The German Book Prize is the big-name (Man Booker-like) German fiction prize handed out in the fall -- at the Frankfurt Book Fair, of course -- and they'll announce their much-anticipated longlist next week, on 14 August.
Just ahead of that, the Wilhelm-Raabe-Literaturpreis -- with the same ambit (German language fiction published in 2013) -- has just announced its longlist of twelve titles (alas, not at the official site, last I checked); the only place I could find them all listed was in the local Braunschweiger Zeitung.
Is the Wilhelm Raabe worth paying attention to ? Well, note that they do pay out more money than the German Book Prize -- €30,000, to €25,000 for the far better-known prize. More significantly, they have a pretty good track record: Wolf Haas' The Weather Fifteen Years took the prize in 2006, Andreas Maier has won the prize, as has Sibylle Lewitscharoff, for Blumenberg, in 2011 (shortlisted for the German Book Prize; my review forthcoming) -- and last year they helped fan the fires in recognizing Christian Kracht's ultra-controversial Imperium (see, for example, one of my mentions last year). (Among German Book Prize-winners under review at the complete review: Uwe Tellkamp's Der Turm, forthcoming in English as an e-book from Frisch & amp; Co.)
So, yes, it certainly seems worth paying attention to. (The only two longlisted titles I have are the Glavinic and the Klein, but I'm not done with them yet.)
Just ahead of that, the Wilhelm-Raabe-Literaturpreis -- with the same ambit (German language fiction published in 2013) -- has just announced its longlist of twelve titles (alas, not at the official site, last I checked); the only place I could find them all listed was in the local Braunschweiger Zeitung.
Is the Wilhelm Raabe worth paying attention to ? Well, note that they do pay out more money than the German Book Prize -- €30,000, to €25,000 for the far better-known prize. More significantly, they have a pretty good track record: Wolf Haas' The Weather Fifteen Years took the prize in 2006, Andreas Maier has won the prize, as has Sibylle Lewitscharoff, for Blumenberg, in 2011 (shortlisted for the German Book Prize; my review forthcoming) -- and last year they helped fan the fires in recognizing Christian Kracht's ultra-controversial Imperium (see, for example, one of my mentions last year). (Among German Book Prize-winners under review at the complete review: Uwe Tellkamp's Der Turm, forthcoming in English as an e-book from Frisch & amp; Co.)
So, yes, it certainly seems worth paying attention to. (The only two longlisted titles I have are the Glavinic and the Klein, but I'm not done with them yet.)