Sometimes just the titles of new books can reveal a lot about what’s currently preoccupying a country. We take a look at the six novels on the shortlist for Germany’s most prestigious literary prize.
From climate anxiety to Germany’s unresolved past, the six novels which have made it into the shortlist for this year’s Deutscher Buchpreis offer a surprisingly useful guide to the ideas shaping the country today.
The shortlisted books range from village histories haunted by the Nazi era to stories about climate activism and radicalisation, Jewish life in contemporary Berlin and the lingering legacy of the former East Germany.
Two of the contenders are even called Die Lücken (The Omissions) and Schleifen (Loops) – titles that seem to capture a broader mood of missing pieces, uncertainty and attempts to make sense of a complicated present.
None of the six novels has yet appeared in English translation, having all been published this year. But it’s a safe bet that an English version of the eventual winner and many of the others will appear before too long.
Some of the shortlisted authors already have strong international profiles. For example, an earlier novel by nominee Shida Bazyar – translated into English as The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran – was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize this year.
The Deutscher Buchpreis is Germany’s closest equivalent to the Booker Prize in Britain or the National Book Award in the United States. The winner will be announced in Frankfurt on October 5th.
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Shida Bazyar – Die Lücken (The Gaps)
People don’t really bet on the outcome of this prize in the way that people bet on who will win the Booker in Britain, but if there’s a book many critics see as the one to beat, this is it.
Shida Bazyar’s novel spans roughly a century in the life of a village in the Hunsrück region in western Germany. A ghost narrator moves through time, uncovering stories that have been forgotten, suppressed or deliberately ignored. Jewish residents, committed Nazis, teachers, newcomers and refugee families all become part of a larger picture.
For international residents, the novel explores Germany’s continuing efforts to confront its Nazi past, while also examining later waves of migration, including families who arrived from Iran.
Franziska Gänsler – Orca
The most immediately contemporary novel on the shortlist may also be the most unsettling.
Franziska Gänsler’s Orca follows Cora, a young woman working behind a supermarket meat counter whose life becomes intertwined with that of Olympia, a charismatic childhood acquaintance who eventually becomes associated with political violence.
As the story unfolds, friendship, class resentment, climate activism and radicalisation become increasingly difficult to separate.
What makes the novel interesting is its refusal to offer easy explanations. It explores how loneliness, status anxiety and the desire to belong can push people in unexpected directions. Anyone who lived through Germany’s pandemic years – and sensed a growing generational frustration – may find parts of it uncomfortably familiar.
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Elias Hirschl – Schleifen (Loops)
Every shortlist needs a book that people describe with a mixture of admiration and panic. This year’s candidate is Schleifen.
Austrian author Elias Hirschl has written a wildly inventive novel about language, philosophy and the search for perfect communication. The story follows Franziska Denk and mathematician Otto Mandl, whose shared obsession with words leads them into increasingly strange intellectual territory.
Reviewers have reached for comparisons ranging from Wittgenstein to Jorge Luis Borges. The book contains language cults, bizarre illnesses, thought experiments, a seemingly endless supply of ideas and a generous dose of surreal humour.
Some critics have called it difficult. Others have called it brilliant. Most seem to agree it’s both.
Valeria Gordeev – Die Zikade entschlüpft ihrer goldglänzenden Hülle (The Cicada Slips Out of Its Shiny Golden Shell)
The shortlist’s only debut author has produced perhaps its strangest novel.
Valeria Gordeev, who won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2023, tells a story that moves between Berlin, Moscow and Kyiv while exploring immortality, war, political fantasy and technological dreams.
Valeria Gordeev, the only debut novelist on the shortlist. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/APA | Gerd Eggenberger
One sibling lives in Germany, another works beneath the Kremlin preserving Lenin’s body – and events become steadily more bizarre from there.
The novel blends satire, science fiction, political commentary and grotesque comedy. Yet beneath the chaos lies a serious attempt to understand the post-Soviet world and the sense of disorientation created by war and authoritarianism.
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Peggy Mädler – Selbstregulierung des Herzens (Self-Regulation of the Heart)
One of the strongest trends on this year’s shortlist is an interest in history. Peggy Mädler’s contribution approaches it from a distinctly East German perspective.
Beginning in the 1960s and extending all the way to the Covid-19 era, the novel follows Georg, an economist fascinated by cybernetics and computer systems in the GDR. Alongside questions of technology and planning, Mädler explores everyday life under socialism, personal freedom and the compromises people make to survive within restrictive political systems.
The result is a book about control, prediction and the limits of human agency. Those trying to understand why memories of the GDR remain such a powerful force in modern Germany will find plenty to think about here.
Dana Vowinckel – Anton und Alma (Anton and Alma)
If Die Lücken examines Germany’s past, Anton und Alma looks directly at some of its most sensitive contemporary debates.
Dana Vowinckel’s second novel follows two young Berliners in love. Anton comes from a Jewish academic family. Alma, meanwhile, comes from a far more precarious background and must confront uncomfortable aspects of her own family history.
Their relationship unfolds against a backdrop that includes the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the events of October 7th, 2023.
The book asks difficult questions about identity, belonging and the pressures placed on personal relationships by political events. It also offers a much-praised portrait of contemporary Jewish life in Germany.
