German Book Prize 2024 Longlist

It’s 2022 in London and the Queen is dead! Durga, an international Indian/German screenwriter with a huge appetite for rebellion...

It’s 2022 in London and the Queen is dead! Durga, an international Indian/German screenwriter with a huge appetite for rebellion and hallucinations runs past the mourners. While Mithu Sanyal’s celebrated debut Identitti explored identity politics, Antichristie digs deep into colonialism and the violence within us all. Durga has been hired to do a film adaptation of the imperial Agatha Christie thrillers. But suddenly, she’s thrown back to 1906. She meets Indian rebels whose battles are far from non-violent like Gandhi’s. And then the first bomb explodes. What kind of resistance is right in a wrong world?

For her 100th birthday, architect Anouk Perleman-Jacob invited Michael Köhlmeier to write her life story as a novel. Born in...

For her 100th birthday, architect Anouk Perleman-Jacob invited Michael Köhlmeier to write her life story as a novel. Born in Saint Petersburg, she lived through the Bolshevik terror. On Lenin’s orders, she was deported as a little girl along with her family and other intellectuals on so-called “philosophers’ ships.” For five days and nights, their boat drifted in the Gulf of Finland until the last passenger sent into exile boarded: It was Lenin himself.

Hidden in the pine forests on the outskirts of Berlin lies the Beelitz workers' lung sanatorium. When the factory worker...

Hidden in the pine forests on the outskirts of Berlin lies the Beelitz workers' lung sanatorium. When the factory worker Anna Brennerand the writer Johanna Schellmann met here in 1907, it had existential consequences for both women. Anna is considered clairvoyant, and although the avant-garde of the imperial era is enthusiastically experimenting with the occult, Anna's growing following becomes aproblem for the director of the sanatoriums. The encounter uncovers a deeply buried spirituality in Johanna, and she realises that Anna could play a key role in her literary work. But Anna does not allow herself to be taken in by anyone. Sixty years later, Johanna Schellmann tries to find words for her entanglements in the past, but only Vanessa, her great-granddaughter, sheds light on the darkness - in the middle of a luxuriously renovated Beelitz that is still haunted by the ghosts of the past. From the German Empire to the present day, Ulla Lenze portrays three women's lives who experience liberation and advancement and yet cannot save themselves from the threat of losing their importance.

After years, Heather returns to Colchis. To the sanatorium where she was evacuated as a teenager - through time travel....

After years, Heather returns to Colchis. To the sanatorium where she was evacuated as a teenager - through time travel. Heather, like many other evacuees, has since suffered from phantom memories and the pain of loneliness, having left behind a life and a future she barely knew. She hopes to find inner peace, but Colchis has also changed. The sanatorium has fallen into disrepair, the remaining residents have retreated into their own world. Matthias, evacuated from the time of the Peasant Wars, nevertheless becomes a confidant for Heather, showing her that to surrender means the end of humanity.

From Leipzig to Belgrade, from the GDR to the People's Republic of Yugoslavia, from silver screen spectacles to adventure novels....

From Leipzig to Belgrade, from the GDR to the People's Republic of Yugoslavia, from silver screen spectacles to adventure novels. Relentless and fast-paced, "The Projectionists" tells the story of our present being crushed by the past - and of incomparable characters: in the Velebit Mountains, a former partisan experiences the adventurous filming of Karl May's Winnetou film adaptations. Decades later, the brutal battles of the Yugoslavian wars take place in these very places - in the midst of it all, a group of young right-wing radicals from Dortmund experience the futility of their ideology. And in Leipzig, the texts of a former patient are discussed at a conference in a psychiatric clinic: How did he manage to disappear without a trace? Was he able to predict the future? And what links him to the world traveller Dr May, who was once also a patient at the clinic?

Jella loves Yannick very much. Yannick also loves Jella very much. They recognize each other. They do it differently. They...

Jella loves Yannick very much. Yannick also loves Jella very much. They recognize each other. They do it differently. They do it right. Until it shifts. Now Jella lies in her old childhood bedroom "with a pounding neck and a distant feeling", wondering how things got this far, taking another close look at her upbringing in Lusatia. Small town and gravel pits, glitter and gloss. At friends who carried her through so much. And at that moment when Yannick's hands closed around her neck.Die schönste Version is an introspection: Ruth-Maria Thomas writes about becoming a woman, being a woman, about bodies, desires, and deep abysses.

Erwin is earning the money, while his wife takes care of the children and the household. But when Erwin loses...

Erwin is earning the money, while his wife takes care of the children and the household. But when Erwin loses his job in his mid-50s and his father dies, he falls into an acute crisis. He oscillates between despair and delusions of grandeur. Bizarre plans sprout in his head and the greed for a pure, libidinous life in the wilderness. One day he sets off and disappears.Finding me tells Erwin's story from alternating perspectives and traces that of the family over three generations: from the suppression of individual desires, and the impact of patriarchal structures to the search for new role models in the present.

“If that's all there is, I’m moving out!” someone yells and heads off in their seven-league boots and their travel...

“If that's all there is, I’m moving out!” someone yells and heads off in their seven-league boots and their travel socks. A hare in the back seat. We travel straight through time, through the ages, and out into pitch-dark outer space. In a hand-drawn plane through the sky and through memories: of two grandmothers, one pale, one dark, one in-tact, one damaged. A grandfather and his furrowed hands. A brother and his tree. Of frantic dreams, twisted fairy tales, and Purple Rain.

A man no longer sleeps. With his nerves at breakingpoint, he fears losing everything: his marriage, his status, his life....

A man no longer sleeps. With his nerves at breakingpoint, he fears losing everything: his marriage, his status, his life. His wife Imogen sends him to San Vita, a mysterious luxury resort in the snowy silence of the Dolomites. Under the care of Professor Trinkl, he is told to find himself there. He resists for fear of having to face his innermost self. And rightly so: although Trinkl promises him happiness, he instils in him an unease that is rooted in his childhood. Deeply unsettled, the man flees to his best friend from childhood. And has no idea how far he will have to go to find healing.

Juno chats online with men who proclaim their love to women on the internet and try to scam them out...

Juno chats online with men who proclaim their love to women on the internet and try to scam them out of their money. But instead of falling for their scams, Juno finds a kind of freedom in talking to these men. In these conversations she can be who she wants to be and say what she wants to say – supposedly without consequences. This is in stark contrast to the rest of her life, when she is always on the go, always worrying about Jupiter, always busy and tied down. So Juno occasionally escapes from her day-to-day life by going online and playing games with men who lie to her. She herself becomes a liar. But when you lie, are you not lying first and foremost to yourself? One day Juno comes across Benu, who sees through her lies just as she sees through his. And despite the distance between them, they form a connection.

© Maximilian Gödecke

Author

Martina Hefter

 

In 2022, Stefanie Sargnagel reluctantly trades her comfortable Viennese sofa for a plane ticket to the USA. She is to...

In 2022, Stefanie Sargnagel reluctantly trades her comfortable Viennese sofa for a plane ticket to the USA. She is to teach creative writing at a small college in the middle of nowhere, Iowa. In this town of 8,000 inhabitants, surrounded by endless cornfields, there is nothing much else. Accompanied by music legend Christiane Rösinger during the initial period, they set out to explore the void. They encounter bad food, overweight but friendly locals, vultures, and an old Austro-Hungarian nostalgia enthusiast.

When eleven-year-old Lev is confined to bed for weeks, Kato, of all people, who is clever but shunned by everyone,...

When eleven-year-old Lev is confined to bed for weeks, Kato, of all people, who is clever but shunned by everyone, is sent to his bedside to bring him his homework. An unbreakable bond develops between the mismatched pair, providing a foothold for the two adolescents in the multi-ethnic communist state of Romania. Half a lifetime later, Lev is still walking the paths of his childhood, while Kato left for the West years ago. All that remains for Lev are her drawn postcards from all over Europe. Until one day he receives a card from Zurich pushing open the gate to the past again.

She had everything, and she lost everything. Following the death of her 17-year-old daughter Sonja and a cancer diagnosis,Linda leaves...

She had everything, and she lost everything. Following the death of her 17-year-old daughter Sonja and a cancer diagnosis,Linda leaves behind everything that had previously defined her: her work at a Leipzig art foundation; her husband Richard; her family and friends. Feeling distraught and vulnerable, she flees to an old farmhouse in the Saxon countryside. And it ends up being another woman’s daughter who brings her back to life from the brink of the abyss.

Her father’s death and clearing out his home set many things in motion for Rosa that she was actually glad...

Her father’s death and clearing out his home set many things in motion for Rosa that she was actually glad had been lying dormant. After all, the history of the Jeruscher family is an absolute mishmash of quarrels, attempted and successful escapes, longings and disappointed hopes, and the futile desire to find a home somewhere. Now everything is back: memories of her crazy childhood in the 90s, the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, and her relatives in Israel – but also her missing older sister, with whom she had broken ties for good reason.

In 1968, Teo, a young Laotian, arrives at Berlin's East Station. Love leads her to East Germany, far from her...

In 1968, Teo, a young Laotian, arrives at Berlin's East Station. Love leads her to East Germany, far from her family. However, her new life in Potsdam, seemingly a socialist idyll, is challenging. Even her perfect German cannot dispel the daily sense of being an outsider as an Asian woman.Fast forward to Christmas 1982: André, Teo's son, is thirteen, wishing to avoid his teacher's harassment and go unnoticed. It is not easy as a half-Laotian citizen of East Germany with a disabled younger brother. Yet, everything is fine as long as his mother remains healthy, his brother stays calm, and the mother and grandmother get along. However, a series of tragic events shake the family.

When Hans meets the young and beautiful stepmother of his classmate Hellmut Quandt, he has no inkling of the role...

When Hans meets the young and beautiful stepmother of his classmate Hellmut Quandt, he has no inkling of the role Magda will play in his life, both through his own relationship with her and through her position as the archetypal mother of the Third Reich. Back then, the Weimar Republic was still enjoying its brief time in the sun, and Hans was hopelessly in love with Hellmut.Years later, after Hellmut’s tragic death, Hans and Magda begin an affair. The relationship is not so much dishonest as transactional, with each of them taking what they need. While Magda wants to escape her marriage, Hans is desperate to hide his homosexuality. At heart though, both are seeking an ersatz for their mutually beloved Hellmut. It is only when Magda meets Joseph Goebbels and joins the Nazi Party that she and Hans definitively end their liaison. As she descends deeper into the belly of the regime, he goes along to get along, becoming a diplomat and discreetly meeting with lovers in hushed hotel rooms. And while Magda is soon appearing in the newsreels, Hans finds himself increasingly under threat. A story about the paths of two people and a country across a span of twenty years. And about how fate is always a matter of choices.

Zora del Buono was eight months old when her father died in a car accident in 1963. Her dead father...

Zora del Buono was eight months old when her father died in a car accident in 1963. Her dead father was a great void at the heart of the family. She and her mother hardly ever spoke about him. When her mother did mention him, Zora broke off the conversation, her heart pounding. She couldn’t bear her mother’s pain. Now, at 60, she wonders: what happened to E.T., the then 22-year-old man who caused the accident? How has he lived with the guilt for the past 60 years? Because of Him is the story of a search: the narrator goes looking for E.T., wanting to confront him with her family’s story. Her search takes her to dark, mysterious places where she finds answers that throw up new questions. What will it do to her, knowing more about the man who killed her father than about her father himself? And how can a person heal when there will always be a void in their life?

Toni and Toni developed a dance performance some time ago and were on the verge of a big breakthrough –...

Toni and Toni developed a dance performance some time ago and were on the verge of a big breakthrough – until an accident after the dress rehearsal on a euphoric night in a Viennese club changed everything. Since then, the two have been looking for their way back into life together.Toni, a trained dancer, falls back into old patterns of self-harm. She lives a listless and series-watching life, rarely leaving her bed, while Toni, the narrator, practises Zen meditation and develops an obsession with Buddhist teachings and learning Japanese characters. Their mutual care and inner conflicts put the couple to a severe test.

"I have seen. The self is a witness. It speaks, and yet it has no language." This is how she...

"I have seen. The self is a witness. It speaks, and yet it has no language." This is how she describes the process of storytelling. She wants to find a form for the unspeakable, the genocide of the Yezidi population, the seventy-fourth, perpetrated by IS fighters in Sinjar in 2014. Seventy-four is a journey to the origins, to the crime scenes: to the camps and the front lines, into the living rooms of relatives and on to an Ezidi village in Turkey where no one lives today. It is about looking, listening, bearing witness, linking images and reports with one's own history, with a life as a journalist and author in Germany.

Every day, nineteen-year-old Jannes and his family drive the sheep over the heathland of Lüneburger Heide. But there is growing...

Every day, nineteen-year-old Jannes and his family drive the sheep over the heathland of Lüneburger Heide. But there is growing unease in the area: the wolf is back. More and more sheep are being killed, and these deaths cause conflicts in the village which quickly turn political. As the situation escalates and threatens to culminate in vigilante justice within the community, Jannes takes refuge with his sheep on the heath. Until he starts running into a strange woman there. He decides to follow her, and little by little he starts to learn the secrets of this supposedly idylliclandscape. He stumbles across violence, nationalist ideology – and a profound silence.