Wednesday 29 June 2011

Hotlist Longlist and Voting Announced

Woah! They've announced the thirty candidates for the German indie book prize, the gruesomely betitled Hotlist. Lots and lots and lots of outstanding indie books, encompassing poetry, novels and short stories, and diaries by dead anarchists. About a third of the titles are translations.

They've managed to avoid last year's embarrassing pitfall of letting the public vote too early on - which meant people with a lot of computer-literate friends and relatives got their books onto the shortlist - I think by simply choosing thirty of the best from the word go. And really, there are some absolute jewels here. I literally can't decide between Simon Urban's Plan D, which is just plain amazing, Steven Uhly's Adams Fuge, which I haven't read yet but was intrigued by at a recent reading, and Lee Rourke's The Canal. Plus I'd love to get stuck into Nino Haratischwili's new book and I bet Carl Weissner's is worth reading too. Oh God, maybe I should change the name of this blog to Love German Indie Books.

You can vote on your favourite online, and there are samples from all the books on the site too. I hope I make it to the glitzy awards ceremony, especially as I know one of the judges again this year.

Anyway, here's the full list:

Belleville Naomi Schenk/Ulrich Rüdenauer (Hrsg.): Archiv verworfener Möglichkeiten

Corso Georg Stefan Troller (Hrsg.): corsofolio Paris

Diaphanes Joseph Mitchell: McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon

Dittrich Roland E. Koch: Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß

Droschl Monique Schwitter: Goldfischgedächtnis

Edition Rugerup Les Murray: Größer im Liegen

Eichborn DBC Pierre: Das Buch Gabriel

Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt Nino Haratischwili: Mein sanfter Zwilling

Haymon Andrej Kurkow: Der wahrhaftige Volkskontrolleur

Jung und Jung Katharina Geiser: Diese Gezeiten

Klöpfer & Meyer Nina Jäckle: Zielinski

Kookbooks Daniela Seel: Ich kann diese Stelle nicht wiederfinden

Kunstmann Paul Murray: Skippy stirbt

Libelle Christoph Meckel: Russische Zone

Luftschacht Martin Mandler: 23 Tage

Luxbooks John Ashbery: Ein weltgewandtes Land

Mairisch Lee Rourke: Der Kanal

Merlin Tahar Ben Jelloun: Jean Genet

Milena Carl Weissner: Die Abenteuer von Trashman

Rotbuch Akos Doma: Die allgemeine Tauglichkeit

Schöffling Simon Urban: Plan D

Secession Steven Uhly: Adams Fuge

Stroemfeld Peter Kurzeck: Vorabend

Taberna Kritika Franz Dodel: Von Tieren

Transit Indri Thorsteinsson: Taxi 79 ab Station

Verbrecher Erich Mühsam: Tagebücher, Bd. 1 1910-1911

Wagenbach Ascanio Celestrini: Schwarzes Schaf

Walde+Graf Christian Saehrendt: Die radikale Absenz des Ronny Läpplinger

Weidle Heinz Hilpert: So wird alles Schwere entweder Leicht oder Leben

weissbooks.w Breece D’J Pancake: Stories

3 comments:

Daniel said...

I'm wondering how these books get on the Hotlist...? Do they allow each press to nominate one book? Or do they pick one book from each independent press? Noticed, eg., that DBC Pierre got the nod over at Eichborn. A good book (at least I liked it in English), but ... a translation? But I guess a book's being written in German isn't a requirement...?

Kerstin Klein said...

Every time I see Paul Murray's "Skippy stirbt" I wonder whether I shoul buy it. It really makes me curious. And now it is even on the Hotlist. ... :)

kjd said...

Hi Daniel,

I asked about this. Independent publishers were invited to submit one book each. I believe the only requirement is that it's a book by an indie publisher. There was a Kuratorium that whittled down the 140 entries to thirty, and now the jury has to pick seven. The remaining three titles on the hotlist shortlist come from the public vote.
It's a lot of hard work and nobody's getting paid a penny! Now that's dedication, huh?