We were surprised by the frequent use of time travel as a motif, occasionally combined with the theme of healing, which echoes throughout much contemporary literature like the century-old novel “Magic Mountain.” And where is the wide world; the echo of today’s crises and wars? Many of the nominated novels by authors for the German Book Prize 2024 were selected because they responded to the question in a variety of ways to how we tell stories when our own reality often seems inconceivable.
Autofiction is legion
Perhaps it has to do with the observation that “the concept of crisis is itself in crisis” (Armin Nassehi); that Russia’s war on Ukraine has exponentially increased the number of crises we are facing today, which leads to a general sense of overwhelment, coupled with the need to at least reassure ourselves of our own experiences and memories. But perhaps the growing trend towards autofiction also goes hand in hand with a cult of the self in social media culture? Whatever the case may be, we were particularly impressed by those autofictional novels adept at playing with the popular genre. Martina Hefter, our award winner, but also Maren Kames, for example, draw on their own lives and at the same time create distinct art: Hefter, for example, by parodying the cult of the ego in social networks and thematizing exploitative relationships as far away as Africa; Kames, by taking a rabbit on an auto-motorized jaunt through autobiographical terrain, searching for a new, and by no means unambiguous language.
Gaps often provoke research and imagination: André Kubiczek envisions his mother's life that was cut short in the GDR, and her final journey to her home country Laos shortly before her death in 1986. His novel is one of the books this year that neither scandalizes nor romanticizes the GDR. East Germany as a fractured space of experience for fragile identities also plays an important role in Ruth-Maria Thomas, Franz Friedrich, Katja Oskamp, Patricia Hempel and Domenico Müllensiefen, while Zora del Buono sets off on a trip to the Alpine villages of Switzerland to research and reconstruct her father’s untimely death that was caused by a traffic accident. Together with her, we learn much about the number of deadly traffic accidents, but also about the man in the snazzy car, who took her father's life, and likely has been plagued by guilt ever since. Several stories about adoption, such as those by Franz Dobler or Ulrike Draesner, offer space to reflect on family, belonging and elective affinity.
Powerful women
Sexual autonomy is a topic that is being addressed directly by a relatively new voice in the landscape of the German-language novel: Ruth-Maria Thomas succeeds in combining that quest with sexualized violence, so that the perpetrator-victim perspective leaves some questions unanswered. Male-dominated violence in relationships is also a central theme for Lana Lux, Laura Leupi and Barbara Rieger. Mariann Bühler creates characters, who transcend gender boundaries in seemingly rock-solid village structures. Several novels tell of men in crisis and powerful women:
This is also the case with Iris Wolff, who tells of a childhood love story backwards, chapter by chapter— soon after the collapse of the communist regime, he remained in his home village in Romania, while she left for Western Europe to eke out a living as a street painter. Wolff, who lets the young man tell the story, takes us back to Romania’s past, while refusing to reduce her characters to mere vehicles of identiy politics ad absurdum. Arno Geiger has written perhaps the staunchest novel about the crisis of masculinity, depicting the dream journey of an abdicated king in search of the meaning of life.
Time travel
If you read several novels in succession, you are bound discover peculiar correspondences between the books. Time travel is one of the possibilities of literature past and present. For example Mithu Sanyal, who catapults us from present-day London to an “India House” at the dawn of the 20th century, and forces us to consider the revolutionary violence inherent to all liberation movements and post-colonialist debates. Franz Friedrich, on the other hand, has written a philosophical time travel novel about a sanatorium called Colchis, which brings together people from all eras, who have been saved from an untimely death. He jumps from Thomas Müntzer, whose face appears on the GDR’s 5-mark bill to the ‘Peasants' War in the 16th century, to the question of whether history is determined or can be corrected.
Illness and healing
Timon Karl Kaleyta and Ulla Lenze also write about a sanatorium. While Kaleyta parodies an exclusive sanatorium à la “Magic Mountain”, in which a man without qualities seeks a cure for his (not solely sexual) impotence, Lenze is the first to depict the history of the Beelitz sanatorium near Potsdam as literature. Like Lenze, Jan Schomburg also investigates the spiritualism of the 1920s.
Doris Wirth details how the father of a family drifts towards a violent psychosis with no prospect of recovery, while Markus Berges takes us on an autofictional journey to a women’s psychiatric clinic in Münsterland and to a psychotic patient who was his first love. Paula Fürstenberg writes about how friends take care of one another, Jan Kuhlbrodt about thinking, reading and writing with a body in steady decline. Martina Hefter is Kuhlbrodt’s partner; their novels are very different in style and content and yet, read together, present an unforgettable impression of the social, psychological and physical barriers people who are ill are faced with in our supposedly barrier-free world.
Democracy or dictatorship
The twenties and thirties of the 20th century are often used as a reference within today’s political debates. Nora Bossong describes the seductive power of fascism through the eyes of a homosexual follower, who is irresistibly drawn to Magda Goebbels, the wife of the Nazi propaganda minister. Markus Thielemann literally brings the ghosts of the Nazi past to life. The seemingly timeless everyday life of a shepherd family in the Lüneburg Heath is invaded not only by wolves, but also by the New Right and the restless ghost of a murdered Nazi slave laborer.
The reality of wars
A few novels, each outstanding in its own right, address the reality of war in our time. Michael Köhlmeier explores the Leninist-Stalinist-Putinist-paranoid Russian “soul” in a novel that also questions the possibilities of achieving literary truth. Clemens Meyer’s opus magnum links the Yugoslav Wars to the film adaptations of Karl May’s novels, and lays bare the projections inherent to male hero myths. Ronya Othmann shows us the meaning of genocide, specifically the genocide of the Yazidis by the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” that took place ten years ago; even within the scope of literature: language reaches an insurmountable limit here. Where violence triumphs, art fails. And yet, we cannot do without storytelling, writing and reading.
P.S. Dystopias…
…can also be found in many books: Jasmin Schreiber, Johanna Grillmayer, Helwig Brunner, Andrea Grill, Bernhard Kegel, Elias Hirschl and Thea Mengeler. But whether dealing with the climate crisis or AI, the jury believes that the best literary form for the end of the world has yet to be found..
Natascha Freundel is a radio journalist at radio3 RBB and moderates the debate podcast “Der zweite Gedanke” (on second thought). From 2010 to 2018, she was a radio journalist at NDR Kultur in Hanover and Hamburg, prior to that she was a freelance journalist and literary critic in Berlin, Israel and Ukraine for ARD Kulturwellen and various newspapers, including Berliner Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau and Die Zeit. In 2024, she was spokesperson for the jury of the German Book Prize.
Books mentioned:
- Nora Bossong: Reichskanzlerplatz. Suhrkamp
- Markus Berges: Irre Wolken. Rowohlt Berlin
- Helwig Brunner: Flirren. Literaturverlag Droschl
- Mariann Bühler: Verschiebung im Gestein. Atlantis Verlag
- Zora del Buono: Seinetwegen. C.H. Beck
- Franz Dobler: Ein Sohn von zwei Müttern. Tropen
- Ulrike Draesner: zu lieben. Penguin Verlag
- Franz Friedrich: Die Passagierin. S. Fischer
- Paula Fürstenberg: Weltalltage. Kiepenheuer & Witsch
- Arno Geiger: Reise nach Laredo. Hanser
- Andrea Grill: Perfekte Menschen. Leykam Verlag
- Johanna Grillmayer: That's life in Dystopia. Mary Salzmann Verlag
- Martina Hefter: Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir? Klett-Cotta
- Patricia Hempel: Verlassene Nester. Tropen
- Elias Hirschl: Content. Paul Zsolnay Verlag
- Timon Karl Kaleyta: Heilung. Piper
- Maren Kames: Hasenprosa. Suhrkamp
- Bernhard Kegel: Gras. Dörlemanm
- Michael Köhlmeier: Das Philosophenschiff. Hanser
- André Kubiczek: Nostalgia. Rowohlt Berlin
- Jan Kuhlbrodt: Krüppelpassion - oder Vom Gehen. Gans Verlag
- Ulla Lenze: Das Wohlbefinden. Klett-Cotta
- Laura Leupi: Das Alphabet der sexualisierten Gewalt. März Verlag
- Lana Lux: Geordnete Verhältnisse. Hanser Berlin
- Thea Mengeler: Nach den Fähren. Wallstein Verlag
- Clemens Meyer: Die Projektoren. S. Fischer
- Domenico Müllensiefen: Schnall dich an, es geht los. Kanon Verlag
- Katja Oskamp: Die vorletzte Frau. park x ullstein
- Ronya Othmann: Vierundsiebzig. Rowohlt
- Barbara Rieger: Eskalationsstufen. Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau
- Mithu Sanyal: Antichristie. Hanser
- Jan Schomburg: Die Möglichkeit eines Wunders. dtv
- Jasmin Schreiber: Endling. Eichborn Verlag
- Markus Thielemann: Vom Norden rollt ein Donner. C.H. Beck
- Ruth-Maria Thomas: Die schönste Version. Rowohlt Hundert Augen
- Doris Wirth: Findet mich. Geparden Verlag
- Iris Wolff: Lichtungen. Klett-Cotta
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