literature
Touching story opens the Bachmann Prize
The author and spoken word artist Jayrome C. Robinet (l) at the Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt. photo
© Gert Eggenberger/APA/dpa
Twelve authors are taking part in the 47th Days of German-Language Literature 2023. The first readings have taken place. The jury expressed a lot of praise, but also sharp criticism.
The author Jayrome C. Robinet opened this year’s reading competition for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize with a virtuoso text about family and transgender. In his unpublished fragment of a novel, the language artist and performer, who comes from France and lives in Berlin, tells the story of a trans man and his pregnancy, as well as his loving and at the same time traumatic childhood.
Judge Mara Delius praised the text for its “cautious, slightly floating language”. The jury also paid tribute to Robinet’s musical performance, but criticized its conventional style and the author’s unexplored narrative threads. In 2019, Robinet published his autobiographical book “My way from a white woman woman to a young man with a migration background”.
Valeria Gordeev inspires the jury
Valeria Gordeev, who comes from Tübingen, received unanimous praise for her precise description of a man who was neurotic about cleaning. In the end, the text dealt with far more than the obsessive-compulsive disorder depicted. “It is without a doubt one of the favorite texts in this year’s competition,” said juror Klaus Kastberger.
Anna Gien, who was born in Munich, had to take a lot of criticism for her dream sequences recorded in diary entries, which revealed the emotional life of a woman around 30. From the point of view of the juror Philipp Tingler, it is prose that could also have been created by artificial intelligence. “It’s like typing into ChatGPT: “Write me a Bachmann text,”” he said.
Andreas Stichmann (“One Love in Pyongyang”) split the jury with his text about a 65-year-old and his life crisis. “Bland and boring,” said Kastberger, while juror Insa Wilke drew positive comparisons to the humorist Loriot and the cartoon character Homer Simpson.
The twelve participants will present their texts at the 47th Days of German-language Literature (3sat broadcasts) until Saturday. The awards will be presented on Sunday – above all the main prize of 25,000 euros, which commemorates the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973). Last year the author Ana Marwan, who comes from Slovenia and lives in Austria, won it.