Deutscher Buchpreis

Deutscher Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist

Clearing

Lichtungen

Iris Wolff · 47 when first published

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 2022 · Shortlist

Djinns

Dschinns

Fatma Aydemir · 36 when first published

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 2021 · Shortlist

Eurotrash

Eurotrash

Christian Kracht · 55 when first published

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 · 50 when first published

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 · 74 when first published

Novel · 208 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 2020 · Shortlist

Out of the Sugar Factory

Aus der Zuckerfabrik

Dorothee Elmiger · 35 when first published

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 2019 · Shortlist

Brothers

Brüder

Jackie Thomae · 47 when first published

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

The Liquid Land

Das flüssige Land

Raphaela Edelbauer · 29 when first published

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 2017 · Shortlist

The Pine Islands

Die Kieferninseln

Marion Poschmann · 48 when first published

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.

Also: International Booker 2019 shortlist

Deutscher Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist

Beside Myself

Außer sich

Sasha Marianna Salzmann · 32 when first published

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 2016 · Shortlist

Hooligan

Hool

Philipp Winkler · 30 when first published

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

The World at My Back

Die Welt im Rücken

Thomas Melle · 41 when first published

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

Go, Went, Gone

Gehen, ging, gegangen

Jenny Erpenbeck · 48 when first published

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.

Also: Warwick Prize 2018 shortlist

Deutscher Buchpreis 2015 · Shortlist

One Another

Eins im Andern

Monique Schwitter · 43 when first published

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 2013 · Shortlist

Bricks and Mortar

Im Stein

Clemens Meyer · 36 when first published

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 2012 · Shortlist

Indigo

Indigo

Clemens Setz · 30 when first published

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

Sand

Sand

Wolfgang Herrndorf · 46 when first published

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

Against the World

Gegen die Welt

Jan Brandt · 37 when first published

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

Blumenberg

Blumenberg

Sibylle Lewitscharoff · 57 when first published

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 · 49 when first published

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

September: Mirage

September, Fata Morgana

Thomas Lehr · 53 when first published

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

The Hunger Angel

Atemschaukel

Herta Müller · 56 when first published

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 2008 · Shortlist

The Abolition of Species

Die Abschaffung der Arten

Dietmar Dath · 38 when first published

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 · 46 when first published

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

The Dark Ship

Das dunkle Schiff

Sherko Fatah · 44 when first published

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 · 56 when first published

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 2006 · Shortlist

The Collector of Worlds

Der Weltensammler

Ilija Trojanow · 41 when first published

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 · 43 when first published

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

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert

Saša Stanišić · 28 when first published

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 · 42 when first published

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 · 30 when first published

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 · 81 when first published

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 · 59 when first published

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.