Rainald Goetz receives Büchner Prize 2015

The German Academy for Language and Literature has awarded the Georg Büchner Prize 2015 to Rainald Goetz.

From the jury’s statement:
»The German Academy for Language and Literature hereby distinguishes an author who has made himself the chronicler of the present and its culture with unique intensity, as a participating, thinking and morally judging observer who has constantly put new forms and media to the test: the short story, the novel, the play, the blog and the text-image-collage. Rainald Goetz has described contemporary Germany of the last thirty years, has given vividness and a voice to it, has celebrated and condemned it, and has always analysed it with theoretical methods as well. Beyond his nervous, anxious readiness to experience, lie a comprehensive education and a sensitive historical awareness that facilitate a balance of passionate expressiveness, observing coolness and satirical preciseness in his language.«

Rainald Goetz, born May 24th, 1954 in Munich, studied History and Medicine in Munich and obtained a doctoral degree in both subjects. He briefly worked as a physician, but quit this profession for the sake of literature in his early thirties. His first novel, Mad, a story set in a psychiatric hospital, was published in 1983. Goetz subsequently also succeeded as a playwright. In 1998, Goetz was writing the internet diary »Rubbish for Everyone«, probably the first literary blog in Germany, with entries on the world of media and consumerism. It was published in book form in 1999 and together with Rave, Jeff Koons, Celebration and Deconspiracy belongs to Today Tomorrow, Goetz’s great history of the present. From 2007 until 2008, he wrote the blog »Lament« on the website of »Vanity Fair«; the blog was released in book form as early as 2008 and introduced the project »Ravine«, an analysis of the 2000s. This project includes works such as babbling, a volume of photographs entitled september eleventh 2010 and finally his latest novel Johann Holtrop, that describes the rise and fall of a manager. Rainald Goetz was awarded numerous prizes. He lives in Berlin.

For more information about Rainald Goetz' work, please visit the author's Foreign Rights website or contact the respective Rights Manager.