German Book Prize Longlist: Some Musings

The list of twenty titles in the running for the German Book Prize was announced yesterday. In the past, I've shadowed the prize quite closely. It is, after all, the German-language equivalent to the Man Booker, with a large PR budget. The prize makes people sit up and notice books, and those people include editors at foreign publishing houses. The majority of the winning titles have since been published in English, most recently Lutz Seiler's amazing Kruso, translated by Tess Lewis. So it's important for my work.

But. Amit Chaudhuri has a piece in today's Guardian about why the Booker is bad for writers. The idea is not a new one: choosing a "book of the year" focuses attention on one book at the expense of others and there are some who suggest it encourages writers to produce a certain kind of book. Chaudhuri criticizes the Booker system and also those who criticize the judges' choices, saying they "ritually add to its allure". So here I am, about to join Chaudhuri in ritually adding to the German Book Prize's allure.

Allow me a quick caveat before I begin: having done my own "jury service" for the International DUBLIN Literary Award, I understand that choices are made within a complex dynamic, partly due to time pressure. I'm not in favour of imposing quotas on longlists or shortlists, but I do think judges should be aware of the messages they send with their lists. I was proud of our Dublin shortlist; it was beautifully international, covered a wide range of styles and subjects, and the gender ratio mirrored that of the nominations. Yes, I counted – after the fact.

Let me move on to the German Book Prize longlist now. The award website offers brief descriptions of the nominated books, which is good because I've only read part of one of them; eight of them aren't published until next month. There is, however, a definite theme: men (writers, professors, occasionally more down-to-earth characters) who have reached a crossroads in their lives. A writer friend and I picked apart the list yesterday, lying on towels at the outside pool. We ended up doubled over with laughter... We counted nine of these beauties. Admittedly, neither of us has read any of them, and we suspected a couple of them might be playing with the trope in an amusing way. But nine out of twenty books being riffs on a similar theme still seems... a little samey.

What I've decided, then, is to look only at the novels on the list that interest me. It's my party over here and I get to make the guest list. I am flat out nonplussed by books about white men over forty breaking out of the mould to make life-changing decisions. But there are a few books I definitely do like the look of.

In alphabetical order, with links to information in English where available (and German where not):

Franzobel: Das Floss der Medusa – what happened on board the raft of the Medusa, as depicted in Géricault's 1819 painting? Could be an examination of racism, human nature, survival instincts...

Jakob Nolte: Schreckliche Gewalten – werwolves, feminist terrorism, 20th century: "a black rainbow of horror". What's not to be very curious about?


Kerstin Preiwuß: Nach Onkalo – almost falling into the dull trope, but this one's about a forty-year-old man left stranded when his mother dies and how he finds ways to survive.

Sven Regener: Wiener Strasse – this is the one all my non-literary friends are looking forward to. I'm hoping it will stand alone because it's part of a whole series of books revolving around Frank Lehmann, a hapless charmer of a character who stumbles through life in West Germany, this time in 1980s Kreuzberg. I translated a sample and loved every minute of it. The first sentence is eight words long; the next two and a half pages. And it's funny. I am biased but I'd like a UK publisher to pick it up, even though Berlin Blues didn't make much of a splash in 2004. Times have changed, UK publishers!

Sasha Marianna Salzmann: Außer sich – English world rights have already sold to Text Publishing, so you'll get to read this at some point. I know I'm looking forward to it hugely. Antisemitism, Soviet Union, migration, family history, gender identity. By a writer whose plays and whose work at the Gorki Theater I really admire. A shining star on this list.

Christine Wunnicke: Katie – how could I resist a book inadvertently named after me and set in 1870s London? Except I've had it on my shelves since the spring and haven't got round to it. I will now, and I suppose that's part of the point of the prize.

Well, would you look at that? The love german books shortlist of six is gender balanced, all by itself. The German Book Prize longlist is not – but take a look at publishers' catalogues for an instant idea of why. They bring out significantly more men than women on their German literary fiction lists, and that's reflected in all award longlists. Thankfully, women and men have started to question conditions in the bottleneck of creative writing schools. You can read their texts on the Merkur Blog, and some of them are horrifying.
My hope is that this feeder, the programmes that take in a majority of female students and turn out a majority of male debut novelists, will change. And that editors at German houses will pay a little more attention to who they're publishing, perhaps shift the focus from the late works of accomplished white men to more innovative people and projects.

To some extent, it's a coincidence that the German Book Prize longlist was announced on the same day as President Trump applied the term "very fine people" to white supremacists. In other ways, it's not. The German Book Prize reflects the state of German literary publishing, which reflects the German-speaking countries as a whole. Some exciting things are happening, some progressive ideas are coming to the fore, but all in a culture in which the middle-aged, middle-class white male experience is considered the norm and worthy of more attention.   

In his Guardian article, Chaudhuri writes:

I’m not saying that the Booker shouldn’t exist. I’m saying that it requires an alternative, and the alternative isn’t another prize. It has to do instead with writers reclaiming agency. The meaning of a writer’s work must be created, and argued for, by writers themselves, and not by some extraneous source of endorsement (...). (A)s in other walks of life under capitalism, there has been a loss of initiative among writers: a readiness to let others decide why their work is significant while they busy themselves at literary festivals (...). Only rarely is silence a useful riposte.

I think that's a good conclusion, and I take from it the following tentative plan: as time and life allow, I'm going to follow the novels on the longlist that interest me, and also draw attention to other exciting German books coming out this autumn. I agree that a prize nomination is not the only measure of excellence we have, and nor are sales figures or numbers of reviews or many of the factors editors consider when commissioning translations. Defining excellence, meanwhile, is an impossible task, just like translation. The kind I relish most.

Sie können aber gut Deutsch – Ade, Chamisso-Preis

Der Chamisso-Preis schafft sich ab. Die Trägerin des Literaturpreises für „herausragende auf Deutsch schreibende Autoren, deren Werk von einem Kulturwechsel geprägt ist“, die Robert-Bosch-Stiftung, begründete die Einstellung mit der nicht unzutreffenden Aussage, Schreibende mit Migrationsgeschichte könnten inzwischen viele andere Preise gewinnen. Geschäftsführerin Uta-Micaela Dürig sagte: „Viele dieser Autoren wollen heute nur für ihre literarischen Leistungen gewürdigt werden, und nicht wegen ihres biografischen Hintergrunds.“
 
Bei diesem Satz sollte man aufhorchen, denn er ist ein Zeichen, dass die Organisatorinnen auf die Schriftsteller hören. Der Chamisso-Preis entstand in den 1980er Jahren, angetrieben von Harald Weinrich, u.a. Professor für Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Die Auszeichnung förderte ursprünglich „deutsch schreibende Autoren nicht deutscher Muttersprache“. Sie war also die mit Preisgeld aufgeladene Verkörperung des zweischneidigen Kompliments „Sie können aber gut Deutsch!“ Das mag im letzten Jahrhundert angemessen gewesen sein; tatsächlich hat sich aber durch den Preis oder vielleicht nur nebenbei viel geändert – „Gastarbeiterliteratur“ ist als Begriff durch „Migrationsliteratur“ oder den schauderhaften Euphemismus „Chamissoliteratur“ ersetzt worden; Autoren, die woanders geboren sind, zeigen Präsenz auf Nominierungslisten und in den Medien und vertreten Deutschland im Ausland. Was diese aber nicht mehr brauchen, ist eine ins Gönnerhafte neigende Auszeichnung für ihre (fremd-)sprachlichen Leistungen.

Literaturpreise schaffen Aufmerksamkeit, keine Frage. In Großbritannien wurde der jetzige Baileys Prize für Romane von Schriftstellerinnen ins Leben gerufen, nachdem 1991 keine der sechs Nominierten für den Booker Prize Frauen waren. Inzwischen ist der Baileys Prize wirtschaftlich sehr erfolgreich; die Autorinnen auf der Shortlist können damit rechnen, viele neue Leserinnen zu gewinnen. Der Unterschied zum Chamisso-Preis? Die Initiative kam von innen: von Frauen (und Männern) innerhalb des Literaturbetriebs. Die Preisjury besteht seitdem ausschließlich aus Frauen. Der Chamisso-Preis wurde von Menschen ohne Migrationserfahrung gegründet; in der diesjährigen Jury sitzen sechs Biodeutsche und Feridun Zaimoglu. Der Preis ist – natürlich wohlmeinend – von oben herab entstanden und wird noch heute so verliehen.

Über die Jahre hat die Bosch-Stiftung versucht, den Chamisso-Preis zeitgemäßer zu gestalten. Die Kriterien wandelten von der nichtdeutschen Muttersprache zum prägenden Kulturwechsel; 2015 ging die Auszeichnung an Esther Kinsky und Uljana Wolf, zwei in Deutschland geborene Schriftstellerinnen, die üblicherweise von dem Migrantenetikett verschont bleiben. Das war ein großer und richtiger Schritt. Die Stiftung schreibt dazu auf ihrer Webseite: „Die gesellschaftliche Realität zeigt heute, dass eine stetig wachsende Autorengruppe mit Migrationsgeschichte Deutsch als selbstverständliche Muttersprache spricht. Für die Literatur dieser Autoren ist der Sprach- und Kulturwechsel zwar thematisch oder stilistisch prägend, sie ist jedoch zu einem selbstverständlichen und unverzichtbarem Bestandteil deutscher Gegenwartsliteratur geworden.“

Ebenso richtig. Nur ist diese Botschaft nicht in der Gesellschaft angekommen. Immer noch müssen die Ausgezeichneten den braven Ausländer spielen, immer noch wird ihr Anderssein betont, die sprachliche Bereicherung, die sie einbringen. Nicht so sehr die Bosch-Stiftung sondern Moderatoren und Journalisten stellen immer noch dieselben Fragen, auf die die Ausgezeichneten immer nur dieselben Phrasen geben können: „Ich habe mich in die deutsche Sprache verliebt“, „auf Deutsch schreiben ist für mich befreiend“, „ich musste mir die deutsche Sprache aneignen, um zu überleben...“ Anstatt zuzugeben, dass es schlicht bizarr wäre, auf die besseren Verdienstmöglichkeiten auf dem deutschsprachigen Literaturmarkt zu verzichten, wenn man schon mal seinen Lebensmittelpunkt in Deutschland, Österreich oder der Schweiz hat. 

„Chamisso-Autoren“ sitzen  zusammen auf Podien und sollen übers Ausländersein reden und nicht übers Schreiben. Sind keine Autoren wie alle anderen, sollen keine Geschichten erzählen wie alle anderen, sondern nur Geschichten übers Ausländersein. Haben sprachliche Würze zu sein in der faden deutschen Suppe. Die deutsche Sprache ist in dieser Erzählung der rettende Anker; die deutsche (oder eben österreichische oder schweizerische) Gesellschaft das Mutterschiff. Die Preisträger gehören einer eigenen Kategorie an: einer literarischen Parallelgesellschaft, von der Mehrheit erschaffen. Seit Jahren aber rebellieren Autoren dagegen. 2008 schrieb Preisträger Saša Stanišić über „drei Mythen vom Schreiben der Migranten“: als philologische Kategorie, mit monothematischen Stoffen und als sprachliche Bereicherung. Mehrere Preisträger und Nichtpreisträger haben sich kritisch geäußert, weigern sich, den „Kanakenbonus“ (Imran Ayata) auszunutzen oder die „Berufsfremde“ (Terézia Mora) zu spielen. Bloß: welch schreibender Mensch lehnt €15,000 Preisgeld ab? Da zeugt die Entscheidung, Autoren nicht mehr für ihren biografischen Hintergrund anzuerkennen von Respekt für ihre Wünsche. 

Jörg Sundermeier schrieb in der taz, ein Preis, der „Deutsch endlich in einer weltoffenen Literatur“ ankommen lässt sei nötiger denn je. Das stimmt sogar, aber kann nicht jeder Literaturpreis, der für alle Deutschschreibende offen ist, genau das erreichen? Ist nicht ein Bachmannpreis, ein Deutscher Buchpreis für Schreibende mit anderen Herkunftssprachen oder ethnischen Hintergründen viel mehr Wert als diese paternalistische Auszeichnung, die das Gespräch in eine einzelne Richtung lenkt? Es liegt an den Verlagen, marginalisierte Autorinnen zu entdecken und zu fördern, sie für Preise einzureichen – denn marginalisiert sind noch viele, und der Weg zum Verlag ist schwer. Es läge an der Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, endlich eine Autorin aus einem anderen Kulturkreis mit dem Büchner-Preis auszuzeichnen. Auswahl gäbe es da – auch dank der Arbeit der Bosch-Stiftung – reichlich. Der Chamisso-Preis in seiner bisherigen Form hat ausgedient. 

Das Gute behält die Bosch-Stiftung konsequenterweise bei: das Programm, bei dem Autoren in Schulen gehen und Kindern zeigen, dass nicht alle deutschsprachige Schriftsteller deutschsprachig auf die Welt kommen. Dadurch werden sie zu Vorbildern und inspirieren womöglich eine neue Generation. Ilija Trojanow und José F.A. Oliver klagten in der FAZ, das würde sie auf eine „bildungspolitisch nützliche Rolle“ reduzieren. Aber eben diese wertvolle Arbeit kann der deutschsprachigen Literatur zugute kommen, sie mit Nicht-Arztsöhnen beleben, Kinder von syrischen Flüchtlingen oder englischen Übersetzerinnen beflügeln. Die Bosch-Stiftung könnte auch Eigeninitiativen von marginalisierten Autoren unterstützen; die Zeitschrift Freitext zum Beispiel möchte sich wiederbeleben. Wer Geld zu verteilen hat, wird es nicht schwer haben, Projekte aufzutun. Der Chamisso-Preis schafft sich ab, und das ist gut so – aber wir dürfen auf ihre Weiterexistenz gespannt sein.

Swiss Book Prize to Monique Schwitter

The Schweizer Buchpreis – which goes to German-language books only – has been awarded to Monique Schwitter for her novel Eins im Anderen. I'm pleased because I really enjoyed it. And the judges called it "powerful, humorous and thoughtful". Hooray!

German Book Prize to Frank Witzel

It's not just me, I suspect, who's rather surprised that the German Book Prize has gone to Frank Witzel for his 800-page experimental novel on a West German youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The title is Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager in Sommer 1969. Publishers Matthes & Seitz say it's unavailable right now, so I'm guessing they hadn't dashed off an extra print-run in anticipation. And yes, good on him, Mr Witzel – a writer of fiction, poetry and essays, translator, illustrator and musician living far from the maddening crowd in Offenbach. The kind of writer other writers are happy for, the kind of writer literary types love to love. I haven't read any of his writing other than the short sample, but those who have actually done so are very pleased today (with the award and with themselves). You can read Bradley Schmidt's sample translation via New Books in German.

The judges said of it:

Frank Witzel’s work is, in the best sense, a boundless novelistic construct. It tells the story of a youth from the Hessian provinces who, at the age of thirteen and a half, finds himself on the verge of adulthood. Woven into this story is the political awakening of the former Federal Republic of Germany, which is just beginning to shake off the fustiness of the immediate post-war years. This era of transformation is conjured up through disparate episodes that run through an incredibly wide range of literary forms, from internal monologue to action scene, from meeting minutes to philosophical treatise. In its blending of delusion and wit, formal audacity and historical panoramicity, the novel “Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager im Sommer 1969” (The Invention of the Red Army Faction by a Manic-Depressive Teenager in the Summer of 1969) is unique in German-language literature. Frank Witzel ventures into the precarious terrain of speculative realism. The German Book Prize honours a brilliant linguistic work of art that is a vast quarry of words and ideas – a hybrid compendium of pop, politics and paranoia.

I shall buy a copy when one becomes available, and report back. All I can say right now is that Witzel's win continues a line of "difficult" novels taking the prize, following Lutz Seiler, Terézia Mora and Ursula Krechel. Of those, I believe English translation rights have only sold for the Seiler book (forthcoming from Scribe Publications in Tess Lewis's translation). We shall see if anyone is brave and rich enough to launch The Invention of the Red Army Faction by a Manic-Depressive Teenager in the Summer of 1969 on an Anglophone readership.  

German Book Prize Shortlist 2015

I was going to do a whole blog post on it but a) I'm the busiest I've ever been and b) the German Book Prize website is actually really good, even in English. So here's a link to the six-title shortlist. Go on, click on it. You know you're dying of curiosity. Three of my favourites are on it.

My Take on the 2015 Longlist

Welcome to the annual last-minute love german books overview of the German Book Prize longlist. As tradition dictates, this is written very shortly before the shortlist is released, based almost entirely on personal prejudice combined with an immersive reading of the extracts published by the prize committee. So join me on a confusing romp through slightly too little information on the twenty titles nominated for Germany’s biggest book prize.

As usual, reading twenty extracts makes me automatically seek out common factors. This year we have an abundance of generations or characters rooted in family pasts – measured here in the “grandparent factor” – and a lot of books that are either rather on the short side or incredibly long. While short is generally good in terms of getting translated, those great big bricks of books have a tough time finding publishers abroad. I keep telling writers this but they generally ignore me. For links, see my first post on the longlist.

Alina Bronsky: Baba Dunjas letzte Liebe

Bronsky is good at eminently readable books about quirky Russians, as evidenced by Broken Glass Park, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, and Just Call Me Superhero (all tr. Tim Mohr). She’s not the super-snooty critics’ favourite, however, so I don’t think she’s won any prizes so far. I’d guess she’s unlikely to win this one either, but the novel looks like a fun read: a babushka in nuclear-contaminated Chernovo with a great voice falls in love one last time. I’m intrigued.

Grandparent factor: positive, and Russian for double points

Overly long or ridiculously short: 160 pages

Sample sentence: I’m her nearest neighbour, only a fence divides our plots of land. And the fence might once have been a proper one. By now it’s more an idea of a fence.

Ralph Dutli: Die Liebenden von Mantua

This is one of those times when the extract tells the reader next to nothing, apart from that the writer was really enjoying himself. Fairly baroque writing, reminiscent of Sibylle Lewitscharoff perhaps. The language is playful but not indigestible, but the publisher’s plot summary seems pretty off the wall – a new religion based on the love between two Stone Age corpses founded by a dubious count in northern Italy, anyone?

Grandparent factor: if you count Stone Age lovers, then maybe.

Overly long or ridiculously short: not really – 276 pages

Sample sentence: Vergil was inescapable here, he is scattered across the peninsular between the three lakes, he looks down as bust, relief and statue upon the barely awakened Mantua, as though he were simultaneously ancestor, eternal ruler and very contemporary mayor.

Jenny Erpenbeck: Gehen, ging, gegangen

Everybody’s favourite contemporary German writer TM is back with another interesting-looking collage. The four-page sample contains East Germany, the Middle Ages and the present day and several different characters, combining history and politics in Erpenbeck’s signature style. And the subject matter: old professor meets refugees. I’d say this might be a more intellectual version of Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand/Little Bee, with a white middle-class character helping white middle-class readers to relate to asylum seekers’ lives. Nothing wrong with that, and it’s on my reading list. I’d be surprised if it didn’t make the shortlist too. Good luck to Susan Bernofsky with translating the title and its wordplay, though.

Grandparent factor: not really

Overly long or ridiculously short: neither – 352 pages

Sample sentence: Against expectations, however, the commissioner of the fountains, the socialist state, had suddenly gone astray after forty years, and with the state went the associated future; only the waterfalls in staircase formation bubbled on, bubbling even now summer after summer to spirited, almost unbelievable heights, happy, daring children continuing to balance along them, admired by proud, laughing parents.

Valerie Fritsch: Winters Garten

This is a popular one, I think. Very opulent descriptions in the extract, verging on kitsch. It made me wonder how she squeezed a story into the 154-page book, but apparently there is one, or the bare bones of one. Young man grows up in verdant garden with large extended family, later leaves and finds love in dystopian outside world, then returns to Eden facing uncertain future. I know one translator who really adores it and it’s already sold to two countries (although English-language rights are still available, it seems).

Grandparent factor: oh yes

Overly long or ridiculously short: 154 pages

Sample sentence: On the burial mounds grew raspberries, which they stuffed greedily in each others' mouths as though they wanted to grow very tall, and those who had already done so carried the great-grandmother effortlessly cradled in their arms into the house as though she were nothing but a log of wood.

Heinz Helle: Eigentlich müssten wir tanzen

This is the one I’m most excited about, I think. I heard Helle reading from the manuscript two years ago and still think it’s extremely good. Dystopia with boys returned from a weekend away to find the world destroyed without explanation. Cruelty, stupidity – the premise seems like a Thomas Glavinic novel only I much prefer the writing. So sinister! Serpent’s Tail are publishing his Ben Lerner-esque previous novel as Superabundance (tr. Kári Driscoll) next spring.

Grandparent factor: probably not

Overly long or ridiculously short: 174 pages

Sample sentence: A slight grey falls onto the bowling lanes though the light shafts, there’s no electricity, the pins are gone, dangling above, perhaps, we don’t see them.

Gertraud Klemm: Aberland

Dark humour, interesting idea contrasting an ageing woman and her daughter, top feminist bonus points, and won the audience vote at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Nice long sentences but possibly low on plot. Real people are very keen, critics less so. I'm on the fence and not all that interested.

Grandparent factor: obviously

Overly long or ridiculously short: 184 pages

Sample sentence: The dress will support me in my new role; it cost 1,349 euro, but the designers from Vittorio Missoni have put together a magical dress – it lashes my body almost surgically into shape, and the subtly shimmering herringbone pattern makes up for at least ten years, for example the strange bulge of flesh that has grown out between my armpit and the top of my breast like a slug, which can be effortlessly stowed away beneath the wide straps, and at the knees and the back it pulls off the balancing act between showing off and concealing.

Steffen Kopetzky: Risiko

A rather nicely phrased piece of adventure writing, for people who like that kind of thing. I vaguely remember enjoying his previous yarn, Der letzte Dieb. Unpretentious and probably fun, I’d say, if it manages to avoid Orientalist clichés. Well-researched historical novel set in 1916 crossing Syria, Iraq and Persia but reviews have been too poor for it to make the shortlist, I suspect.

Grandparent factor: probably not, unless you happen to be Iranian

Overly long or ridiculously short: 732 pages

Sample sentence: As the emir only utters a sigh, however, he pushes the tip of the dagger so far in that Habibullah starts to bleed. He is suddenly crawling like a beetle to get up from the ground.

Rolf Lappert: Über den Winter

I found the extract rather unremarkable and unrevealing; sparse language describing an uneventful family excursion to a frozen Hamburg lake. I don’t like to generalize but to judge by the publisher’s blurb, that’s pretty much it – man returns to family life and discovers “the miracle of small details”. Not my cup of tea.

Grandparent factor: very possibly

Overly long or ridiculously short: nope – 384 pages

Sample sentence: On the grass of a park, someone had made a big snowman that was hugging a tree, furniture and crates fell out of the window of a house into an open rubbish skip, a black dog chased after a cyclist.

Inger-Maria Mahlke: Wie Ihr wollt

I so wanted to love this book. I’ve admired Mahlke’s writing for some time and I think she’s as cool as a Slush Puppy. Plus the subject matter: Lady Mary Grey, Tudor heir to the throne once described as “little, crook-backed and very ugly”. But you know how nobody finishes reading Hilary Mantel because those Tudors are so bloody complicated? That was exactly my problem here – too much assumed knowledge that I didn’t have. Loved the writing but simply could not follow the story.

Grandparent factor: Henry the Eighth!

Overly long or ridiculously short: not really – 272 pages

Sample sentence: Ellen wanted to dodge, bumped her head against the table top. So hard that the jug tipped over, all her own fault for not clearing it away after breakfast. Pale yellow, topped by greyish islands of foam, an extending tongue of ale shot over the table towards my documents.

Ulrich Peltzer: Das bessere Leben

Is this the counterpart to Peltzer’s previous novel Part of the Solution (tr. Martin Chalmers)? Hedge fund managers and an insurance salesman, former idealists, come together in some way in this apparently highly political novel. The characteristic detail-soaked writing makes me want to read more, at any rate, and reminds me of a reigned-in Will Self at times. 

Grandparent factor: probably not

Overly long or ridiculously short: a bearable 448 pages

Sample sentence: Conquered Khartoum and sealed Gordon Pasha’s un-pretty end, to be read of in school books and regimental chronicles, a boy in boarding-school uniform agonizing his memory in front of the bored class… his life was England’s glory, his death was England’s pride, but Fleming couldn’t remember more than the last lines of Kipling’s poem (although he really did try), wordy evocations that called no soul back to life. He drank and closed his eyes.

Peter Richter: 89/90

Here’s the thing about this one: although it claims to be a novel, it doesn’t feel like one. It feels like good journalism, with witty footnotes as an added extra. An autobiographical tale of rebellious young men in East Germany, not exactly something that hasn’t been done before. It might end up translated, though, because I expect the writer has good connections as a newspaper correspondent in New York.

Grandparent factor: probably somewhere, either a Nazi or a Stasi

Overly long or ridiculously short: 416 pages

Sample sentence: When the summer that was to change the world came along, I draped my bedding so that it looked like someone was lying in it, opened the window and jumped out into the night. That wasn’t a big deal; we lived on the upper ground floor.

Monique Schwitter: Eins im anderen

I thoroughly enjoyed this book once I gave it a chance (see my review) – a woman exploring ex-loves of all kinds, with a brave plotline that creeps up unexpectedly. Nicely done reckoning with female life today, without notching up the drama as a couple of the other titles on the list do.

Grandparent factor: positive

Overly long or ridiculously short: a pleasant 232 pages

Sample sentence: It was planned differently. The sentence I wanted to write here was: And then came Philipp. Actually it ought to be my husband’s turn, who incidentally suits the name very well. But the neat chronology of men is getting messed up; there’s a problem.

Clemens J. Setz: Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre

This one wins the prize for longest book on the list, and is stuffed full of odd stuff with a very drawn-out and scary storyline. I’ll post a review very soon but the short version is that a young woman gets a job at an assisted living facility and has to deal with a psycho – who isn’t one of her clients. Setz has his very own way of writing and seeing the world, and reading the book submerges you in it for a very long time. You have to be into it to stick it out, let’s say. I did. You can read his Indigo (tr. Ross Benjamin) in English and I hope this one will follow – although obviously don’t hold your breath.

Grandparent factor: negative (I checked)

Overly long or ridiculously short: 1022 pages

Sample sentence: The red and blue hot-air balloons were now so far away that they looked like vitreous haze. As a child, Natalie had once discovered a magic trick with which you could focus on all the far distant things that were interesting and mysterious – a man with a rabbit-ears hat in a ski-lift cabin, a peacock-ish wind-wheel on a neighbour’s balcony, a brightly coloured decoration in a hospital window, an advertising banner towed by a glider.

Anke Stelling: Bodentiefe Fenster

Hmm. How to explain why I’m not a fan of this novel when so many other book bloggers are? It was picked up on by a tabloid newspaper as another illustration of How Awful Mothers in Prenzlauer Berg are – an easy target if ever there was one. Actually, though, for all the protagonist’s negativity on the subject, she’s reporting from the inside, a kind of participatory anthropology, although of course the character is just another Prenzlauer Berg mother, albeit the kind with less money. Maybe I’m just tired of the conversation, but I don’t feel Stelling adds very much to it, hardly scratching the surface of all the injustices and just laying blame at individuals’ feet.

Grandmother factor: positive

Overly long or ridiculously short: a readable 248 pages

Sample sentence: I’m sitting here weeping because I can’t save my friend. Isa’s going to turn into a wreck, she’s going to end up in the funny farm, the children dead or in the funny farm as well or narrowly escaped, but only for the time being, only until they start families of their own and then it’ll start all over again.

Ilija Trojanow: Macht und Widerstand

A fabulous cantankerous Bulgarian in what may well be a return to form by Trojanow, loved by all for his Richard Burton novel The Collector of Worlds (tr. Will Hobson). It seems he has interwoven two characters on either side of the power divide in the formerly socialist country: an officer and a dissident. Based on a great deal of reading and interviews and including archive material, this will almost certainly make the shortlist. Comparisons have been made to Peter Weiss – but I still want to read it.

Grandparent factor: probably

Overly long or ridiculously short: 480 pages

Sample sentence: The others shake their heads conspicuously, typical Konstantin, always contrary, on principle, a real farce. Always has to question everything. I know I’m hard work. I let the others talk, I hold my tongue. When the first lunch guests dribble in we get complimented out of the café.

Vladimir Vertlib: Lucia Binar und die russische Seele

Vertlib has a gentle sense of humour that comes out nicely in the extract. It sounds like the story is a variation on the “grumpy old person meets idealistic young person” stock, featuring a Jewish grandmother (bing! double points!) and an anti-racism activist in Vienna. Nice that this writer is getting a little more attention.

Grandparent factor: clearly

Overly long or ridiculously short: 320 pages

Sample sentence: Those two boys know I can hardly walk now. Do they think I’m still young and dynamic like I was at sixty? Szymborska wrote a poem shortly before her death about an ancient tortoise that dreams of dancing. When it finally takes the risk of trying a few dance steps and twirls round on the spot, it rolls over on its back and can’t move any more. What was the name of that poem again?

Kai Weyand: Applaus für Bronikowski

An unambitious young man gets a job at a funeral parlour and tries to fulfil a dead woman’s last wish. I don’t think I could read a whole book in this naïve pedantic voice, but maybe that’s just me. Other people may find it funny and it’s mercifully short.

Grandparent factor: positive

Overly long or ridiculously short: 188 pages

Sample sentence: Assuming I decide on an almond crescent, but you know something about the almond crescent that I don’t know, for example that the almond flakes aren’t the best, then it wouldn’t be very friendly of you to keep that knowledge to yourself. I’m asking you because you’re a qualified bakery salesperson.

Frank Witzel: Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager im Sommer 1969

Long title, huh? Long book, too. This is one of those very specific West German sagas that can be rather unsexy for people from other countries. But I found the extract grotesque, scary and rather exciting, pretty much against my will. The critics love it and although I think it might be too difficult a read to win the prize, I’m glad to have got a sample of Witzel’s writing. It tastes like something Willy Wonka might have invented while in a bad mood.

Grandparent factor: probably

Overly long or ridiculously short: 818 pages!

Sample sentence: I immerse the rabbit corpses in a saucepan of water so that the worms come floating out. The factory-owner lumbers around in the corridor with a wooden wheelbarrow. He’s come from the slate cliff, where he collected up branches and beasts indiscriminately. Of course he doesn’t need to collect anything. That’s why he does it.

Christine Wunnicke: Der Fuchs und Dr. Shimamura

Based on a real historical character, this seems to be a novel about a Japanese neurologist who went to Europe and had a special interest in fox obsessions. Yes. While Wunnicke does sketch an interesting character in the extract, it all sounds rather pernickety to me. The language is nicely precise, at least.

Grandparent factor: who knows?

Overly long or ridiculously short: 144 pages

Sample sentence: Dr Shimamura had four carers: Sachiko, his wife, Yukiko, her mother, Hanako, his own mother, and a maid, whom he sometimes called Anna but more often Luise. He had taken the latter home with him from the Kyoto asylum on his retirement, as a souvenir, and because no one there quite knew whether she was a patient or a nurse and no one remembered her name either.

Feridun Zaimoglu: Siebentürmelviertel

More baroque language, this time more baroque and in a historical novel around German emigrants in 1940s Istanbul. I’m reading it now and enjoying that language, although I haven’t a clue whether anything is going to happen other than an endless string of childhood and domestic incidents. Critics have generally been enthusiastic about the sheer cheek of the thing.

Grandparent factor: yes, a Turkish grandmother for extra points

Overly long or ridiculously short: 800 pages

Sample sentence: I wait for the punch, for the children’s kicks. I wait until my bones ache from lying on the hard earth. This is the field of our first shame. Beak-clattering from the birds nesting on the cypress branches. Ashes in the sky, the wind-warped barn burning on the fallow land.

If I ruled the world, I’d have a shortlist consisting of Bronsky, Erpenbeck, Helle, Schwitter, Trojanow and Witzel. Because they’re too long to be realistic translation material, I’m not listing Setz and Zaimoglu, even though I think they’ll probably be on the real shortlist. After all, I don’t rule the world.

Hotlist Hotlist 2015

God, lists make for such easy blogging. The "Hotlist" is a top ten of outstanding books produced by independent publishers in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Although there is a prize in the end, awarded at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the money goes to the publisher rather than the writer and/or translator. So it's about raising the profile of these books and rewarding excellence under difficult publishing conditions. Anyway, today they released the, erm, Hotlist. Here are some links and brief descriptions of this rather diverse list.

Merle Kröger: Havarie, Argument Verlag

A dinghy full of migrants, a container freighter and a cruise ship meet in the Mediterranean – a crime novel on the edge of Fortress Europe by an award-winning writer

Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki: Tumor linguae, Edition Korrespondenzen 

Bilingual edition of selected works by a cult poet, translated from Polish by Michael Zgodzay and Uljana Wolf 

Rauni Magga Lukkari / Inger-Mari Aikio-Arianaick: Erbmütter - Welttöchter, Eichenspinner Verlag

Two women Sami poets from different generations, in German translation by Christine Schlosser, in a really good-looking edition

 

Arno Camenisch: Die Kur, Engeler Verlag

Novel about an elderly couple in 47 "images", whatever that may mean, by a Swiss writer who this time writes in German, I think

Dinaw Mengestu: Unsere Namen, Kein & Aber Verlag

American novel set in the Midwest and Uganda, translated by Verena Kilchling

Monika Rinck: Risiko und Idiotie, kookbooks

Essay collection by a poet, on risk and idiocy and what comes after poetry – apparently revealing and hilarious

Sifiso Mzobe: Young Blood, Peter Hammer Verlag

South African novel about a teenage car thief, translated by Stephanie von Harrach

Heike Geißler: Saisonarbeit, Spector Books

I love this book and I feel no shame at declaring it my absolute favourite. Musings on the general crapness of paid labour, triggered by a seasonal job at the Leipzig Amazon warehouse. You may have a chance to read some of it in English soon, I hope. 

Anke Stelling: Bodentiefe Fenster, Verbrecher Verlag

I'm not that keen but everyone else loves this novel about a Prenzlauer Berg mum losing her marbles. Also nominated for the German Book Prize.

Kai Weyand: Applaus für Bronikowski, Wallstein Verlag

Comic novel about an unambitious man who gets a job at a funeral parlour. Also nominated for the German Book Prize.

German Book Prize 2015 Longlist

They've announced the twenty titles on the longlist for the German Book Prize (designed to emulate the Booker), from 167 submissions. Here they are, with links, in English where possible but mostly in German:

• Alina Bronsky: Baba Dunjas letzte Liebe (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, August 2015)
• Ralph Dutli: Die Liebenden von Mantua (Wallstein, August 2015)
• Jenny Erpenbeck: Gehen, ging, gegangen (Knaus, August 2015)
• Valerie Fritsch: Winters Garten (Suhrkamp, März 2015)
• Heinz Helle: Eigentlich müssten wir tanzen (Suhrkamp, September 2015)
• Gertraud Klemm: Aberland (Droschl, Februar 2015)
• Steffen Kopetzky: Risiko (Klett-Cotta, Februar 2015)
• Rolf Lappert: Über den Winter (Carl Hanser, August 2015)
• Inger-Maria Mahlke: Wie Ihr wollt (Berlin Verlag, März 2015)
• Ulrich Peltzer: Das bessere Leben (S. Fischer, Juli 2015)
• Peter Richter: 89/90 (Luchterhand, März 2015)
• Monique Schwitter: Eins im Andern (Droschl, August 2015)
• Clemens J. Setz: Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre (Suhrkamp, September 2015)
• Anke Stelling: Bodentiefe Fenster (Verbrecher Verlag, März 2015)
• Ilija Trojanow: Macht und Widerstand (S. Fischer, August 2015)
• Vladimir Vertlib: Lucia Binar und die russische Seele (Paul Zsolnay, Februar 2015)
• Kai Weyand: Applaus für Bronikowski (Wallstein, März 2015)
• Frank Witzel: Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager im Sommer 1969 (Matthes & Seitz, Februar 2015)
• Christine Wunnicke: Der Fuchs und Dr. Shimamura (Berenberg, März 2015)
• Feridun Zaimoglu: Siebentürmeviertel (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, August 2015)

First impressions? There are a lot of big fat doorstoppers on this list, with Peltzer, Setz, Witzel, Kopetzky and Zaimoglu, but also a couple of nice bijou treats and two babushkas. Looks like this year's judges paid attention to the clamour for more women on the longlist in 2014 (although there are only two women judges this time around). I'm looking forward to reading Erpenbeck, as you can imagine, and Helle. I've read two titles in full (Setz and Stelling), dipped into the Mahlke but lost the plot, and am working on Zaimoglu. Plus I just started reading Schwitter yesterday!

I shall track down the booklet of extracts and post my traditional take on the longlist in due time. Until then, enjoy the fun with the Book Prize Bloggers (linked via Facebook), an interestingly disparate group of people and proof that both the industry and the bloggers themselves are taking German book blogs more seriously.

2015 Hotlist Longlist

You can now vote for one of 30 titles nominated for the German-language independent publishers' award, the excruciatingly named Hotlist. Independents submit one book each and a committee or something chooses the top 30, then there's this online vote, then a jury of German, Swiss and Austrian literary types picks a shortlist of seven plus three from the online vote, then the jury picks one of those ten as best indie book of the year. The results are often surprising; last year it was a photo essay about employees at CERN. The € 5000 prize money goes to the publishing house and there's a second prize consisting of a € 4000 printing voucher. Then there's a big party in Frankfurt.

I've already voted.

Georg Büchner Prize to Rainald Goetz

Sue me – I have never read Rainald Goetz and I'm not even planning to. I think he's like Marmite; you have to have grown up with him to appreciate him. But a hell of a lot of Germans do appreciate him, and now he's won the mega-prestigious Georg Büchner Prize for his life's work. It comes with €50,000 and eternal glory. The judges said:

Rainald Goetz has described Germany's present of the past thirty years, let it come to perception and speak for itself, he has celebrated it and condemned it and analyzed it over and over by means of theory. Behind his nervous, tense willingness to gain experiences are a broad education and a sensitive awareness of history, which enable his language a balance between passionate expression, observational coolness and satirical clarity.

They're really into him, huh? But I know a lot of people (men?) who worship the guy. I once went to a reading he did where he was like, I'm going to read for ten minutes and then go out and smoke a fag on the doorstep (it was raining, I think) and then I'm going to have a rest for a while and then at half past I'll read for five minutes and then I'll have a bit of a sit down and then on the next full hour I'll read for another ten minutes, but first here's the list of ingredients on my cigarette packet. Those may not have been his exact words; it was about five years ago. But instead of totally losing patience and leaving, like I did, everyone else was hanging on his every word and had nothing they wanted to do more than spend all day waiting for the guy to read in between his extended cigarette breaks. Also I used to see him in my local supermarket before I moved house. He's quite short and likes white bread rolls.

He's written lots of novels and plays about contemporary phenomena. I think the only thing available in English is the play Jeff Koons, translated by David Tushingham.

Ingeborg Bachmann Prize to Nora Gomringer

The weltschmerz doesn't seem to be going away. So while the German-language Literaturbetrieb* had four days of fun at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt – albeit no longer drinking a right-wing populist's faux-champagne at the mayor's reception but the faux-champagne of the new Social Democratic mayor, who's had enough of her previous coalition with the FPÖ – I was sweating in tropical Berlin and working and not watching the spectacle ("Germany's Got Talent for swots" – Stefanie Sargnagel) on TV because how can I take so many days off work and Greece and Syria and Nigeria and also I've kind of had enough of a lot of German literary critics. I mean, they're only talking about literature, it's not like they deserve a medal for it, and I didn't want to spend four days watching jumped-up egos talk about literature, even though I've thoroughly enjoyed watching it in the past. I hope I'll get over this cynical phase I'm going through.

So the prize went to Nora Gomringer for her piece "Recherche". And here's the thing about this piece ("porn for Germanists" – Nora Gomringer): it's a magnificent story, a real humdinger of clever wit and good writing and light and dark ideas under the surface, as long as you know who her protagonist Nora Bossong is. Now, I happen to know who Nora Bossong is because she's a German writer and I've even had a drink with her and some other German publishing people on one occasion, and heard her reading a couple of times, although I don't think I've ever read one of her novels or any of her poetry. And she's a striking woman and one of those people a lot of publishing types know. But she's not, you know, famous. There's a bit in Gomringer's story where another character asks the Bossong character to sign a book, which is amusing because it's unexpected for the Bossong character, which makes us smile if we know who Nora Bossong is but doesn't come across as cruel; Gomringer doesn't seem to be taking the mickey (because we can probably assume Nora Gomringer would react the same way?). And there's another bit in the story where that same character sets her alarm clock to watch the Bachmann Prize on TV, which is also amusing if we know what the Bachmann Prize is because what kind of psycho would spend four days of her life watching a literary competition on TV, and again that self-deprecating humour is delightful. But Gomringer doesn't actually name the literary competition on TV, so it's a kind of double in-joke.

So what I think about "Recherche" is that it's the perfect story to win the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize right now, but it's not a story that works in any other context. From my point of view, there'd be no point in translating it, for instance, because no one would pick up on its big joke. Or you could add footnotes, but jokes with footnotes are a bit crap.

And I can't shake the impression that a story consisting partly of in-jokes for the German-language Literaturbetrieb* winning the prize is a bit of a swizz for people who don't get the in-jokes. OK, the competition has drawn attention to lots of talented writers who wouldn't have got on TV otherwise, and will be good for all of them, and I've no doubt Nora Gomringer has other texts that will appeal to a broader audience. But doesn't it seem a little provincial, dare I say it, for a prize that used to translate all its finalists' texts into seven languages to be awarded to a story that works only for a very limited readership?

Or, ach, maybe a literary prize's purpose isn't to provide a service to the maximum number of readers, a kind of capitalist efficiency logic by which the best story is the one that the largest number of people appreciate. Like Dire Straights on paper or something. I don't know. At least it goes towards disproving Tim Parks's theory that writers are pandering to international audiences by making their work more bland. That's a cheering thought. And at least Nora Gomringer gets a bit of fame and fortune for a while.

The weltschmerz is telling me it doesn't matter anyway, what with nothing mattering anyway. Maybe I shouldn't have started reading Camus. Here's a witty response to the story by the actual Nora Bossong, possibly. It's a fun game of pingpong for a summer afternoon.


*Literaturbetrieb, I nearly forgot. It translates as literary industry and means the sum of publishers, editors, writers, critics, etc. making a living out of literature, or trying to. And although a lot of books are published in German, the Literaturbetrieb feels very small and incestuous and tends to suffer a lot of storms in teacups. So you can use it as a term of abuse if you fancy raising yourself above it for any reason.

Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize to Susan Bernofsky

Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of Days continues to reel in the accolades, this time winning Susan Bernofsky the coveted Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. The judges said:

Susan Bernofsky’s English translation, ‘The End of Days’, is a beautiful, poetic and persuasive work in its own right, intellectually engaging, and emotionally gripping. The lyrical richness and psychological depth of the original German are matched by a fresh, compelling English style in a publication that promises to bring both author and translator to the forefront of modern European literature known in Britain and America.

Congratulations! Susan gets £2000 and a big hug from a man in a gown and mortarboard. 

Tanja Dückers on the Gender Gap in German Letters

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tenfold Women's Whammy in Translation Prizes

Having spent the past year complaining that women don't win translation prizes – and I wasn't the only one – I am absolutely thrilled about the latest crop of awards announcements.

Let's start with the US PEN Translation Prizes for fiction and poetry, which went to Denise Newman (for her translation from Danish of Naja Marie Aidt's Babboon) and Eliza Griswold (for I Am the Beggar of the World, translated from Pashto). That makes two women translators and two books by women.

Moving on the America's Best Translated Book Award, we see that the fiction prize last night went to Can Xue's The Last Lover, translated from Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen, and the poetry prize to Roció Cerón's Diorama, translated from Spanish by Anna Rosenwong. Bringing us up to four books by women, translated by four women.

Most superduperexcitingly, for me, is the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, awarded in my country of origin. And as you may know by now, at yesterday's swanky champagne reception it went to....

Jenny Erpenbeck and Susan Bernofsky for The End of Days. Here's my review from way back when. I'm very pleased indeed for Erpenbeck and Bernofsky and the world at large, because this is an excellent German novel, no doubt in an excellent translation, which deserves recognition and readers.

So we have ten women winning translation prizes. The only book I know of the five is Erpenbeck's, but I'm happy that all our angry foot-stomping has prompted judges on two continents to look a little more closely at fiction and poetry by women in translation. Or it could of course be coincidence that five outstanding books written and translated by women happen to have caught their eyes. I don't really care either way.

I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, translated from the Pashto - See more at: http://www.pen.org/literature/2015-pen-award-poetry-translation#sthash.NPmz2oC1.dpuf

I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, translated from the Pashto - See more at: http://www.pen.org/literature/2015-pen-award-poetry-translation#sthash.NPmz2oC1.dpuf

her translation from the Danish of Naja Marie Aidt's Baboon - See more at: http://www.pen.org/literature/2015-pen-translation-prize#sthash.jRIn4L4R.dpufger

her translation from the Danish of Naja Marie Aidt's Baboon - See more at: http://www.pen.org/literature/2015-pen-translation-prize#sthash.jRIn4L4R.dpuf

her translation from the Danish of Naja Marie Aidt's Baboon - See more at: http://www.pen.org/literature/2015-pen-translation-prize#sthash.jRIn4L4R.dpuf

her translation from the Danish of Naja Marie Aidt's Baboon - See more at: http://www.pen.org/literature/2015-pen-translation-prize#sthash.jRIn4L4R.dpuf

her translation from the Danish of Naja Marie Aidt's Baboon - See more at: http://www.pen.org/literature/2015-pen-translation-prize#sthash.jRIn4L4R.dpuf

Prizes, Nominations!

So many prizes! Here's a little catch-up.

First off, the Gutekunst Prize for Young Translators (from German to English) has gone to Sophie Duvernoy, a New York writer, editor and translator. Congratulations on getting that "wow factor" down!

Then there's the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, sort of a grown-up version for actually published books translated out of German, and that will be awarded to Catherine Schelbert for her rendering of Swiss writer Hugo Ball's "rollicking, zany, melancholy story of about the rise and fall of a troupe of performers in the louche world of cafés, taverns, nightclubs, and vaudeville theaters in a Switzerland where the Great War is only a distant rumble," Flametti, or The Dandyism of the Poor. Congratulations go to Schelbert in Switzerland!

And then we have the nominations for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, an award for literary translations from any living European language into English. The eight nominated translators include two from German: Susan Bernofsky for Jenny Erpenbeck's novel The End of Days and Anne Stokes for Sarah Kirsch's poetry collection Ice Roses. I'm pleased for them because this is one of those prizes where everyone's a winner, celebrated all together at Oxford Translation Day.

I have a feeling I may have forgotten something.

Alfred Döblin Prize to Natascha Wodin

The Döblin Prize is an award for as yet unpublished prose, launched by Günter Grass. It happens every two years in the form of a whole day of readings, each followed by discussions. In the past, this event has been by invitation only but this year – whether because Günter's not here to tell anyone off or for other reasons – it was open to the public. That was a good thing.

I was party to an invitation to the two previous competitions, so I can compare. Previously, there was a small audience of critics and editors, publishing people. There was lunch in the middle and a barbecue in the afternoon and there was stilted smalltalk during the breaks. This time the audience was slightly larger, although not huge because the train drivers were on strike, which made getting to the Literary Colloquium tricky. Plus, you really have to be keen to attend a day of readings from 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening. Another thing: there were far fewer critics this time. Maybe they were offended at having their privileges taken away.

The idea of the format is to re-create a workshop atmosphere, in a kind of homage to the Gruppe 47, with people asking questions of the writers and offering praise and criticism. So there were six finalists, four of whom I saw. Their manuscripts were at various stages, some unfinished and open-ended, others with looming publication dates. I was most impressed by Sascha Reh, who read from his forthcoming novel Gegen die Zeit. But then, I've actually read the whole of that manuscript and I really like it – set in 1973 Chile, it asks all sorts of questions about politics, national identity and computing. All the other finalists were female, which is a good thing considering that the award has only ever gone to three women since 1979, and made it look very far removed from a Gruppe 47 workshop.

The great thing about allowing the plebs public to attend was that, after a while at least, non-critics joined in the conversation. So that when one of the judges, Sigrid Löffler, commented that novels reflecting on history are patronizing and that everyone knows all about 1977 and 1973, the sparks really started flying and countless people pointed out that she was talking nonsense. Novels aren't written for critics, or at least I hope not, and why is the third German novel about the end of the Allende government or the second German novel to touch on East German women's relationship to the RAF less relevant than the six thousandth German novel about an old man falling for a younger woman? Who knows, maybe Löffler was getting bored and wanted to play devil's advocate; apparently that was what Grass liked to do too.

What she was fond of, however, was Natascha Wodin's manuscript; she even compared it to Sebald (prompting quite some confused murmuring in the audience – surely the all-powerful Sebald comparison should be used sparingly?). And Wodin did in fact win the €10,000 prize in the end. I wasn't quite as convinced; the book is a biographical project tracing the life of Wodin's mother. Now, I'm certain it will eventually become a fascinating piece of work because Wodin's mother had a fascinating and horrific life, as the daughter of a once-rich family in the Soviet Union, who was brought to Germany as an "Ostarbeiter" – a Nazi euphemism for forced labourers recruited either by violence or under false pretenses, exploited to the utmost in private homes and German industry. What Wodin read was essentially non-fiction with a personal touch; her mother committed suicide when she was only ten or eleven and never told her daughter her story, so we got a lot of general facts in the ten-page extract. And the author seemed almost immune to criticism, shrugging off every question and consideration from the audience. But I'd say that the nature of the book project also almost exempts it from literary criticism; how can anyone suggest changes to a text as highly charged and personal as a book about a real dead mother whose life was ruined by the Nazis? And comparing a text like this to five literary novels seems to me a rather bizarre thing to do.

Which underlines, of course, the absurd nature of literary prizes. Why on earth would anyone have the temerity to proclaim one unpublished manuscript every two years as the best one and give its author a large sum of money? If only it weren't for the fact that Eugen Ruge and Saša Stanišić won the Döblin Prize with two great novels in recent years, going on to pick up the German Book Prize and the Leipzig Book Prize respectively...

German Poets and Prizes

The dam has broken and prizes are going to poets! Following Jan Wagner's surprising receipt of the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair after everyone thought even nominating a poet was an act of iconoclastic tokenism, they've gone and done it again. This time it's the Kleist Prize for Monika Rinck. Rinck has published mainly poetry and essays but also some rather odd other things, and you can find quite a lot of her poems in Nicolas Grindell's English translations at no man's land if you click on the first link above.

The Kleist Prize is an interesting one because it's awarded by a different individual every year, to all kinds of writers for their entire work. I kind of like the idea because it means there are no compromises. This year it was the president of the German Academy of Language and Literature, Heinrich Detering, who chose to bestow a big fat €20,000 on Rinck. Hooray!

And then – perhaps less surprisingly – there's another German poet on the poetry shortlist for the Best Translated Book Award: Farhad Showghi for End of the City Map, tr. Rosmarie Waldrop. The winners are announced on 27 May.

Incidentally, Jan Wagner's Regentonnenvariationen made it to number 5 on the Spiegel bestseller list after he won the Leipzig prize and spent several weeks in the charts. That hasn't happened to a poet before; not even Tranströmer after he won the Nobel.

Erpenbeck/Bernofsky, Kehlmann/Brown Janeway Shortlisted, Brambach/Kinsky, Showghi/Waldrop Longlisted

Lists! The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist is out, and features Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of Days, translated by Susan Bernofsky, and Daniel Kehlmann's F, translated by Carol Brown Janeway. Guess which one's my favourite?

And also the American sort of equivalent, the Best Translated Book Award, has announced its longlists. No German writing on the fiction list, but two titles on the poetry longlist (if anyone runs a blog called Love French Books, they'll be really pleased about both lists, though): Collected Poems by Rainer Brambach, translated by Esther Kinsky, and End of the City Map by Farhad Showghi, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Leipzig Book Fair Prize to Poet Jan Wagner

Well, there you are. What a funny day. They've gone and given the "literature" category of the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair to Jan Wagner for his poetry collection Regentonnenvariationen. You can read one of Iain Galbraith's also award-winning translations of his work here, or wait for the book Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees to come out next month.

Unwisely, perhaps, the taz just ran a piece about how a few other poets got a bit antsy (geddit) about Wagner's nomination. I think Wagner is a delightfully accessible poet with lovely skin, who's worked hard to get to this position – the first poet to win Germany's second-biggest prize for a single title, which usually goes to either a novel or a short story collection. And it's not like he nominated himself. He gave a sweet little speech, all shocked and overwhelmed and his nice skin all flushed.

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist

The 2015 longlist is out, and it's pretty pretty pretty!

• The Ravens by Tomas Bannerhed translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death 
• The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky 
• Bloodlines by Marcello Fois translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella 
• In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomás González translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne
• The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
• F by Daniel Kehlmann translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway 
• Boyhood Island by Karl Ove Knausgaard translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
• By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar 
• The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim 
• While the Gods Were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent 
• Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
• The Giraffe's Neck by Judith Schalansky translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside
• Tiger Milk by Stefanie de Velasco translated from the German by Tim Mohr
• Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch 
• The Last Lover by Can Xue translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen

Four women writers, five German writers! What more can a feminist German book lover ask for?

I'm currently working on statistics about the proportion of translation fiction published in the UK and Ireland written by women. It's not going to be good news – four out of fifteen titles pretty much reflects the percentage as a whole, which is hovering somewhere around a quarter.

My favourite is Tiger Milk, in case you were wondering.