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Author Barbi Marković
Photo: Apollonia Theresa Bitzan / Residenz Verlag
She prepared her acceptance speech in ten well-spent minutes in the canteen. On stage, Barbi Marković, who won the Leipzig Book Fair prize in the fiction category on Thursday, does not speak from her perspective. She tells what her main character would do. In her book “Minihorror,” the author, who was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1980, describes the everyday life of the protagonists Mini and Miki. This is primarily characterized by numerous horror scenarios. »The speech is intended to eliminate poverty and war. Mini reads and the world stays the same," says Markovic on stage.
She studied German and has lived in Vienna since 2006. In 2023, the author was awarded the Berlin Art Prize for Literature. Your book was published by Residenzverlag.
The Berlin art historian Tom Holert was honored in the non-fiction/essay category. His book »ca. 1972: Violence - Identity - Method" focuses on the period after the revolutionary euphoria of 1968. The author works with text and images. Holert was born in Hamburg in 1962 and taught at the Free University of Berlin, among other places.
Ki-Hyang Lee won in the translation category. She translated “The Curse of the Rabbit” by Bora Chung from Korean. The book is made up of ten short stories. The award winner was born in Seoul in 1967 and lives in Munich.
The Leipzig Book Fair prize is endowed with a total of 60,000 euros and is awarded in three categories. Each winner receives 15,000 euros, plus 1,000 euros for each nomination.
This year, the book fair has awarded the prizes in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, essays and translation for the 20th time. According to the organizers, 486 new publications from 177 publishers were submitted and viewed by a seven-person jury.
ada/dpa