All prizes Austria
Austria · Since 2016 · For books in German
Awarded each November by Austria's culture ministry and the Austrian booksellers' association to the best German-language book of the year (fiction, essays, poetry or drama) by an Austrian author.
The prize goes back to an initiative of culture minister Josef Ostermayer and was announced in March 2016. Austrian authors had long asked for a prize of their own, as they felt at a disadvantage at the German Book Prize. Publishers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland may each submit up to two titles from roughly the past twelve months. A jury of five, appointed anew each year, names a longlist of ten books in September and a shortlist of five in October. The winner is announced in November, on the eve of the Buch Wien book fair, and receives 20,000 euros; the other four finalists receive 2,500 euros each. A separate debut prize, funded by the Vienna Chamber of Labour, is worth 10,000 euros. The first winner was Friederike Mayröcker for fleurs; later winners include Eva Menasse, Norbert Gstrein and Clemens J. Setz.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Dissolutions”
Marlene Streeruwitz · 75 when first published
Novel · 411 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Nina Wagner, 56, a poet from Vienna and a single mother, teaches in New York. Walking through her own very personal New York, she thinks back over her loves, her family and the society she has left behind.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Last Days”
Martin Prinz · 52 when first published
Novel · 260 pages · War, Historical
AI-generated summary:April 1945, in a valley of Lower Austria. With the Red Army waiting nearby, the local Nazi district leader sets up his own court martial and has civilians and deserters sentenced and killed at will.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“How the World Went On”
Monika Helfer · 77 when first published
Short stories · 757 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories for every day of the year, 365 in all: everyday moments, adventures, encounters and walks through nature, seen by a writer in the rhythm of a whole year.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2025 · Shortlist
Verena Stauffer · 47 when first published
Poetry · 67 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Love poems in seven chapters, from Cyprus, Persia and Pompeii to a questioned homeland, where archaic images of nature meet pop culture, phone messages, the metaverse and AI.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist
Elias Hirschl · 30 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Satire, Speculative
AI-generated summary:The world is ending. Until then, the narrator works at a content farm called Smile Smile Inc., writing pointless listicles designed to generate clicks, while her boyfriend founds a new start-up every week.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Fishbone Days”
Elke Laznia · 50 when first published
Poetry · 125 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Poems about saying goodbye to a loved one: caring for a parent through a slow decline and death, and the tenderness, disgust, old wounds and family rifts that the long farewell brings to light.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Seven-League Heart”
Katharina Winkler · 45 when first published
Novel · 239 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Told in verse from the daughter's point of view, a five-year-old's games of fairy tales and magic with her father turn into abuse. The book follows her from childhood into young womanhood.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2024 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Lemons”
Valerie Fritsch · 35 when first published
Novel · 186 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:August Drach grows up in a house at the edge of a village that is hell and paradise at once. His father beats him and is tender only with the dogs; August finds comfort with his loving mother.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Night Women”
Maja Haderlap · 62 when first published
Novel · 293 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:Mira drives to southern Carinthia to prepare her elderly mother for leaving the house where she found shelter decades ago, a single unskilled worker with small children. The visit stirs memories of a traumatic childhood.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Earth Above, Sky Below”
Milena Michiko Flašar · 43 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Suzu, a young woman in Tokyo who describes herself as single with hamster, takes a job with a cleaning crew that specialises in kodokushi: people who die alone and lie undiscovered in their flats.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist
Kochen im falschen Jahrhundert
Teresa Präauer · 44 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:A hostess who does not feel especially talented at hosting prepares a dinner for her guests. The evening goes wrong and keeps starting over, as five nameless people talk about food, shopping and how to live.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2023 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Property”
Wolf Haas · 63 when first published
Novel · 156 pages · Autofiction, Family
AI-generated summary:A writer's mother, nearly ninety-five, is dying in a care home. Born in 1923, she learned early what property means when you have none: poverty, work and saving, though it was never enough even for a square metre.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Story of a Child”
Anna Kim · 45 when first published
Novel · 221 pages · Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:In July 1953, in a small town in Wisconsin, a twenty-year-old telephonist gives up her newborn son for adoption. The nurses soon suspect that the baby is not white, and a social worker is sent to find the father.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Struggling Along”
Helena Adler · 39 when first published
Novel · 177 pages · Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:The youngest daughter of a bankrupt farmer has barely escaped her parents' house when she finds that there is no escaping the provinces. She joins a gang of troublemakers who loot the slaughterhouse and smuggle drugs in animal carcasses.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Poacher”
Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker · 40 when first published
Novel · 349 pages · Family, Nature
AI-generated summary:Jakob runs his parents' run-down farm in Upper Austria and fights its decline. When the artist Katja offers to work there as an intern, things seem to take a turn for the better.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2022 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Enlargement”
Robert Menasse · 68 when first published
Novel · 652 pages · Politics, Satire
AI-generated summary:Two blood brothers from the Polish anti-communist underground go separate ways: Mateusz becomes Poland's prime minister, Adam an EU official in charge of enlargement. Then Mateusz begins to undermine Albania's bid to join.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Nile”
Anna Baar · 48 when first published
Novel · 148 pages
AI-generated summary:A writer of serial stories for a women's magazine is told to finish hers in the next issue. She sketches an ending, then destroys her notes, afraid that what she writes might come true.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Nine Strange Women”
Daniela Chana · 36 when first published
Short stories · 300 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:Nine stories about unusual women of today, each modelled on one of the nine Muses, from Thalia, Muse of comedy, to Melpomene, Muse of tragedy. Doubles, dreams and strange encounters break into modern life.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“My Favourite Animal Is Called Winter”
Ferdinand Schmalz · 36 when first published
Novel · 189 pages · Satire, Crime
AI-generated summary:Franz Schlicht delivers frozen food in Vienna. A customer, Dr Schauer, wants to die in a chest freezer and hires Schlicht to carry his frozen body to a clearing. But when the time comes, the freezer is empty.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2021 · Shortlist
Olga Flor · 53 when first published
Novel · 204 pages · Satire, Politics
AI-generated summary:In an Austrian municipality, the dropout Maximilian joins a rejuvenation experiment at a private clinic built under a bog, through a fraudulent tangle of companies, banks and parties. Everyone involved is invited to its grand opening.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Fairy Dust”
Cornelia Travnicek · 33 when first published
Novel · 277 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In a modern take on Peter Pan, Neverland becomes No Man's Land, a siding for lost teenagers nobody feels responsible for. They live as pickpockets, and the gang's adult boss keeps them supplied with drugs: the fairy dust.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Infanta Parts Her Hair on the Left”
Helena Adler · 37 when first published
Novel · 183 pages · Family, Coming of age, Satire
AI-generated summary:The youngest daughter of a mountain farm near Salzburg burns down her parents' farmhouse: partly by accident, partly in self-defence against a bigoted mother, a father given to drink and fireworks, and cruel twin sisters.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Dress Up, Dance, Laugh”
Karin Peschka · 53 when first published
Novel · 312 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Fanni, in her late fifties, is deputy head of a supermarket department, married with two grown children. She breaks out of her family life and joins a mixed group of seekers in an Alpine hut in Pinzgau.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2020 · Shortlist
Die Bagage
Monika Helfer · 73 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Family, Historical, War
AI-generated summary:Josef and Maria Moosbrugger and their children live on the edge of a mountain village, poor and despised. When Josef is called up in the First World War, Maria is left alone, dependent on the mayor's protection.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Comfort of Round Things”
Clemens Setz · 37 when first published
Short stories · 314 pages
AI-generated summary:Twenty stories in which the unexpected breaks into ordinary lives: a school nurse kidnaps a boy instead of treating him, and a young man in love with a blind woman finds her flat covered in insults.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Adventurous Journey Through My Room”
Karl-Markus Gauß · 65 when first published
Nonfiction · 220 pages
AI-generated summary:Without leaving his Salzburg flat, a writer travels through the objects in its rooms and finds in each of them stories of distant regions, forgotten peoples and odd, brave lives.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist
Das flüssige Land
Raphaela Edelbauer · 29 when first published
Novel · 349 pages · Speculative, Historical
AI-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: Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 shortlist
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2019 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Mother Is Burning”
Sophie Reyer · 35 when first published
Novel · 246 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Luise tries to get by with her two children. Her mother has killed herself with alcohol and pills, her anorexic daughter Ina is losing her mind, and her son Clemens talks with his dead grandmother.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“All the Night Above Us”
Gerhard Jäger · 52 when first published
Novel · 237 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:At seven in the evening, a soldier begins a twelve-hour watch alone in a tower near the border: no one may get through the wire fence. As the night darkens and the weather turns, memories and dark thoughts rise.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Ironing Woman”
Heinrich Steinfest · 57 when first published
Novel · 286 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Tonia Schreiber, once a wealthy marine biologist, irons the laundry of well-off clients in Heidelberg by hand. It is her penance for the death of her beloved niece Emilie, killed in a shooting for which she blames herself.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Go Fiddle Yourself Home, Father, or Write Death into My Heart”
Josef Winkler · 65 when first published
Novel · 195 pages · Autofiction, Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:Only a few years ago, a writer learned that the SS mass murderer Odilo Globocnik was buried in 1945 in a field of his Carinthian home village, where his father and grandfather grew their grain.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2018 · Shortlist
Herr Katō spielt Familie
Milena Michiko Flašar · 38 when first published
Novel · 208 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Recently retired, Mr Katō drifts away from his wife and children in Japan. Then he starts working for an agency that hires him out as a stand-in for absent relatives.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Strategies for Finding a Host”
Brigitta Falkner · 58 when first published
Nonfiction · 202 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:In over 200 full-page plates of drawings and verse, mites, ticks, larvae and carnivorous plants play their games of camouflage and mimicry, in a natural history of parasites told like a comic-book thriller.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Lucid Dream”
Olga Flor · 49 when first published
Novel · 281 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Two people begin a love affair that is meant to spare both of their families, a passion kept in rational, economical portions. The novel looks back on how that attempt fails.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist
Der Tag, an dem mein Großvater ein Held war
Paulus Hochgatterer · 56 when first published
Novella · 112 pages · War, Historical, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In the last days of the war, a girl of about thirteen who remembers nothing finds shelter on a farm in Lower Austria. Then a Russian forced labourer turns up there, carrying a painting from Göring's art collection.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist
Die Hauptstadt
Robert Menasse · 63 when first published
Novel · 416 pages · Satire, Politics
AI-generated summary:In Brussels, an official tasked with polishing the European Commission's image asks a colleague for an idea, which awakens a ghost from history. Meanwhile a detective must drop a murder case and the city tries to name a pig running through its streets.
Also: Deutscher Buchpreis 2017 winner
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Approach”
Anna Mitgutsch · 68 when first published
Novel · 441 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:Theo, in his nineties, is taken to hospital and senses his life is ending. As he takes stock, a young Ukrainian carer reaches him in a way neither his wife nor his estranged daughter can.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Picture Puzzle with Cat”
Peter Henisch · 73 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age, Historical
AI-generated summary:A child leans at a window in postwar Vienna with a cat beside him, the first of many in his life. A writer looks back on growing up in the city of the 1940s and 1950s.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Emigrating”
Peter Waterhouse · 60 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Migration, Politics
AI-generated summary:Media has come to Austria from the Caucasus and reads her new language slowly. Reading with her, a writer stops, translates and questions the words that asylum files and rulings use for people like her.
Österreichischer Buchpreis 2016 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Daldossi, or The Life of the Moment”
Sabine Gruber · 53 when first published
Novel · 315 pages · Love, War
AI-generated summary:Bruno Daldossi has photographed war in Chechnya, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan. In his early sixties he is sent into retirement, and when his partner of many years leaves him, he loses all footing in Vienna.