarin”. There was even talk of racism on social media.

Tomer Gardi and Katerina Poladjan are nominated

Did the jury take the criticism to heart when making their selection and reading? At least in fiction, it seems as if there was an emphasis on diversity.

Tomer Gardi, who was born in 1974 in Kibbutz Dan in Galilee and lives in Berlin, has been nominated for his novel Eine Runde Sache, which tells of experiences of being foreign, the most varied of identities and a life as an artist; then Katerina Poladjan, who was born in Moscow in 1971 and also lives in Berlin. Her novel “Music of the Future” portrays four women from four generations who live together in a komunnalka in the Siberian expanse, thousands of versts east of Moscow.

And Emine Sevgi Özdamar was also nominated for her life’s work “A room surrounded by shadows”, a literary work of art of its own rank, which was no longer eligible for the German Book Prize because it was published late last year.

The jury also chose Dietmar Dath’s so-called calculus novel, “Gentzen or: Clean up drunk”, and Heike Geißler’s Monday novel “Die Woche”, according to the jury “politically committed literature full of wit”.

In the non-fiction books here Hadija Haruna-Oelker, there Horst Bredekamp

It’s an interesting and surprising list, with Emine Sevgi Özdamar the obvious favourite.

In the non-fiction section, Hadija Haruna-Oelker with “The beauty of difference: Thinking differently together”, Horst Bredekamp with his Michelangelo book, Christiane Hoffmann with “Everything we don’t remember. On foot on my father’s escape route”, Juliane Rebentisch with ” The Controversy over Plurality: Confrontations with Hannah Arendt” and the essays and speeches by Uljana Wolf.

And for the translations Andreas Tretner (translated from the Russian “Wunderkind Erjan” by Hamid Ismailov), Anne Weber (translated from the French “Nevermore” by Cécile Wajsbrot), Stefan Moster (translated from the Finnish “In the hall of Alastalo. A description from the archipelago’ by Volter Kilpi), Helga van Beuningen (‘My little magnificent animal’ by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, from the Dutch) and Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit. (translated from Japanese “Thorn Extractor. The Fabulous Jizō of Sugamo” by Hiromi Itō)

Source: Tagesspiegel

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