Sasa Stanisic receives German Book Prize 2019 for "Herkunft" ("Origins")

The winner of the German Book Prize 2019 is Saša Stanišić for his novel “Herkunft” (Luchterhand).

Statement from the jury:

“Saša Stanišić is such a good storyteller that he even distrusts storytelling. Beneath each sentence in this novel the unavailable origins lurk, which simultaneously drive the storytelling. These origins only make themselves available as a fragment, a fiction and as a toying with the story’s possibilities. The author ennobles his readers with his vast imagination and releases them from the conventions of chronology, realism and formal unambiguity. ‘Hesitation has never told a good story’, he has his first-person narrator say. With great humour, he counters the narratives of historical misrepresentation with his own stories. ‘Herkunft’ (‘Origins’) is a portrait of a present that constantly re-tells itself anew – with the result that a ‘Self-Portrait with Ancestors’ becomes a novel about a Europe of life journeys.”

The members of the jury for the German Book Prize 2019 are: Petra Hartlieb (Hartliebs Bücher bookstore, Vienna), Hauke Hückstädt, (Literaturhaus, Frankfurt am Main), Björn Lauer (Hugendubel, Frankfurt), Jörg Magenau (independent literary critic), Alf Mentzer (Hessischer Rundfunk), Daniela Strigl (literary scholar) and Margarete von Schwarzkopf (author and literary critic).

The other novels that were shortlisted for the award are:

Raphaela Edelbauer, “Das flüssige Land” (Klett-Cotta), Miku Sophie Kühmel, “Kintsugi” (S. Fischer), Tonio Schachinger, “Nicht wie ihr” (Kremayr & Scheriau), Norbert Scheuer, “Winterbienen” (C.H.Beck) and Jackie Thomae, “Brüder” (Hanser Berlin).

The Stiftung Buchkultur und Leseförderung des Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (Foundation for Book Culture and the Promotion of Reading of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association) is awarding the German Book Prize 2019 to the best German-language novel of the year to coincide with the start of Frankfurter Buchmesse. The German Book Prize receives financial support from the Deutsche Bank Stiftung (Deutsche Bank Foundation), and other partners include Frankfurter Buchmesse and the city of Frankfurt am Main. The television network Deutsche Welle supports the German Book Prize in its media activities both at home and abroad.www.deutscher-buchpreis.de/en/.

Press photo for download (available from approx. 8.30 pm): www.boersenverein.de/pressefotos

Frankfurt am Main, 14 October 2019