German Book Prize 2010

The longlist for this year’s German Book Prize was announced yesterday, featuring 20 titles that seven judges selected from an overall pool of 148 books published between October 2009 and September 2010. (And including the new book from Andreas Maier, whose Klausen we recently released. Yay for Maier!)

Here’s what the judges’ spokesperson Julian Encke had to say: “We are pleased to present a longlist that covers a broad spectrum: a diversity of forms and worlds, taking readers to the German provinces, but also to Russia, Israel, the former Yugoslavia, to Paris and Prague. These are novels with original voices, social portraits and narrative experiments, sometimes very funny, but without condemning their characters.”

The six-title shortlist will be announced the morning of September 8th, and the winner will be announced on October 4th, just before the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

For those of you who read German, extracts from all of these titles can be downloaded free of charge from Libreka! Usually translated excerpts are available for the six finalists, but until then, us non-German-speaking readers are pretty much shit out of luck. (Although I suspect someone—Michael Orthofer?—will have brief overviews of the more notable titles.)

Anyway, here’s the longlist:

Alina Bronsky, Die schärfsten Gerichte der tatarischen Küche (Kiepenheuer & Witsch) (Bronsky’s Broken Glass Park is available from Europa Editions)

Jan Faktor, Georgs Sorgen um die Vergangenheit oder im Reich des heiligen Hodensack-Bimbams von Prag (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)

Nino Haratischwili, Juja (Verbrecher Verlag)

Thomas Hettche, Die Liebe der Väter (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)

Michael Kleeberg, Das amerikanische Hospital (DVA)

Michael Köhlmeier, Madalyn (Carl Hanser Verlag)

Thomas Lehr, September. Fata Morgana (Carl Hanser Verlag)

Mariana Leky, Die Herrenausstatterin (DuMont Buchverlag)

Nicol Ljubić, Meeresstille (Hoffmann und Campe)

Kristof Magnusson, Das war ich nicht (Verlag Antje Kunstmann)

Andreas Maier, Das Zimmer (Suhrkamp Verlag) (As mentioned above Maier’s Klausen is available from Open Letter)

Olga Martynova, Sogar Papageien überleben uns (Droschl Literaturverlag)

Martin Mosebach, Was davor geschah (Carl Hanser Verlag)

Melinda Nadj Abonji, Tauben fliegen auf (Jung und Jung Verlag)

Doron Rabinovici, Andernorts (Suhrkamp Verlag)

Hans Joachim Schädlich, Kokoschkins Reise (Rowohlt Verlag)

Andreas Schäfer, Wir vier (DuMont Buchverlag)

Peter Wawerzinek, Rabenliebe (Galiani Berlin)

Judith Zander, Dinge, die wir heute sagten (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag)

Joachim Zelter, Der Ministerpräsident (Klöpfer & Meyer Verlag)