Literature business-Attention, book price longlist: Fear to read on

The second worst are the authors descriptions. They are oriented towards the most commonly read important tuer formulations such as “has studied in Wuppertal and Paris”. Anyone who has ever seen a university from the inside assumes that studying in Paris was only a semester abroad, but it just sounds better. The résumés of those twelve writers and eight writers whose works made it to the longlist of the German Book Prize were also properly inflated for the associated reading sample band.

One had a residence scholarship, the next one was a participant in the Bavarian Academy of writing, one won the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize, another the Franz Hessel Prize and another the Kranichsteiner Literature Promotion, several were already on various shortlists or reached the final of the Open Mike. The only nominee in which short biography is dispensed with the list of such successes is Feridun Zaimoglu. But he doesn’t need it either; You already know that.

The German Book Prize will be awarded by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandel in October shortly before the Frankfurt Book Fair. He is endowed with 25,000 euros. At the end of August, the longlist of the authors was presented, from which the jury distilled the shortlist with six titles, which will be announced next week. The five who do not win are awarded 2500 euros each.

However, what is not lost is the sales figures. In the book industry, a novel is a success if 4,000 copies have passed the counter – if 0.005 percent of the population was ready to spend money on it. This does not have to be a criterion for quality, but it can be assumed that this was not granted to each of the author on the longlist.

After reading the official reading samples, you also understand why. When an author begins with the words: “Well when I was on myself, I applied to the Germanists as a tutor, that was possible if you had five semesters behind you”, you are inclined to put the book on page after the first sentence and use the time more sensible. You could defrost the ice compartment or sort CDs again.

But then you say to yourself, “Don’t be so strict, give you a chance!” And so you fight 20 reading samples to find out what a book distinguished that was considered to be worthy of longlist. What strikes: Many write in the 1st person. This form of storytelling works when the I actually tell something and emerges from it as a changed person. Or if – as with Heinz Strunk – it describes the normal madness so precisely that it starts to shine.

“Life insurance” by Katrin Bach begins with the words: “I am thirty -four years old and I’m afraid.” That is an introduction! And because “I’m afraid” makes it curious, she repeats this sentence in manifold content variations. This creates an incredible monotony, which-at the time we took care of the German performance course-is supposed to symbolize that life in your village is incredibly monotonous. Since this message has been understood after four and a half pages, the remaining 230 pages are quite afraid.

At Kaleb Erdmann seems to have a tea trauma (“Drinking tea has something masochistic, I’ve always thought that, I say”). So in “the alternative school” via the tea infusion as a metaphor, while he sees a nutria, which in turn is viewed by a child. But actually it is neither about tea nor false beavers, but a novel by the first-person narrator. So a case of self -referential literature. It was considered super modern. Back then, in the 70s. But now we are half a century further.

In German middle class literature, the children of administrative employees often remember the old row house settlement, this is mostly inefficient. Perhaps post -migrant authors will succeed in writing more in -depth stories based on experiences that are more existential in nature? Like Dmitrij Kapitelman, who was born in Kyjiw, Jina Khayyer, who is Iranian descent, and Jehona Kicaj, who was born in Kosovo in the early 90s. That could be exciting, you think. But what all three deliver are experience reports on how to find them in the “time”. So texts of the way that educates remind you that there is a world beyond the Federal Republic in which it is more uncomfortable. This is journalistic, but not literarily interesting.

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If you once had the stories and novels of the most renowned migrant German writer Maxim Biller. Then they knew that autobiographically colored texts live from the fact that they leave open on the one hand, which is real and what is invented, and on the other hand have a narrative core with all personal decor. This is missing from Dmitrij Kapitelman, Jina Khayyer and Jehona Kicaj. The read does not back up soon – just as you will soon forget the texts of the “time” again.

The Uwe Kopf (“The Elf Brains of the Silk Spin Rawe”), who died much too early, once said: “You should reduce your texts to the skeleton and omit every unnecessary word. This applies especially to adjectives. Often the author only wants to force (…) originality. “You think about it when you read such a sentence:” The suitcase rolls well and without resistance next to me over the reflecting stone slabs. “Many texts on the lunglist are sick that the effort to be” original “, too obviously shimmers through.

And while secretly exhibiting the death certificate of German -language literature and wondering who reads (masochist? People without language?), This happens miracles. A former psychiatric nurse knocks out a text, in which one hangs in the ropes after just a few sets: »My mother teaches us things. Other things other than sitting at the dining table with a straight back than to say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’, other things than her son. She teaches us that schnapps means trouble. That men who drink beer are harmless. “This is how” the black begins at my father’s hands “by Lena Schätät. And of course I will spend the 24 euros to find out who drinks what here and why.

German Book Prize 2025: The nominees. 128 pages, available free of charge in many bookstores.