Ulrike Edschmid shortlisted for the Wilhelm-Raabe-Literaturpreis 2021
News07.09.2021
We are delighted to announce that Ulrike Edschmid has been shortlisted for the Wilhelm-Raabe-Literaturpreis 2021 for her novel Levy’s Testament.
Every year, the city of Braunschweig and Deutschlandfunk distinguish a piece of prose written in German that is of major significance in the author’s literary development with the Wilhelm Raabe Literary Award. It is endowed with a prize sum of €30,000 and is amongst the most important of the German literary awards. Past recipients include Rainald Goetz, Ralf Rothmann, Andreas Maier, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Christian Kracht, Clemens J. Setz and Judith Schalansky.
More on the shortlisted novel, Levy’s Testament:
A story of love and loss and a journey through 1970s left-wing Europe
They meet in Berlin but in London they become a couple. They spend their days in a court room at the Old Bailey, to support anarchists facing draconian prison sentences. Strikes, squatting, IRA attacks and the tough measures taken by the government shape everyday life in the winter of 1972. The couple explore the city, floating through it weightlessly as though in a dream. The Englishman (as the narrator calls her companion) knows little about his Jewish family. Decades later, after they have already been separated for many years, the Englishman uncovers a family drama. It takes him back to the Old Bailey: to 1924, to a spectacular fraud case, in which the accused is Levy, his great-grandfather.
Every year, the city of Braunschweig and Deutschlandfunk distinguish a piece of prose written in German that is of major significance in the author’s literary development with the Wilhelm Raabe Literary Award. It is endowed with a prize sum of €30,000 and is amongst the most important of the German literary awards. Past recipients include Rainald Goetz, Ralf Rothmann, Andreas Maier, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Christian Kracht, Clemens J. Setz and Judith Schalansky.
More on the shortlisted novel, Levy’s Testament:
A story of love and loss and a journey through 1970s left-wing Europe
They meet in Berlin but in London they become a couple. They spend their days in a court room at the Old Bailey, to support anarchists facing draconian prison sentences. Strikes, squatting, IRA attacks and the tough measures taken by the government shape everyday life in the winter of 1972. The couple explore the city, floating through it weightlessly as though in a dream. The Englishman (as the narrator calls her companion) knows little about his Jewish family. Decades later, after they have already been separated for many years, the Englishman uncovers a family drama. It takes him back to the Old Bailey: to 1924, to a spectacular fraud case, in which the accused is Levy, his great-grandfather.
»You won't want to put this slim, intense book down until the very last page ...«
Christoph Schröder, ZEIT Online
»Edschmid works with the suggestive power of historical indices, her style combines reportage and fiction. The constant shifts between present tense and past tense create a special kind of hyper-realistic perception that does justice to the individual case and yet goes far beyond it.«
Meike Fessmann, Der Tagesspiegel
Christoph Schröder, ZEIT Online
»Edschmid works with the suggestive power of historical indices, her style combines reportage and fiction. The constant shifts between present tense and past tense create a special kind of hyper-realistic perception that does justice to the individual case and yet goes far beyond it.«
Meike Fessmann, Der Tagesspiegel