Bremen Literature Prize 2014 to Clemens Meyer

Hooray! The Bremen Literature Prize will be awarded to Clemens Meyer for his amazing novel Im Stein. €20,000 and it won't arrive in his account until the next financial year.

I rather like this little detail from the award foundation's website:

In December 1959 the judges' suggestion to award the Bremen Literature Prize to Günther Grass for The Tin Drum was rejected by the Bremen senate because of the book's "literary description (...) of disgust and sexuality, death and blasphemy".  

That fits Im Stein as well, don't you think?

The award has gone to various greats since 1954: Ilse Aichinger, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Thomas Bernhard, Christa Wolf, Alexander Kluge, Volker Braun, Peter Handke, Wolfgang Hilbig, Elfriede Jelinek, WG Sebald, Ulrich Peltzer, Reinhard Jirgl, Felicitas Hoppe, Clemens Setz. They now also have a smaller prize for emerging writers, which has also proved to be in good taste, and this year goes to Roman Ehrlich for his debut novel Das kalte Jahr.