Irina Rastorgueva, Thomas Weiler, and somewhat surprisingly Kristine Bilkau are awarded the price of the Leipzig Book Fair. Wolf Haas and Christian Kracht go away empty -handed.
From the beginning, there is something slightly oppressive above the awarding of the 21st Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. It can be due to the greenhouse climate of the hall. Or on the words of the opening speech by Messechefin Astrid Böhmisch, which are traffic jams under the glass dome, whose language images sometimes get a bit shaky. “Waggling contacts can be put together again,” she says. How is that? Is the award handover to Wolf Haas in the fiction category according to the principle of Nabokov’s shotgun.