“Nothing like writing, writing, writing.” This is the credo for his most recent work, “Property,” which also serves as a credo for his life. Although Wolf Haas is not a manic, fast writer, he is more of a mischievous, delicate writer. Now the Austrian, born in 1960, will be awarded the Erich Kästner Prize for Literature 2024.
The honor is given to German-speaking authors “who have published outstanding literary works with contemporary criticism.” The award ceremony will take place on February 23, 2024, the 125th birthday of Erich Kästner, in the International Youth Library in Blutenburg Castle in Munich. The prize is endowed with 5000 euros.
The jury’s statement states: “In the brilliance and ingenuity of his language, his confident and habitual use of comedy and humor, the reflection of human fears and hardships, in the close ties of his reading public, a widespread relationship to the namesake of this prize. Wolf is evident Haas therefore receives the Erich Kästner Prize for his always surprising and linguistically sparkling oeuvre.”
The studied German and former advertising copywriter initially made a name for himself as a crime writer; The series about the quirky investigator Simon Brenner reaches an audience of millions (most recently “Garbage”) and was partly successfully made into a film (with Josef Hader in the leading role). With genre-free novels such as “The Weather 15 Years Ago” (2006), “Defense of the Missionary Position” (2012) and “Young Man” (2018), Haas has shown himself to be very experimental in form, language and content and has always surprised.
He has already received several awards for his complex work, including the Bremen Literature Prize and the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize. With “Eigentum”, his mother memoirs published by Hanser Verlag at the beginning of September 2023, Haas has it on the shortlist for the Austrian Book Prize 2023 done.
The Erich Kästner Prize for Literature has been awarded at irregular intervals by the Erich Kästner Society since 1979. Before Wolf Haas, Peter Rühmkorf (1979), Loriot (1984), Robert Gernhardt (1999), Tomi Ungerer (2003), Andreas Steinhöfel (2009) and Felicitas Hoppe (2015) were honored.