German Book Award Longlist

The longlist for the 2008 German Book Award was announced yesterday, and as Michael Orthofer points out, there a number of familiar names on the list, including Peter Handke, Karen Duve, Uwe Timm, Ingo Schulze, and Feridun Zaimoglu.

Michael’s write-up on the prize is really good, especially since he reads German and can offer up more educated opinions on which books should win. (I really like his observation about how publishers are only allowed to submit two titles, yet the judges called in a few more for Suhrkamp, considering they have four books on the longlist . . .) To echo my common complaint, it would be great to have short samples in English of all these books. Hopefully that will happen for the shortlist.

The shortlist will be announced on September 17th, with the prize being awarded on October 13th during the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Here’s the full list:

Lukas Bärfuss: Hundert Tage (Wallstein)

Marcel Beyer: Kaltenburg (Suhrkamp)

Dietmar Dath: Die Abschaffung der Arten (Suhrkamp)

Karen Duve: Taxi (Eichborn Berlin)

Sherko Fatah: Das dunkle Schiff (Jung und Jung)

Olga Flor: Kollateralschaden (Zsolnay)

Norbert Gstrein: Die Winter im Süden (Hanser)

Peter Handke: Die morawische Nacht (Suhrkamp)

Iris Hanika: Treffen sich zwei (Droschl)

Martin Kluger: Der Vogel, der spazieren ging (DuMont)

Judith Kuckart: Die Verdächtige (DuMont)

Rolf Lappert: Nach Hause schwimmen (Hanser)

Norbert Niemann: Willkommen neue Träume (Hanser)

Karl-Heinz Ott: Ob wir wollen oder nicht (Hoffmann und Campe, August 2008)

Hans Pleschinski: Ludwigshöhe (C. H. Beck)

Ingo Schulze: Adam und Evelyn (Berlin Verlag)

Uwe Tellkamp: Der Turm (Suhrkamp)

Uwe Timm: Halbschatten (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)

Martin Walser: Ein liebender Mann (Rowohlt)

Feridun Zaimoglu: Liebesbrand (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)