Literature: “One farm and eleven siblings” is non-fiction book of the year

literature
“One farm and eleven siblings” is non-fiction book of the year

In “One farm and eleven siblings. The quiet farewell to rural life in Germany” Ewald Frie describes a world in transition. photo

© Christian Charisius/dpa

It is about the “farewell to rural life”. Using his family as an example, Ewald Frie describes the tensions between town and country.

The author Ewald Frie has received the German Non-Fiction Prize 2023. A jury chose “One farm and eleven siblings. The quiet farewell to rural life in Germany” in Hamburg from among the eight nominated books for the award, which is endowed with 25,000 euros.

For the third time, the Book Culture and Reading Promotion Foundation of the German Book Trade Association has honored an outstanding non-fiction book in the original German edition that provides impetus for social debate.

“The quiet farewell to rural life happens everywhere. Ewald Frie takes a personal and surprising perspective on this process of change: Using the example of his family from the Münsterland, he describes tensions that have developed between town and country and are currently occupying us intensively,” says it in the jury’s reasoning.

In his amazingly simple and at the same time poetic language, Frie creates access to a changing world – always empathetic, but never nostalgic. Ewald Frie is Professor of Modern History at the University of Tübingen.

Also nominated were: Omri Boehm with “Radical Universalism. Beyond Identity”, Teresa Bücker with “All_Time. A Question of Power and Freedom”, Judith Kohlenberger with “The Escape Paradox. About our contradictory handling of expulsion and displaced persons”, Meron Mendel with “Talking about Israel. A German debate”, Hanno Sauer with “Morals. The invention of good and evil”, Martin Schulze Wessel with “The curse of the empire. Ukraine, Poland and the wrong turn in Russian history” and Elisabeth Wellershaus with “Where the foreign begins. About identity in the fragile present”.

dpa

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