Even before the publication of her debut novel, Valeria Gordeev won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. She convinced the jury in Klagenfurt, Austria, with her text about a man with a cleaning neurosis.
This year’s Ingeborg Bachmann Prize goes to Valeria Gordeev. The author, who comes from Tübingen, prevailed against eleven competitors at the 47th Days of German-language Literature in Klagenfurt, Austria.
In the reading competition, Gordeev won over the jury with her short story “He cleans”. In it, Gordeev precisely describes a man with cleaning neurosis – but does not present him as a clinical case, but as a devoted person who cares for his mother and sister.
Jury chairwoman Insa Wilke praised the text as a “plea for sensitivity”. During the literary competition, twelve authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland read their texts to a seven-person jury from Thursday to Saturday.
Breakthrough before the first novel
Gordeev has been working on her debut novel for a number of years, which deals, among other things, with contemporary Russia. Her parents emigrated from the Soviet Union at the end of the 1970s, Gordeev was born in 1986 in Tübingen. The author also works as an illustrator and songwriter.
The renowned literature prize, which commemorates the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973), is endowed with 25,000 euros and is awarded by the city of Klagenfurt.