Leipzig Book Fair Prize – SPIEGEL ONLINE

This identification of seriousness may surprise some: Heinz Strunk, who became known as part of the phone prank comedy group Studio Brown, whose first novel “Meat is my vegetables” a humorous accounting with life as a dance band musician, is nominated for the award the Leipzig book Fair – one of the most prestigious awards for contemporary German literature

In the novel, however, for which he is nominated herein, Heinz Strunk solves first of autobiographical topics. “golden glove” is about the woman murderer Fritz Honka, the St. Pauli in the seventies replied in fear and terror.

Among his competitors in the Fiction of the price are two playwrights who publish her first novel: Roland Schimmelpfennig, born in 1967, can be in “On a clear, cold January morning at the beginning of the 21st century” destiny paths at a highway construction site cross. His 1981 born colleague Nis-Momme Stockmann told in “The Fox” by a North German town that is plagued by floods

2015 won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize lyricist Jan Wagner -. And 2016 could be a book of poems succeed: Marion Poschmann with its “didactic poems and elegies” (as the subtitle of “Borrowed Landscapes”) as nominated as the 1008-page novel “Frohburg” the born in that Saxon city 1941 author Guntram Vesper

translator of five languages ​​nominated

A special feature of the Leipzig book Fair is that it will be awarded in the categories Fiction / essays and translation since its inception of 2005.

The nominated titles in the nonfiction category deal with subjects as varied as the world sailor Georg Forster (Author: Jürgen Goldstein), the sociology of restaurants (Christoph Ribbat), the relationship between horses and humans (Ulrich Raulff, the price already 2010 won for his Stefan-George-book), the painter Adolph Menzel (Werner Busch) and the climate crisis (John Schellnhuber).

works from five different original languages ​​are nominated for the Translation Prize: French (Claudia Hamm with “The Kingdom of God” by Emmanuel Carrère), American English (Frank Heibert with “Frank” by Richard Ford), Russian (Ursula Keller with “A street in Moscow” by Mikhail Ossorgin), Serbian (Brigitte Döbert with “tutors” by Bora Cosic) and Catalan (Kirsten Brandt with “volatile shine” by Joan Sales).

The winners will be announced on March 17, announced at the Leipzig Fair.