Kathrin Schmidt Receives the German Book Prize 2009 for her Novel “Du stirbst nicht”

FRANKFURT - The winner of the German Book Prize 2009 is Kathrin Schmidt. She receives the award for her novel “Du stirbst nicht” (Kiepenheuer & Witsch). “The novel tells a story of regaining the world. Syllable by syllable, sentence by sentence, the heroine, waking from a coma after a brain haemorrhage, searches for her lost language, her lost memory. At times laconically, at times mockingly, at times uncannily, the novel describes the inner world of the sick woman, and with great eloquence, gives rise through this to the emerging story of her family, of her marriage, of an unplanned, unheard of love affair. The world she reassembles from the fragments also includes the disintegrating GDR, the years between reunification and the beginning of our century. Thus, the individual tale of a return from the brink of death is positioned both unobtrusively and with great skill in the echo chamber of the historical-political era of change” - in the words of the citation from the seven judges. The judges for the German Book Prize 2009 are: Richard Kämmerlings (literary editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung), Michael Lemling (managing director of Buchhandlung Lehmkuhl, Munich), Martin Lüdke (freelance literary critic), Lothar Müller (editor of the feature section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung), Iris Radisch (literary editor at DIE ZEIT), Daniela Strigl (literary critic and literary researcher at Vienna University) and the judges’ spokesman Hubert Winkels (literary editor with broadcasters Deutschlandfunk).

“Making a choice can never really do justice, but in the argument about quality, it is not simply unavoidable, but also justifiable, as long as relating to nothing more than the measure of quality”, said Gottfried Honnefelder, president of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels - German Publishers & Booksellers Association - and chair of the German Book Prize Academy, in welcoming the around 400 guests in the Kaisersaal at the Römer. “The real winner in the case of the German Book Prize is literature itself.”

With the German Book Prize 2009, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels awards the year’s best German-language novel and marks the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

www.deutscher-buchpreis.de.

Claudia Paul Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels Director Press & Information Phone: +49-(0)69-1306-293; E-mail: paul@boev.de

Source: Borsenverein des Dt. Buchhandels e.V.

Claudia Paul, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Director Press & Information, Phone: +49-(0)69-1306-293; E-mail: paul at boev.de