They've announced that Ralph Dutli has won the Rheingau Literatur Preis 2013 for his Soutines letzte Fahrt (see the Wallstein Verlag publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.de); it was also longlisted for the German Book Prize last week (see my previous mention).
Yes, the winning title sounds interesting -- based on the painter Chaim Soutine --; yes, Dutli sounds interesting (yet another translating author -- from the Russian, in his case); yes, this prize has an impressive winners-list (Peter Stamm in 2000, Reinhard Jirgl in 2003, Clemens Meyer in 2006, to name just a few winners) -- but what's eye-catching is what he gets for winning: the cleverly rounded amount of €11,111 -- and, more importantly, 111 bottles of local wine (Riesling, apparently). That should keep him going for a while.
Yes, the winning title sounds interesting -- based on the painter Chaim Soutine --; yes, Dutli sounds interesting (yet another translating author -- from the Russian, in his case); yes, this prize has an impressive winners-list (Peter Stamm in 2000, Reinhard Jirgl in 2003, Clemens Meyer in 2006, to name just a few winners) -- but what's eye-catching is what he gets for winning: the cleverly rounded amount of €11,111 -- and, more importantly, 111 bottles of local wine (Riesling, apparently). That should keep him going for a while.