Judith Schalansky awarded Carl-Amery-Literaturpreis 2022
NewsThe jury states the following: »In her writing, which sometimes swerve into the fantastic, Judith Schalansky explores our existence, creating beguiling atlases and inventories of lost and forgotten stories of people and objects that are as clever as they are unconventional. As a poetic archivist, she likes to collect scientific findings, but at the same time she doesn’t shy away from mythical creatures. Thus, her books are little cabinets of wonder for discovering the world, in which theme and form interact in a wonderful way. In their almost mathematical rigour, her texts provide support for readers through order and reliability, a support that the frequent theme of these stories – transience – has already exposed as illusory. As the editor and creator of the Naturkunden series, she also proves herself to be an author in the footsteps of Carl Amery, with a profound interest in ecology, securing nature writing a firm place in German-language literature.«
The Carl-Amery-Literaturpreis, endowed with 6,000 Euros, was established in 2007 and is awarded every other year by the Bavarian Verband deutscher Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller, with the support of Luchterhand Literaturverlag and ver.di Bayern. Previous winners include Feridun Zaimoğlu (2007), Juli Zeh (2009), Ilija Trojanow (2011), Ulrich Peltzer (2013), Norbert Niemann (2015), Thomas von Steinaecker (2017) and Karen Duve (2019).
The Carl-Amery-Literaturpreis is awarded to German-language authors for critical works that seek to break new aesthetic ground and thus expand the spectrum of literary possibilities. The prize commemorates the Munich-based writer Carl Amery (1922 – 2005) and his life's work. Amery's critical examination of restorative tendencies in society and the church and his journalistic commitment to a peaceful and ecologically sensible world have set standards. The award ceremony will take place in Munich on 9 April 2022, the 100th birthday of Carl Amery.