Explore the world

Deutscher Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist

Wachs

AITitle translated by AI:“Wax”

Christine Wunnicke

Novel · 176 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:Eighteenth-century France, before and during the Revolution: Marie Biheron, who dissects corpses to model their insides in wax, and Madeleine Basseporte, who draws the anatomy of flowers, fall in love.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist

Am Samstag gehen die Mädchen in den Wald und jagen Sachen in die Luft

AITitle translated by AI:“On Saturdays the Girls Go into the Woods and Blow Things Up”

Fiona Sironic

Novel · 205 pages · Coming of age, Nature, Love

AIAI-generated summary:Fifteen-year-old Era lives with her mother at the edge of a forest and documents the extinction of birds. On a stream she watches her classmate Maja, daughter of two 'momfluencers', blow up hard drives in a nearby clearing.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist

ë

Jehona Kicaj

Novel · 169 pages · War, Migration, Family

AIAI-generated summary:A child of refugees from Kosovo grows up in Germany looking for a language and a voice, meeting ignorance at every turn, and lives through the Kosovo War of the late nineties from a safe distance.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist

Die Ausweichschule

AITitle translated by AI:“The Stand-In School”

Kaleb Erdmann

Novel · 298 pages · Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:In 2002, shots are fired at a school in Erfurt on the last day of final exams. The narrator, then eleven, is evacuated with his classmates. More than twenty years later, the event breaks back into his life, and he starts writing about it.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist

Haus zur Sonne

AITitle translated by AI:“House of the Sun”

Thomas Melle

Novel · 315 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Welcome to the House of the Sun, a state-funded clinic where people weary of life or terminally ill have every wish fulfilled before they quietly die. But does someone who no longer wants to live really want to die?

Deutscher Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist

Die Projektoren

Clemens Meyer

Novel · 1047 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:From Leipzig to Belgrade: a former partisan witnesses the filming of the Winnetou westerns in the Velebit mountains, where the Yugoslav wars are fought decades later, while in Leipzig a conference discusses the writings of a vanished psychiatric patient.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist

Clearing

Lichtungen

Iris Wolff

Novel · 255 pages · Love, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:When eleven-year-old Lev is bedridden for weeks, the clever, shunned Kato is sent to bring him his homework, and an unbreakable bond grows between them in communist Romania. Years later, Kato has left for the West, and a postcard arrives from Zurich.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist

Hasenprosa

AITitle translated by AI:“Hare Prose”

Maren Kames

Novel · 181 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A woman sets off in her seven-league boots, a hare on the back seat, on a journey across time and out into dark space, and through memories of two grandmothers, a grandfather and a brother.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist

Von Norden rollt ein Donner

AITitle translated by AI:“From the North Rolls a Thunder”

Markus Thielemann

Novel · 287 pages · Nature, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Every day, nineteen-year-old Jannes and his family drive their sheep across the Lüneburg Heath. Then the wolf returns, sheep are killed, and the conflicts in the village quickly turn political.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist

Vierundsiebzig

AITitle translated by AI:“Seventy-Four”

Ronya Othmann

Novel · 507 pages · War, Autofiction, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:A journalist living in Germany travels to the places of the genocide against the Yazidis committed by IS fighters in Shingal in 2014: to the camps, the front lines, her relatives, and an abandoned Yazidi village in Turkey.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist

Die Möglichkeit von Glück

AITitle translated by AI:“The Possibility of Happiness”

Anne Rabe

Novel · 380 pages · Family, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Stine is born in the mid-eighties in a small town on the East German Baltic coast. Too young to grasp the end of the GDR, she grows up as her family hides the lost world behind silence, until questions arise she can no longer push aside.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist

Vatermal

AITitle translated by AI:“Fathermark”

Necati Öziri

Novel · 291 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A son addresses the father he has never met, telling the story of his family, a mother and a sister whose lives and bodies are marked by social and political circumstances.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist

Maman

Sylvie Schenk

Novel · 172 pages · Family, Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:A daughter approaches her mother, born in 1916 to a woman who died in childbirth and was said to be a silk worker. She pursues the questions her family history has left open.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist

Muna oder Die Hälfte des Lebens

AITitle translated by AI:“Muna, or Half of Life”

Terézia Mora

Novel · 440 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Summer 1989: Muna, about to finish school in East Germany, spends one night with Magnus, an older teacher and photographer, who then disappears. Seven years later they meet again by chance in Berlin and become a couple.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist

Drifter

Ulrike Sterblich

Novel · 286 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Wenzel and Killer, friends forever, work in PR and social media until Vica enters their lives: a woman in a golden dress with two loyal assistants and a huge shaggy dog, who knows far too much about them.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist

Lügen über meine Mutter

AITitle translated by AI:“Lies About My Mother”

Daniela Dröscher

Novel · 442 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A childhood in the 1980s dominated by one thing: her mother's weight. Her husband is convinced it is to blame for everything he has been denied: promotion, social advancement, the respect of the village.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist

Spitzweg

Eckhart Nickel

Novel · 255 pages · Crime, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A narrator who never cared much for art is won over by his admired school friend Carl and his enthusiasm for the painter Spitzweg, until Carl's passion leads him to a crime and their friendship faces its hardest test.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist

Djinns

Dschinns

Fatma Aydemir

Novel · 368 pages · Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:After thirty years of work in Germany, Hüseyin fulfils his dream of a flat in Istanbul, only to die of a heart attack on the day he moves in. His family travels from Germany to the funeral.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist

Trottel

AITitle translated by AI:“Idiot”

Jan Faktor

Novel · 396 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A self-declared fool tells his own life: dropping out of computer science in Prague, moving to East Berlin and its underground scene, starting a family, and living through the GDR and the years after, all shadowed by his son's suicide.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist

Nebenan

AITitle translated by AI:“Next Door”

Kristine Bilkau

Novel · 288 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In a small town on the Kiel Canal, a family disappears without a trace. The empty house becomes the focus of the neighbours, who circle each other like strangers while longing for closeness and belonging.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist

Eurotrash

Eurotrash

Christian Kracht

Novel · 209 pages · Family, Autofiction, Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Twenty-five years after he wandered through Germany, the same narrator sets out on a new journey into the abyss of his own family, whose history keeps crossing that of his country.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist

Identitti

Identitti

Mithu Sanyal

Novel · 384 pages · Satire, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Düsseldorf in the 2020s: Nivedita's professor of postcolonial studies, Saraswati, who described herself as a person of colour, turns out to be white. As the internet hunts Saraswati down, Nivedita asks her the most intimate questions.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist

Library for the War-Wounded

Vati

Monika Helfer

Novel · 172 pages · Family, Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:A man with an artificial leg, an absent father, a widower and a lover of literature: a daughter circles the life of her silent father and tells of her own childhood in a war veterans' convalescent home in the mountains.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist

Der zweite Jakob

AITitle translated by AI:“The Second Jakob”

Norbert Gstrein

Novel · 444 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Jakob, a well-known actor dreading what lies ahead, is asked by his daughter what the worst thing he has ever done is. He remembers a film shoot on the Mexican–American border and the murders of women there.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist

Zandschower Klinken

AITitle translated by AI:“Zandschow Door Handles”

Thomas Kunst

Novel · 253 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Bengt Claasen drives off with all his belongings and his late dog's collar on the dashboard, planning to start a new life wherever it falls off. He ends up in Zandschow, a village in the far north whose residents live poor but in paradise.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist

Serpentinen

AITitle translated by AI:“Hairpin Bends”

Bov Bjerg

Novel · 266 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A father takes his son on a journey back to the hill country where he grew up, haunted by the fate of his male ancestors, who all took their own lives: great-grandfather, grandfather, father.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist

Die Dame mit der bemalten Hand

AITitle translated by AI:“The Lady with the Painted Hand”

Christine Wunnicke

Novel · 165 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Bombay, 1764: the explorer Carsten Niebuhr is stranded on the island of Elephanta, though he should be in Arabia, together with Meister Musa, a Persian maker of astrolabes from Jaipur who meant to be in Mecca.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist

Streulicht

AITitle translated by AI:“Stray Light”

Deniz Ohde

Novel · 284 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A narrator returns to the industrial town where she grew up, where her father pickles aluminium sheets at the works. As her childhood friends marry, she remembers a silent father, a mother who left, and her struggle as a working-class child at school.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist

Out of the Sugar Factory

Aus der Zuckerfabrik

Dorothee Elmiger

Novel · 270 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A worker's T-shirt reads 'My skills never end'; Switzerland's first lottery millionaire looks out to sea on a Caribbean beach. A writer follows the traces of money and desire through the centuries and around the world.

Also: Schweizer Buchpreis 2020 shortlist

Deutscher Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist

Herzfaden

AITitle translated by AI:“Heart Thread”

Thomas Hettche

Novel · 279 pages · Historical, Family

AIAI-generated summary:After a show at the Augsburg puppet theatre, a twelve-year-old girl finds a hidden door to an attic where the woman who carved the famous marionettes tells the story of the theatre and the family that founded it.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist

Brothers

Brüder

Jackie Thomae

Novel · 429 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Two German men born in the same year to a father they never knew, who left them only their dark skin, which set them apart in East Germany. Mick lives free of commitments, while Gabriel becomes a successful architect in London.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist

Kintsugi

Miku Sophie Kühmel

Novel · 295 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Reik and Max celebrate twenty years together at a house by a lake in late winter, with only their oldest friend Tonio and his daughter Pega, as old as the relationship, invited. They plan a quiet weekend, but only the lake stays calm.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist

Winterbienen

AITitle translated by AI:“Winter Bees”

Norbert Scheuer

Novel · 318 pages · Historical, War, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:January 1944: Egidius Arimond, a teacher dismissed from his school, risks everything by smuggling Jews into occupied Belgium in prepared beehives, while bombers circle over the Eifel and his epilepsy medicine runs out.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist

The Liquid Land

Das flüssige Land

Raphaela Edelbauer

Novel · 349 pages · Speculative, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:After her parents die in a car accident, the physicist Ruth sets out to bury them in the village of their childhood, a place that hides from strangers. Beneath it lies a huge cavity that no one in the village will talk about.

Also: Österreichischer Buchpreis 2019 shortlist

Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist

Nicht wie ihr

AITitle translated by AI:“Not Like You”

Tonio Schachinger

Novel · 302 pages · Love, Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Ivo always knew he was special. Now one of the best-paid footballers in the world, with a Bugatti, a wife and two children he adores, he finds his life shaken when his teenage love Mirna comes back into play.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist

Nachtleuchten

AITitle translated by AI:“Night Glow”

María Cecilia Barbetta

Novel · 521 pages · Politics, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Buenos Aires, 1974: Ballester's car repair shop is a breeding ground of utopian thinking, and a girls' school practises liberation theology. Then political unrest, violence and the threat of military dictatorship turn the country into an uncanny place.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist

Sechs Koffer

AITitle translated by AI:“Six Suitcases”

Maxim Biller

Novel · 197 pages · Family, Historical, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:A family secret of the Cold War, told from six perspectives: the narrator's grandfather was executed in the Soviet Union in 1960, and the family's own relatives are suspected of having betrayed him.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist

Die Katze und der General

AITitle translated by AI:“The Cat and the General”

Nino Haratischwili

Novel · 763 pages · War, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Alexander Orlov, a Russian oligarch known as the General, has started a new life in Berlin, but he cannot escape his memories of the First Chechen War and of the night that left the young Chechen woman Nura dead.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist

Gott der Barbaren

AITitle translated by AI:“God of the Barbarians”

Stephan Thome

Novel · 715 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:In the mid-19th century, a Christian rebel movement spreads terror across China. A German missionary who wants to help modernise the empire is caught between the lines of a war in which he risks losing everything he values.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist

Der Vogelgott

AITitle translated by AI:“The Bird God”

Susanne Röckel

Novel · 266 pages · Speculative, Family

AIAI-generated summary:A scientific-minded family is drawn by a chance discovery on a church painting into the myth of a bird god, a myth that turns out to be more than a myth, worshipped in a wretched corner of the earth.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist

Das Floß der Medusa

AITitle translated by AI:“The Raft of the Medusa”

Franzobel

Novel · 588 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:July 1816: off the coast of West Africa, a ship finds a raft carrying the last fifteen of 147 people abandoned after the frigate Medusa sank. The ship's boy Victor tells how this tragedy came about.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist

Romeo oder Julia

AITitle translated by AI:“Romeo or Juliet”

Gerhard Falkner

Novel · 266 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:At a writers' meeting in Innsbruck, Kurt Prinzhorn finds that someone has taken a bubble bath in his hotel room, though no one has entered it. Strange events follow him to Moscow and Madrid, where he meets a former lover.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist

The Pine Islands

Die Kieferninseln

Marion Poschmann

Novel · 192 pages

AIAI-generated summary:After dreaming that his wife is cheating on him, a lecturer who studies beards leaves her and takes the first plane to Japan. Inspired by the poet Bashō, he sets out to see the moon over the Pine Islands, and meets a student carrying a manual of suicide.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist

Beside Myself

Außer sich

Sasha Marianna Salzmann

Novel · 336 pages · Migration, Family

AIAI-generated summary:The twins Alissa and Anton grow up in post-Soviet Moscow and later in an asylum home in western Germany. When Anton disappears and a blank postcard arrives from Istanbul, Alissa sets out to find him, and a sense of belonging.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist

Schlafende Sonne

AITitle translated by AI:“Sleeping Sun”

Thomas Lehr

Novel · 637 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:Rudolf Zacharias travels to Berlin for the opening of an exhibition by his former student Milena Sonntag. Over a single day, a century of German history unfolds, from the battlefields of the First World War to present-day Berlin.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist

Skizze eines Sommers

AITitle translated by AI:“Sketch of a Summer”

André Kubiczek

Novel · 375 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Potsdam, summer holidays 1985. Sixteen-year-old René stays at home: his mother is dead, his father in Switzerland. He shares the money his father left with his three friends as they roam the hot, empty city looking for the right girl.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist

Ein langes Jahr

AITitle translated by AI:“A Long Year”

Eva Schmidt

Novel · 208 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Benjamin lives alone with his mother in a small flat by the lake and is not allowed the dog he wants. He meets old Mr Agostini, whose dog Hemingway keeps him company, though no one knows what will become of the dog.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist

Hooligan

Hool

Philipp Winkler

Novel · 304 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Heiko Kolbe has two families: the one he was born into and the one he chose, his blood brothers the hooligans. He fights his way through to protect what is sacred to him: his boys and their best years.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist

Fremde Seele, dunkler Wald

AITitle translated by AI:“Strange Soul, Dark Forest”

Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker

Novel · 300 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Alexander returns home from a posting abroad as a soldier but soon leaves again. His younger brother Jakob runs the family farm, haunted by guilt after a friend hangs himself, while their father secretly sells off the land field by field.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist

The World at My Back

Die Welt im Rücken

Thomas Melle

Nonfiction · 347 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A writer who has lived with bipolar disorder for many years tells of his manic episodes, personal dramas and slow recovery, and of what goes on inside a person who is ill.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2015 · Shortlist

Wie Ihr wollt

AITitle translated by AI:“As You Wish”

Inger-Maria Mahlke

Novel · 269 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:August 1571: Elizabeth I rules England, and her cousin Mary Grey, twenty-six, of short stature and with a claim to the throne, is furious. Denied freedom and a household of her own, she decides to write an account settling scores with the court.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2015 · Shortlist

Go, Went, Gone

Gehen, ging, gegangen

Jenny Erpenbeck

Novel · 286 pages · Migration, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Richard, a retired professor in Berlin, comes across African refugees protesting on Oranienplatz and decides to look for answers to his own questions about time, loss and legacy among these young men condemned to wait.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2015 · Shortlist

One Another

Eins im Andern

Monique Schwitter

Novel · 224 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Instead of writing, a woman googles her first love one evening and learns that he jumped to his death almost five years earlier. Shocked that she never missed him, she starts to look back on her life through twelve men.

Also: Schweizer Buchpreis 2015 ★ winner

Deutscher Buchpreis 2015 · Shortlist

Über den Winter

AITitle translated by AI:“Through the Winter”

Rolf Lappert

Novel · 382 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:When his older sister dies, Lennard Salm returns to his family in Hamburg, wanting to get back to his own life as soon as possible. But his younger sister loses her job, his father is growing helpless, and he is needed.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2015 · Shortlist

Das bessere Leben

AITitle translated by AI:“The Better Life”

Ulrich Peltzer

Novel · 445 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Jochen Brockmann, a successful sales manager, is caught up in a collapsing system: the bank will not lend, and the unscrupulous investor Sylvester Lee Fleming appears as saviour and tempter. Former revolutionaries have become managers.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2014 · Shortlist

April

Angelika Klüssendorf

Novel · 218 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Her childhood is over, but the girl, who now calls herself April after the Deep Purple song, has left the children's home and dropped out of her training. She tries to find her way in Leipzig in the late seventies, crossing every line she is given.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2014 · Shortlist

Panischer Frühling

AITitle translated by AI:“Panicked Spring”

Gertrud Leutenegger

Novel · 217 pages

AIAI-generated summary:While an Icelandic volcano grounds European air traffic, the narrator meets Jonathan, a young man with a birthmark selling a street newspaper on London Bridge. The two feel strangely familiar, until Jonathan suddenly disappears.

Also: Schweizer Buchpreis 2014 shortlist

Deutscher Buchpreis 2014 · Shortlist

Der Allesforscher

AITitle translated by AI:“The Researcher of Everything”

Heinrich Steinfest

Novel · 397 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Sixten Braun's ordinary life as a manager implodes when he is knocked out by part of an exploding whale in Taiwan. Soon after leaving hospital he survives a plane crash, and years later he ends up caring for an orphaned boy who speaks only his own invented language.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2014 · Shortlist

Pfaueninsel

AITitle translated by AI:“Peacock Island”

Thomas Hettche

Novel · 343 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:On the Peacock Island in the Havel, a royal artificial paradise, Marie, a girl of short stature, grows up between palm house and menagerie in the years after the Napoleonic Wars, helping the royal family on their visits.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2014 · Shortlist

3000 Euro

Thomas Melle

Novel · 202 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Denise works at a discount supermarket, is often overwhelmed by her little daughter, and waits for her pay from a porn shoot. Anton, a debt-ridden former law student who sleeps in a hostel, keeps turning up at her till.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2013 · Shortlist

Bricks and Mortar

Im Stein

Clemens Meyer

Novel · 672 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:A many-voiced song of the night: prostitutes, businessmen and gangsters fight for money, power and their dreams, from the street to the clubs and brothels where the money flows.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2013 · Shortlist

Die Sonnenposition

AITitle translated by AI:“The Position of the Sun”

Marion Poschmann

Novel · 337 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:After reunification, Altfried Janich takes a job at a psychiatric hospital housed in a run-down baroque palace. When his friend Odilo dies in a mysterious car accident, he slides onto the night side of things.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2013 · Shortlist

Nie mehr Nacht

AITitle translated by AI:“Never Night Again”

Mirko Bonné

Novel · 353 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Markus Lee travels to Normandy to draw bridges that mattered in the Allied landings of 1944, taking along his fifteen-year-old nephew Jesse, whose mother has taken her own life. A short stay at a deserted beach hotel turns into months.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2013 · Shortlist

Die Ordnung der Sterne über Como

AITitle translated by AI:“The Order of the Stars over Como”

Monika Zeiner

Novel · 607 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Newly separated from his wife, the pianist Tom Holler tours Italy with his Berlin band, hoping to meet his great love Betty again in Naples and to understand at last why he lost his best friend one night in Como.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2013 · Shortlist

Nichts von euch auf Erden

AITitle translated by AI:“Nothing of You on Earth”

Reinhard Jirgl

Novel · 510 pages · Speculative, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:In the 23rd century, the strong and the conquerors leave a ravaged Earth for the Moon and Mars, leaving the old humanity behind. Two hundred years later, Mars proves too hostile, and the new humans return to seize power on a now peaceful Earth.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2012 · Shortlist

Indigo

Indigo

Clemens Setz

Novel · 386 pages · Speculative, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:At Helianau, a boarding school for children with the mysterious Indigo syndrome, anyone who comes near them suffers nausea, dizziness and headaches. A maths teacher notices that masked children are repeatedly driven away to an unknown destination.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2012 · Shortlist

Robinsons blaues Haus

AITitle translated by AI:“Robinson's Blue House”

Ernst Augustin

Novel · 319 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:A nameless man first goes into hiding as a child to escape bullying at school. Since then, disappearing has run through his life as much as building and furnishing new homes, and he looks for his Friday in an internet chat room.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2012 · Shortlist

Fliehkräfte

AITitle translated by AI:“Centrifugal Forces”

Stephan Thome

Novel · 473 pages · Family, Love

AIAI-generated summary:Hartmut Hainbach, a philosophy professor in his late fifties, has everything, yet is not happy: his wife has moved to Berlin, their daughter keeps her distance, and university reforms have spoiled his work. Then he is offered a change of career.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2012 · Shortlist

Nichts Weißes

AITitle translated by AI:“Nothing White”

Ulf Erdmann Ziegler

Novel · 255 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Born into a family of advertising people and illustrators, Marleen cares more about the letters of a text than about its meaning, and dreams of inventing the perfect typeface as she enters the working world of the eighties.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2012 · Shortlist

Sand

Sand

Wolfgang Herrndorf

Novel · 480 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:September 1972: while the Munich Olympics are attacked, four people are murdered in a hippie commune in North Africa and a case of money vanishes. At the centre stands a man without a memory, caught between all sides.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2011 · Shortlist

Das Mädchen

AITitle translated by AI:“The Girl”

Angelika Klüssendorf

Novel · 182 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Her father drinks, her mother takes out her anger on the children, and her classmates avoid her. Yet something carries the girl along, and when she is caught shoplifting, the children's home she is sent to turns out to be a refuge.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2011 · Shortlist

Against the World

Gegen die Welt

Jan Brandt

Novel · 882 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Daniel Kuper is born in the mid-seventies in an East Frisian village. When strange things begin to happen, snow in midsummer, a crop circle, swastikas on walls, the villagers blame him, and he starts a fight against them.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2011 · Shortlist

Die Schmerzmacherin.

AITitle translated by AI:“The Painmaker”

Marlene Streeruwitz

Novel · 398 pages · Crime, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Amy works for a private security firm and can only guess at the corruption and violence behind its secret operations. When she decides to quit, she falls into the hands of a brutal organisation and cannot remember one particular day.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2011 · Shortlist

Wunsiedel

Michael Buselmeier

Novel · 158 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In the summer of 1964, young actor Moritz Schoppe spent ten miserable weeks at the theatre festival in the Franconian town of Wunsiedel. Forty-four years later he returns to the place of his failure.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2011 · Shortlist

Blumenberg

Blumenberg

Sibylle Lewitscharoff

Novel · 224 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:One night, a large yellow lion lies calmly in the study of the philosopher Blumenberg. He manages to keep his composure, even when the lion trots into his lecture the next day and none of the students seems to see it.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2010 · Shortlist

Elsewhere

Andernorts

Doron Rabinovici

Novel · 246 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Ethan Rosen, an Israeli scholar who only feels at home when travelling, flies from Tel Aviv to Vienna while writing a polemic against his rival for a professorship. On landing, he learns that his father is in hospital.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2010 · Shortlist

Georgs Sorgen um die Vergangenheit oder im Reich des heiligen Hodensack-Bimbams von Prag

AITitle translated by AI:“Georg's Worries About the Past, or In the Realm of the Holy Testicle Bimbam of Prague”

Jan Faktor

Novel · 636 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In socialist Prague, a city losing its shine, Georg uses every opportunity to break out, escaping both his mother and the stifling household of his father, where he has to spend his hated weekends.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2010 · Shortlist

Dinge, die wir heute sagten

AITitle translated by AI:“Things We Said Today”

Judith Zander

Novel · 479 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:When old Mrs Hanske dies in the remote village of Bresekow in north-eastern Germany, her daughter Ingrid, who fled the village years ago, returns from Ireland with her family for the funeral, and the villagers begin to talk.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2010 · Shortlist

Rabenliebe

AITitle translated by AI:“Raven Love”

Peter Wawerzinek

Novel · 427 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:As a small child, he was left behind in East Germany when his mother fled to the West. Passed between children's homes, the lonely boy stays silent until his fourth year, avoiding people and imitating birdsong instead.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2010 · Shortlist

September: Mirage

September, Fata Morgana

Thomas Lehr

Novel · 426 pages · Politics, War, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Two fathers and two daughters: a German-American professor and his daughter Sabrina live in the United States, an Iraqi doctor and his daughter Muna in Baghdad. Nothing connects the families until both daughters are killed, in New York in 2001 and in Baghdad in 2004.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2009 · Shortlist

Die Frequenzen

Clemens Setz

Novel · 714 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Alexander and Walter, childhood friends, cross paths again, while Valerie is beaten up in a park and Gabi is driven to madness by mental illness and tinnitus. Life unfolds as a chain reaction of love and madness.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2009 · Shortlist

The Hunger Angel

Atemschaukel

Herta Müller

Novel · 299 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:Romania at the end of the war. On the night of 15 January 1945, a young man from the German minority is deported to a Russian labour camp. A sentence his grandmother called after him, that she knows he will come back, keeps him alive.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2009 · Shortlist

Überm Rauschen

AITitle translated by AI:“Above the Rushing Water”

Norbert Scheuer

Novel · 165 pages · Family, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:A younger brother returns to the inn of his childhood, where the sound of the weir once fed his imagination. Their father is dead and his older brother is losing his mind; standing in the river, fishing, he looks back on his family's life.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2009 · Shortlist

Lichtjahre entfernt

AITitle translated by AI:“Light Years Away”

Rainer Merkel

Novel · 202 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Thomas, a family therapist, visits his long-time girlfriend in New York and finds the relationship is over. On the subway to the airport, his thoughts circle around the dramatic events of the past months.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2009 · Shortlist

Grenzgang

AITitle translated by AI:“Boundary Walk”

Stephan Thome

Novel · 453 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Every seven years, the small town of Bergenstadt in Hesse celebrates Grenzgang, a three-day festival of walking the town's boundaries. The festival brings people from Berlin and Cologne back to the provinces in pursuit of happiness.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2008 · Shortlist

The Abolition of Species

Die Abschaffung der Arten

Dietmar Dath

Novel · 382 pages · Speculative, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:The age we know is long over. What was Europe is now three huge cities in a world ruled by animals under the lion Cyrus Golden, who sends the wolf Dmitri out as an envoy to find an ally against a great threat.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2008 · Shortlist

Adam and Evelyn

Adam und Evelyn

Ingo Schulze

Novel · 288 pages · Love, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Adam, a tailor who loves beautiful women, is caught with another woman by his girlfriend Evelyn. In the late summer of 1989 she leaves with friends for Lake Balaton, and Adam follows them in his old Wartburg.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2008 · Shortlist

Treffen sich zwei

AITitle translated by AI:“Two People Meet”

Iris Hanika

Novel · 238 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Two people who have long gone through life alone fall in love out of the blue: he has the most wonderful eyes in the world, and she is so beautiful he thinks he is hallucinating. But the state lasts only a few days.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2008 · Shortlist

Nach Hause schwimmen

AITitle translated by AI:“Swimming Home”

Rolf Lappert

Novel · 543 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Wilbur's mother dies giving birth to him, his father disappears, and his first home is an incubator. Only when his grandparents take him in does he learn what home means, but the happiness does not last.

Also: Schweizer Buchpreis 2008 ★ winner

Deutscher Buchpreis 2008 · Shortlist

The Dark Ship

Das dunkle Schiff

Sherko Fatah

Novel · 420 pages · Migration, War

AIAI-generated summary:Kerim, a cook from the Iraqi borderlands, fell in with holy warriors before deciding to flee their violence. He makes the long and dangerous journey to Germany, where he tries to start a new life and finds his first love.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2007 · Shortlist

Bad Sheep

Böse Schafe

Katja Lange-Müller

Novel · 200 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Since fleeing East Germany, Soja has lived in West Berlin. Then she meets Harry, out of prison on parole after breaking off his drug therapy, and her whole life starts to revolve around him.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2007 · Shortlist

Der Mond und das Mädchen

AITitle translated by AI:“The Moon and the Girl”

Martin Mosebach

Novel · 190 pages · Love, Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Newlyweds Hans and Ina move to Frankfurt, into a flat behind the main station where, every night, a circle gathers in the courtyard around the Moroccan caretaker.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2007 · Shortlist

Abendland

AITitle translated by AI:“The Occident”

Michael Köhlmeier

Novel · 775 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:At ninety-five, the cosmopolitan Carl Jacob Candoris makes his life's confession, and Sebastian Lukasser, a writer past fifty, is to write it down, weaving both their families into a panorama of a whole century.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2007 · Shortlist

Das bin doch ich

AITitle translated by AI:“But That's Me”

Thomas Glavinic

Novel · 237 pages · Autofiction, Satire

AIAI-generated summary:A writer who shares the author's own name is finishing a novel. He wants what everyone wants, success: a publisher, a prize, money. What he has is a manuscript, a literary agent, headaches and mostly unbearable fellow human beings.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2007 · Shortlist

Wallner beginnt zu fliegen

AITitle translated by AI:“Wallner Begins to Fly”

Thomas von Steinaecker

Novel · 366 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Stefan Wallner feels betrayed and pushed aside at work, his son Costin is cast as a pop star and fails, and Costin's daughter Wendy meets her father when they have little time left together.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2006 · Shortlist

The Collector of Worlds

Der Weltensammler

Ilija Trojanow

Novel · 454 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A portrait of the British colonial officer Sir Richard Burton, a convert to Islam who lived with a courtesan, travelled through Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and searched all his life for the essence of foreign cultures.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2006 · Shortlist

New Lives

Neue Leben

Ingo Schulze

Novel · 570 pages · Historical, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Eastern German provinces, January 1990. Enrico Türmer, a theatre man and secret writer, takes a job at a newspaper and throws himself into active life, telling of this turning point in letters to three people he loves.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2006 · Shortlist

Angstblüte

AITitle translated by AI:“Fear Bloom”

Martin Walser

Novel · 476 pages · Love, Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Karl von Kahn, a financial adviser, is asked to fulfil the last wish of his dying best friend and signs a contract that sells a company. Hours later his friend is much better, and Kahn's telephone rings again with a request to finance a film of Othello.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2006 · Shortlist

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert

Saša Stanišić

Novel · 277 pages · War, Migration, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:When civil war reaches Bosnia in the nineties, Aleksandar flees west to Germany with his parents. There he explores the strange new country and holds his fear at bay with wild stories of his large family and the time when everything was good.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2006 · Shortlist

What We Are Made Of

Woraus wir gemacht sind

Thomas Hettche

Novel · 311 pages · Crime, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Niklas Kalf, writing a biography of a Jewish émigré, travels to New York with his wife Liz in 2002. Soon after they arrive, Liz is kidnapped, and Kalf is blackmailed into uncovering a secret about his subject.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2005 · Shortlist

Measuring the World

Die Vermessung der Welt

Daniel Kehlmann

Novel · 272 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:At the end of the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world: Alexander von Humboldt fights his way through jungle and steppe, while the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss proves at home in Göttingen that space is curved.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2005 · Shortlist

The Communicating Vessels

Und ich schüttelte einen Liebling

Friederike Mayröcker

Novel · 264 pages · Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:After the death of her companion in life and writing, a poet gathers memories and dreams, conversations, quotations and observations into a book of remembrance and farewell.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2005 · Shortlist

Dark Company

Dunkle Gesellschaft

Gert Loschütz

Novel · 166 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Thomas, a former bargeman stranded in the provinces of Lower Saxony, walks out on ten rainy nights and remembers the journey his life has taken, and the black-clad strangers his grandfather once warned him about.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2005 · Shortlist

So sind wir

AITitle translated by AI:“That's How We Are”

Gila Lustiger

Novel · 259 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Prompted by a paperweight, old newspapers and a doll, a narrator follows the traces of her family's memories: Central European Jews, victims of history, who remember everything and say little.

Deutscher Buchpreis 2005 · Shortlist

42

Thomas Lehr

Novel · 368 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:On a sunny August day, a group of visitors emerges from the CERN research centre near Geneva to find that time has stopped and all of Europe is frozen. Seventy people are left awake in a still world.