This year, 486 works from 177 publishers were submitted for the 20th Leipzig Book Fair prize, from which the jury of seven critics has now compiled the shortlist. In the fiction category, in addition to Wolf Haas’ autofictional book “Eigentum”, Inga Machel’s debut novel “On the Tracks”, Barbi Marković’s grotesque “Minihorror” and Dana Vowinckel’s debut “Waters in the Ziplock” were nominated. Anke Feuchtenberger’s “Comrade Cuckoo” is also a graphic novel on the shortlist.
The non-fiction shortlist consists of Jens Beckert’s book “Sold Future. Why the fight against climate change threatens to fail”, “Against Misogyny” by the lawyer and author Christina Clemm, Tom Holert’s study “ca. 1972. Violence – Environment – Identity – Method ” and “A thousand departures. The Germans and their democracy since the 1980s” by Christina Morina and the audio book “Voices of the Century. 1945 – 2000. German history in over 400 original recordings” by Christiane Collorio, Ines Geipel, Ulrich Herbert, Michael Krüger and Hans Sarkowicz was compiled and commented on.
In the translation category, the following are available: Ki-Hyang Lee’s translation of Bora Chung’s volume of short stories “The Curse of the Rabbit” from Korean, Klaus Detlef Olof’s translation of Goran Vojnović’s novel “18 Kilometers to Ljubljana” from Slovenian, Lisa Palme’s translation of Joanna Bator’s novel “Bitternis” from Polish, Jennie Seitz’s translation of Katerina Gordeeva’s volume of reports “Take My Pain” from Russian and Ron Winkler’s version of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poems “Beginning with San Francisco” from English.
The prize is endowed with a total of 60,000 euros and the award ceremony will take place again this year during the book fair on March 21st in the glass hall on the exhibition grounds.