Leipzig Book Fair 2023 Prize for Dinçer Güçyeter | MDR.DE

With her book, the author put an extraordinary woman, who was always in the second row, in the first row. “Bittere Brunnen” goes beyond an ordinary biography – it is a “memory book” which stands for great openness and at the same time is a precise documentation of political contexts.

Johanna Schwering prevailed in the “Translation” category. She translated Aurora Venturini’s coming-of-age novel “Die Cousinen” from Argentinian Spanish into German. The book tells the life of a teenager in her 40’s who experiences abuse. “This hard, yet never cynical novel needs a congenial translation because it concretely demonstrates the enlightenment in the narrator’s linguistic development right down to the comma,” said jury member Shirin Sojitrawalla. In her laudatory speech, she praised the fact that Schwering had “translated an extraordinary novel into incredible German”. “The world has never heard of such a first-person narrator.” It is a bold translation.

The prize of the Leipzig Book Fair is endowed with a total of 60,000 euros. A total of 465 titles were submitted, 15 were nominated. The award, which honors outstanding new German-language publications and translations in the categories of fiction, non-fiction/essay writing and translation, has been awarded by a seven-person jury since 2005.

For the first time in three years, the award was presented at the trade fair instead of digitally. The Leipzig Book Fair was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, and last year it was canceled at short notice due to the cancellation of many exhibitors.

Last year’s award winners include Tomer Gardi (fiction), Anne Weber (non-fiction/essay writing) and Uljana Wolf (translation). They follow well-known writers such as Ingo Schulze, Clemens Meyer, Saša Stanišić, Natascha Wodin and Anke Stelling, who have already received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in previous years.

Source: Book Fair live stream on air, kna, dpa, afp / Editorial processing: Valentina Prljic