Valeria Gordeev has won the City of Klagenfurt’s Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, which is endowed with 25,000 euros. The author from Tübingen prevailed against eleven competitors with her book “Er putzt”. In it, Gordeev describes with great precision the cleaning mania of a neurotic, a young man who makes cleaning an art, cleaning after his mother and sister. In doing so, the author formulated “a call for war on all channels,” the jury judged.
The traditional event is the most important competition for contemporary German-language literature and is celebrating its 47th anniversary, this time on the 50th anniversary of the death of the author Ingeborg Bachmann. It took place from June 28th to July 2nd this year. By Saturday, the candidates had presented their previously unpublished texts – in front of an audience, TV viewers and a jury. Above all, its chairwoman Insa Wilke as well as Klaus Kastberger, Mara Delius and Philipp Tingler are notorious for not stopping at merciless slating.
Twelve instead of 14 authors in the competition
As was announced in June, two of the readers had to cancel at short notice, both from Austria: the writer Helena Adler, nominated by Klaus Kastberger, and the writer Robert Prosser, nominated by Brigitte Schwens-Harrant. The statutes stipulate that participation in the reading competition can only take place if you are personally present and do your own reading. This means that instead of the usual 14 authors, only twelve took part this year.
According to the jury discussions of the past few days, the Ukrainian-born author Yevgeniy Breyger, the Austrian Anna Felnhofer and the German Valeria Gordeev were traded as favourites. Good chances were also given to the British author Jacinta Nandi, the French-born Jayrome C. Robinet and the Polish-German author Martin Piekar.
Martin Piekar clears twice
In addition to the Bachmann Prize, other prizes are awarded in the ORF Theater. The Austrian Anna Felnhofer receives the Deuschlandfunk Prize, which is endowed with 12,500 euros, for her work “Fische fang”. A literary case study about a boy whose mother was dumped by “One Day Father”. The boy cannot identify faces and thus cannot form relationships. Among other things, the jury praised “the complex psychology of an experience of violence” and that the child and adolescent psychologist worked out the realization with great sensitivity that “you only find recognition as a victim”.
The KELAG Prize, donated by the Kärntner-Elektrisiert-Aktiengesellschaft in the amount of 10,000 euros, goes to the poet and teacher Martin Piekar from the Taunus. “Talking to walls/Poles are difficult people” is the title of the story of a growing son who lives with his Polish mother in a small apartment. The social and political conditions would speak from this work, praised juror Klaus Kastberger.
Piekar also received the audience award, which was determined on Saturday by secure voting – the prize money here is 7,500 euros. The jury predicted Piekar a “great literary career”.
The 3sat prize of 7,500 euros goes to the culture journalist Laura Leupi from Zurich, who competed with “The Alphabet of Sexualized Violence”. With her radical work, Leupi tried “to give the subject of rape a language,” says juror Thomas Strässle.