diversity
Bachmann reading contest with whiskey dealer and sociologist
Usama Al Shahmani fled Iraq to Switzerland as an adult after being targeted by the police for a play critical of the regime. He is one of the 14 authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland at the Bachmann Prize 2022. Photo: Ayse Yavas/ORF/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
After two pandemic editions, the competition will take place again with a jury and readers on site. Lots of diversity in the starting field and a new rating system add to the excitement.
Multilingual all-rounders are fighting for the renowned Bachmann Prize this week at the Days of German-Language Literature.
Among the 14 authors who will be presenting their texts at the reading competition in Klagenfurt, Austria, is Eva Sichelschmidt, who lives in Berlin and Rome and works as a whiskey and cigar dealer in addition to writing.
Juan S. Guse is not only a writer, but also a sociologist at the University of Hanover. Iranian-born Behzad Karim Khani runs a Berlin bar and will publish his first novel in the summer. For the first time since the beginning of the Corona pandemic, the jury, readers and audience are coming together again in Klagenfurt, and not in a virtual or hybrid format like in 2020 and 2021.
On the open-air stage
“In the long run, the discussions and the industry need on-site encounters so that the competition remains as lively as it has been for 46 years,” said the jury chair Insa Wilke of the German Press Agency. Nevertheless, the event remains somewhat virtual, because the three-day readings will take place on an open-air stage for the first time and not directly in front of the jury as usual. She is now sitting in a TV studio without authors.
This time, a new system is used for the evaluation, with the jury members secretly awarding one to nine points to their respective favorites on Saturday evening. On the basis of the total points, the city of Klagenfurt’s Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, which is worth 25,000 euros and is named after the writer who was born there (1926-73), will be awarded on Sunday. In previous years, a shortlist was created in a non-public procedure and then publicly voted on. Last year, Nava Ebrahimi, who was born in Tehran, grew up in Cologne and lives in Graz, won the main prize with her text about flight and trauma.
literature in motion
While Ebrahimi came to Germany as a child, this year’s participant Usama Al Shahmani only fled from Iraq to Switzerland as an adult after he was targeted by the police for a play critical of the regime. The Romanian poet Alexandru Bulucz and the Slovenian Ana Marwan, who writes in German, are also taking part in the reading competition. “Like society as a whole, the literary business must also reflect on its mechanisms of exclusion and strive to open it up,” said Wilke, head of the jury. This is how literature keeps moving. According to Wilke, previously excluded perspectives can “lead to other stories and also to new literary means.” Basically, she stated: “It’s not the origin that decides the literary quality”.
As intellectual and important as the reading contest is, some of the contestants are aware that it is also, in a sense, a talent show, and created tongue-in-cheek introductory videos accordingly. “Klagenfurt is as exciting as LA or Tokyo,” sings Leon Engler, who comes from Bavaria, in a specially composed song. “I’ve been wondering for a long time what these writers actually want on television,” grumbles a speaker in the clip of the German voice performer Mara Genschel. Elias Hirschl, who caused a stir last year with his political satire «Salon able», on the other hand, takes the cliché of the reclusive author to the extreme by having food delivered to his home in his almost wordless video and then slamming the apartment door.