German Book Prize 2022: 20 novels have been nominated

The jury for the German Book Prize 2022 has nominated these 20 novels. Since the call for submissions went out, the jury has reviewed 233 titles published – or yet to be published – between October 2021 and 20 September 2022, when the shortlist will be announced.

Jury spokesperson Miriam Zeh (Deutschlandfunk Kultur) released the following statement:

“The great questions of our time are reverberating in contemporary German-language literature: questions about origins and identity, about the forms and future of our coexistence. They can unfold in the German or Austrian provinces no less than in Kabul or Pyongyang, in an impending dystopia or in the real historical East Berlin before the fall of the wall.
From over 200 titles and more submissions than ever before, we have chosen epic narratives, linguistically innovative poetic cascades and formal experiments that break with classical and realistic forms of the novel. We selected our longlist based on various criteria, just as the jury brings together perspectives from literary promotion and criticism. Both established authors and many lesser-known and younger voices have been nominated for the German Book Prize 2022. And if this means bringing these diverse novels to a curious reading public, we will be all the more delighted.”

The nominated novels (in alphabetical order) are:

•    Fatma Aydemir: Dschinns (Carl Hanser, February 2022)
•    Kristine Bilkau: Nebenan (Luchterhand, March 2022)
•    Daniela Dröscher: Lügen über meine Mutter (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, August 2022)
•    Carl-Christian Elze: Freudenberg (edition AZUR, February 2022)
•    Theresia Enzensberger: Auf See (Carl Hanser, August 2022)
•    Jan Faktor: Trottel (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, September 2022)
•    Marie Gamillscheg: Aufruhr der Meerestiere (Luchterhand, March 2022)
•    Kim de l’Horizon: Blutbuch (DuMont, July 2022)
•    Yael Inokai: Ein simpler Eingriff (Hanser Berlin, February 2022)
•    Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker: Wilderer (S. Fischer, March 2022)
•    Anna Kim: Geschichte eines Kindes (Suhrkamp, August 2022)
•    Esther Kinsky: Rombo (Suhrkamp, February 2022)
•    Dagmar Leupold: Dagegen die Elefanten! (Jung und Jung, February 2022)
•    Eckhart Nickel: Spitzweg (Piper, April 2022)
•    Gabriele Riedle: In Dschungeln. In Wüsten. Im Krieg. (Die Andere Bibliothek, March 2022)
•    Slata Roschal: 153 Formen des Nichtseins (homunculus, February 2022)
•    Anna Yeliz Schentke: Kangal (S. Fischer, March 2022)
•    Jochen Schmidt: Phlox (C.H.Beck, September 2022)
•    Andreas Stichmann: Eine Liebe in Pjöngjang (Rowohlt, March 2022)
•    Heinz Strunk: Ein Sommer in Niendorf (Rowohlt, June 2022)

In addition to Miriam Zeh, the members of the jury are: Erich Klein (independent critic, Vienna), Frank Menden (bookshop “stories! Die Buchhandlung”, Hamburg), Uli Ormanns (bookshop “Agnes Buchhandlung”, Cologne), Isabelle Vonlanthen (Literaturhaus Zürich), Selma Wels (curator and moderator, Frankfurt) and Jan Wiele (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

The next step will be for the members of the jury to select six titles from the longlist for inclusion on the shortlist, which will be announced on 20 September 2022. The six shortlisted authors will only find out who among them has won the German Book Prize on the evening of the award ceremony itself. The winner will receive 25,000 euros, the five finalists 2,500 euros each. The prize will be awarded in the Kaisersaal of the Frankfurt Römer on 17 October 2022, at the start of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, and will be broadcast live. 

The German Book Prize is awarded by the Stiftung Buchkultur und Leseförderung des Börsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhandels (Foundation for Book Culture and the Promotion of Reading of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association). The main sponsor of the German Book Prize is the Deutsche Bank Stiftung (Deutsche Bank Foundation), and the city of Frankfurt am Main is also a partner. The television network Deutsche Welle supports the German Book Prize in its media activities both at home and abroad.

Get to know the nominated novels: reading and audio samples, video clips, blog reviews

Beginning this week, the paperback “Deutscher Buchpreis 2022. Die Nominierten” (“German Book Prize 2022. The Nominees”) is available free of charge in many bookshops throughout Germany. It contains reading samples from and further information about all the nominated books, curated by Börsenblatt, the trade magazine of the technology and information provider MVB, and invites readers to discover the stories and their authors.

The podcast radio detektor.fm has produced audio samples from the 20 longlisted titles. The podcast episodes are available on www.deutscher-buchpreis.de/longlist and detektor.fm/deutscher-buchpreis, as well as on the detektor.fm app. All audio samples are also available as podcasts directly on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Deezer and Spotify. Beginning on 31 August, as a cooperating partner of the German Book Prize, the podcast Papierstau will discuss all nominated titles, the shortlist and the novel of the year. The podcast is free and available on all the usual streaming platforms, as well as on the website www.papierstaupodcast.de.

Beginning in September, the nominated authors and their novels will be presented in short video clips, which will be available on the website of the German Book Prize, on YouTube and on Instagram. 

In the coming weeks, under the hashtag #buchpreisbloggen, 20 literary bloggers will each present one of the nominated titles. The reviews will be published on www.deutscher-buchpreis.de/news and shared on the social media channels of the German Book Prize.

A press photo of the jury is available on www.boersenverein.de/pressefotos 

More information about the German Book Prize 2022 can be found at www.deutscher-buchpreis.de

The hashtag for the German Book Prize 2022 is #dbp22