It's still a couple of weeks until the German Book Prize fun kicks in -- the longlist will be announced 13 August -- and while they (sigh) don't announce the names of the 167 submitted titles (why not ? why the hell not ?), it's pretty safe to assume a lot of the entries were also among the 70+ (also unrevealed, sigh) submissions for the 2014 Uwe-Johnson-Preis (back in 2008 Uwe Tellkamp's Der Turm doubled up, winning both (see here and here)).
They have now announced the winner of this year's Uwe-Johnson-Preis -- and it's: Kruso by Lutz Seiler. (This being a German prize -- i.e. the winner announced way in advance -- Seiler only gets to pick up his €15,000 prize on 19 September.)
This one looks fairly likely to also be in the German Book Prize-running; see also the Suhrkamp foreign rights page (and note that rights have already been sold in: France, Italy, Holland, and Denmark -- the US/UK ... not so much (because god forbid they'd jump on the bandwagon before they're sure everyone else is on board -- but I figure their hesitation has already cost them a couple of thousand dollars (the amount the price has presumably gone up with this prize-win, with another step up if/when it is German Book Prize longlisted) ... oh, who am I kidding, they probably can't unload this in the English-language market even under the best of circumstances ...).
(And I don't have to remind you who Uwe Johnson was, do I ? Author -- among much else that's great -- of Jahrestage (Anniversaries), one of the great German post-war novels (and one of the great New York novels of recent decades), the novel Susan Bernofsky named when asked about: "a Holy Grail book to translate", which New York Review Books is bringing out in Damion Searls' (first complete) translation ... in 2017 or so. One of the US publishing highlights of that year -- absolutely guaranteed.)
They have now announced the winner of this year's Uwe-Johnson-Preis -- and it's: Kruso by Lutz Seiler. (This being a German prize -- i.e. the winner announced way in advance -- Seiler only gets to pick up his €15,000 prize on 19 September.)
This one looks fairly likely to also be in the German Book Prize-running; see also the Suhrkamp foreign rights page (and note that rights have already been sold in: France, Italy, Holland, and Denmark -- the US/UK ... not so much (because god forbid they'd jump on the bandwagon before they're sure everyone else is on board -- but I figure their hesitation has already cost them a couple of thousand dollars (the amount the price has presumably gone up with this prize-win, with another step up if/when it is German Book Prize longlisted) ... oh, who am I kidding, they probably can't unload this in the English-language market even under the best of circumstances ...).
(And I don't have to remind you who Uwe Johnson was, do I ? Author -- among much else that's great -- of Jahrestage (Anniversaries), one of the great German post-war novels (and one of the great New York novels of recent decades), the novel Susan Bernofsky named when asked about: "a Holy Grail book to translate", which New York Review Books is bringing out in Damion Searls' (first complete) translation ... in 2017 or so. One of the US publishing highlights of that year -- absolutely guaranteed.)