Martina Hefter wins 2024 German Book Prize
October 15, 2024
Juno, the protagonist in Martina Hefter's "Hey guten morgen, wie geht es dir?" (Hey, Good Morning, How Are You?) is a performance artist in her mid-50s living in Leipzig, Germany, who cares for her husband, who has multiple sclerosis. On sleepless nights, she chats with a Nigerian love scammer, Benu, who wants to fleece her. Eventually, the question arises as to who is exploiting whom — and what happens when, contrary to expectations, lines blur between digital and real-life relationships.
In awarding the 2024 German Book Prize to Hefter, the jury said: "The novel combines grueling everyday life with mythological figures and cosmic dimensions in a fascinating way, navigating between melancholy and euphoria, reflecting on trust and deception. Martina Hefter tells of all this in her cleverly choreographed novel, which exerts its very own attraction."
The 59-year-old Hefter has published five volumes of poetry and three novels to date. Hailing from Pfronten in Bavaria, she had also won the Grand Prize of the German Literature Fund this past August. Like her protagonist, she is a dancer and performance artist. Another biographical element in the story is that her own husband, author Jan Kuhlbrodt, is also seriously ill.
'We have to be vigilant'
Visibly surprised at being declared the winner, Hefter dedicated her prize to her readers, recalling fond memories of many conversations she's had at readings.
She also included a political aspect in her acceptance speech. Without expressly naming the far-right Alternative for Germany party, she decried the fact that many people she talked to while researching her book feel threatened by "a certain party, who deems they should not actually be here [in Germany] because they perhaps don't have the right skin color, live with a disability or don't identify with a specific gender."
"We have to be vigilant, we can be loud and we have to intervene," Hefter stressed.
Other favorites in the short list
The winning title was determined in several selection stages. Since the start of the competition, the seven jury members reviewed 196 titles published between October 2023 and September 2024. A longlist of 20 titles was compiled from these novels, which was then whittled down to a shortlist of six.
Short-listed works seen by critics as favorites ahead of the awards ceremony included Clemens Meyer's "Die Projektoren" (The Projectionists) and Ronya Othmann's "Vierundsiebzig" (Seventy-Four).
Described as an epic tale about Europe's crises and the art of storytelling, Meyer's anti-violence and anti-war "Die Projektoren" delves into the lives of individuals in post-reunification Germany, highlighting the socioeconomic challenges and cultural shifts they face.
Meyer previously received Man Booker International nominations for the English translations of two earlier works. His books have been translated into Turkish, Croatian, Japanese, Arabic, Macedonian and Tamil, among other languages.
Othmann was born in Munich in 1993 to a Kurdish-Yazidi father and a German mother. Her second 500-page novel, "Vierundsiebzig," documents how the the terrorist organization IS subjected Yazidis in the Shingal area in Iraq to mass killings, forced conversions, the abduction of young children and the sexual enslavement of thousands of women and girls. Othman describes the many persecutions faced by the Yazidis over the centuries; the book's title refers to the 74th historically recorded mass murder of the community that happened in 2014. Addressing issues of migration and integration, her book provides a poignant look at the experiences of immigrants in Germany.
Overlooked German authors
The German Book Prize has occasionally overlooked German authors who later achieved international acclaim.
Jenny Erpenbeck's "Kairos" was a bestseller in Germany when it was published in 2021 but didn't make the cut for the German Book Prize. However, its translated version went on to win the International Booker Prize in 2024.
Similarly, Daniel Kehlmann, whose novel "Measuring the World" was not awarded the German Book Prize, received widespread acclaim and numerous international awards. It was translated into more than 40 languages and has been described as one of the biggest successes of postwar German literature.
The German Book Prize is a prestigious literary award presented annually to the best German-language novel of the year. It is awarded by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.
The winner receives €25,000 ($27,250) in prize money, and the five finalists each get €2,500.
The prize aims to highlight outstanding contemporary German-language literature and to promote reading and book culture. It is typically awarded at the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the world's largest book fairs.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier