German Book Prize 2006: Press Commentaries

Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books
“So how do you make a splash in a tough overseas market? Last year, despite widespread misgivings, the literary industry in Germany pulled together to create the German Book Prize. This centralised, high profile fiction competition is designed to stir up a Booker-sized global hullabaloo (…). The 2006 long-list has just emerged. (…). Among other long-listed titles I´d love to see make the perilous journey into English as fast as possible is New Lives (…).”
The Independent, 25.08.2006

Literature
“In 2005 the Federation of German Booksellers awarded its German Book Prize, with a first prize of €25,000 (about $30,200), to the Austrian Arno Geiger for his novel Es geht uns gut, which, like several other well-received works of 2005, returned to the time-honoured tradition of the German family novel pioneered by Thomas Mann in Buddenbrooks (1901). Geiger's novel had as its main character Philipp Erlach, a man in his mid-30s who must come to terms with the difficult legacy of earlier eras, particularly the generation of his two grandfathers, one an opponent of the Nazis and the other a supporter.”
Encyclopædia Britannica 2006

A prize alters the reading landscape
“The arts, media and public opinion reacted with barely concealed disapproval or scepticism when a new literary prize was announced two years ago. Nobody wanted to believe that the initiators (…) would be able to achieve their ambitious aim of managing at long last to create a prestigious author’s award in Germany that makes a big public impact and attracts international attention (…). But this was exactly what this German Book Prize actually managed to do straight off with its first award (…).” Die Welt, 13.09.2006

I am Yugloslavia
“Tomorrow sees the second presentation of the German Book Prize and the fact that it actually feels as if it has always existed and were a long-established leading feature of German literary life, seems a brilliant indication that the initiators have achieved something very good. And this year too, the titles on the socalled long list and short list have been gratefully and in the main benevolently discussed within the industry.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 1.10.2006

The prizewinner
“A question mark hangs over the literary world. And the question mark could hardly be any bigger. Because as of today, it has not yet been said clearly and openly who will win this year’s German Book Prize.” Frankfurter Rundschau, 2.10.2006

Signal for the fair
“You have to grant them one thing: its inventors have already come a long way in popularising the German Book Prize. On Monday morning in a Berlin supermarket, for example, the droning musak stopped for a moment and a female voice announced as one of the three items of “top news” that the Book Prize was being presented today in Frankfurt.” Die Tageszeitung, 4.10.2006

Money for books
“The effect of greater acceptance in the second round was guaranteed this year not least by the quality of titles competing for the prize.”
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 4.10.2006

Life goes haywire
“It’s new, has a special charm and may open the door to the international book world for the winner: the German Book Prize with which the German Publishers & Booksellers Association – Börsenverein – awards the best novel of the year (…).” Frankfurter Neue Presse, 4.10.2006

German Book Prize survives baptism of fire
“There is a great deal of talk of risk-taking this evening in the packed Kaisersaal at the Rathaus, where the colour spectrum is dominated by black jackets and dresses. But in the end, there is no cause for mourning. The mayor sums it up (…): “A bold undertaking”, she says, and adds later on with satisfaction: “Ordeal by fire overcome!” Frankfurter Rundschau, 4.10.2006

Hullabaloo in the Kaisersaal
“Contrary to all the industry’s greedily seasonal laws, the jury has decided on the novel by Katharina Hacker published by Suhrkamp Verlag and is to be commended for it. (…) At the press conference afterwards, the prizewinner was surrounded by a huge throng of photographers as never before seen in Germany’s literary world, directing a battery of flashbulbs at her (…).” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4.10.2006

Katharina Hacker
“The German Book Prize has been awarded for the second time and – many congratulations – has gone again to the right candidate, a female candidate this time around.” Die Welt, 7.10.2006

Twofold stroke of fortune
“The German Book Prize judges have made a good choice with this decision. They would have been just as right, in my view, to have awarded Thomas Hetttche for his very successful novel “Waraus wir gemacht sind” (Verlag Kiepenheuer&Witsch). Hettche too (…) is one of the most important minds in this generation of roughly forty-year-olds, but he is certainly visible on the literary scene and it is good that Katharina Hacker, someone rather more on the fringes up to now, gains in public awareness thanks to this prize.” www.zeit.de, 10.10.2006

Making the running
“A glance at the ‘Spiegel’ bestseller list for next week is quite surprising. It’s not Charlotte Link listed there at number one, nor Kathy Reichs, nor Daniel Kehlmann or Günter Grass. But Katharina Hacker with “Die Habenichtse”, the novel which just three weeks ago (…) was the surprise winner of the German Book Prize.”
Der Tagesspiegel, 20.10.2006