Tijan Sila has won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, which is endowed with 25,000 euros. The author, who was born in Sarajevo and lives in Kaiserslautern, beat 13 other competitors in the renowned literary competition on Sunday in Klagenfurt, Austria.
Sila convinced the jury at the Days of German Literature with his text “The Day My Mother Went Crazy,” in which he writes about intergenerational trauma, family conflicts, and madness. Juror Philipp Tingler spoke of a unique linguistic “mixture of pointedness, tragic comedy, and melancholy.”
“I still don’t quite understand it, but I’m still euphoric,” said Sila after the award ceremony.
Tijan Silan was born in 1981. He came to Germany in 1994 as a war refugee. He studied German and English in Heidelberg. His first novel, “Tierchen Unlimited”, was published in 2017, followed by the works “Die Fahne der Wünsche” and “Krach”. His text for the Bachmann competition is part of his next novel.
Silan is not only a writer but also works as a German teacher in a school.
The prize, which has been awarded since 1977, is given by the city of Klagenfurt, the home of the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973). Last year it was won by the German author Valeria Gordeev.