Klagenfurt - Trauma text competition: Sila wins Bachmann Prize
Family Wounds, Which Have Not Healed Across Generations, Have Thematically Shaped the Annual Competition for the Renowned Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.
The author Tijan Sila, who hails from Sarajevo and lives in Kaiserslautern, stood out in the Austrian Klagenfurt jury's broad favorite field. For his text with the self-explanatory title "The Day My Mother Went Insane," he received the main prize. The honor bestowed by the city of Klagenfurt is endowed with 25,000 Euro and named after the local literat Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973).
Born in 1981, Sila narrates not only about a mother who suddenly becomes schizophrenic but also about a father who slides into a pathological hoarding syndrome. The horror of the Bosnian War is described in parts as harrowing, in parts comically - for instance, with an aunt who is killed by a grenade while nursing her newborn, or with the destroyed office of the mother, which looks "like a microwave in which a spoonful of moussaka had exploded."
As a refugee in Germany
Juror Philipp Tingler spoke in his prize speech for Sila not only about his unique linguistic "mixture of precision, tragicomedy, and melancholy," but also about the narrative structure, which does not end in despair, but with a rebellion against the passing of parents' pain to children. Sila was at a loss for words after receiving the award. "I'm still not quite getting it, but I'm euphoric nonetheless," he said.
Sila came to Germany as a refugee in 1994. In Heidelberg, he studied Germanistics and English studies. Today, he not only writes but also teaches as a teacher in a school. His latest book "Radio Sarajevo" about surviving in the besieged city was published last year; his Bachmann text is part of his next novel.
Other Prize Winners
A series of trauma narratives were also among the offerings at this year's Bachmann competition. The Slovenian Tamara Stajner, who lives in Vienna, won the 10,000 Euro Kelag Prize on Sunday for "Air Below." The text, which is dedicated to a loving, violent, and sick mother, moved Stajner so much during the reading that she almost broke down in tears. The Bonn author and forklift driver Denis Pfabe described in "The Possibility of Order" a man trying to come to terms with the loss of a child through excessive orders in a garden center. For this, he received the Deutschlandfunk Prize worth 12,500 Euro.
Unrewarded was Henrik Szantos' artful language kaleidoscope "A Staircase Made of Paper," in which the inhabitants of a house are mixed up - from the Nazi era to the present. Similarly radical was Miedya Mahmod's linguistically even more daring text "We Don't Want to Express It Badly. Or: Ba,Da," in which war, injuries, and family play a role. Despite the thematic weight, all these excellent and not excellent texts showed a desire to overcome historical and historical traumas.
The audience rewards Cucumber Madness
The audience awarded the "Cucumber Madness" prize to the text "Das Haus mit den schwarzen Fenstern" by the Viennese author Michael Köhlmeier. The text, which deals with the topic of aging, was met with great enthusiasm by the audience. Köhlmeier received a cucumber as a symbolic award.
A candidate instead opted for relieving laughter instead of shock and was rewarded with the audience prize and the 3sat prize: Johanna Sebauer convinced in Klagenfurt with her satire "The Gurkerl", in which a spritzer of pickled gherkins in the eye of a journalist sets off a media and societal escalation spiral about sauerkraut geese as a topic. The Austrian-born and Hamburg-residing author joked on Sunday that gherkins are no longer on her menu for the time being. "It could be that I need a break after this gherkin madness", she said.
- Tijan Sila, the winner of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, was born in Sarajevo but currently resides in Kaiserslautern.
- The Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, held annually in Klagenfurt, Austria, is named after the local literary figure Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973).
- Tamara Stajner, a Slovenian author living in Vienna, win the Kelag Prize with her text "Air Below" at this year's Bachmann competition.
- Denis Pfabe, a Bonn author and forklift driver, received the Deutschlandfunk Prize for "The Possibility of Order", a text about coming to terms with the loss of a child.
- As a refugee in Germany, Tijan Sila studied Germanistics and English studies in Heidelberg before becoming a teacher and writer.
- The jury's favorite field in this year's Bachmann competition included Tijan Sila, who won the main prize for his text "The Day My Mother Went Insane".
- In his prize speech, juror Philipp Tingler praised Sila's unique linguistic style and the narrative structure that ends not in despair, but in rebellion.
- The Bonn author and forklift driver Denis Pfabe's text "The Possibility of Order" includes a man trying to cope with the loss of a child through excessive orders in a garden center.
- The Austrian-born and Hamburg-residing author Johanna Sebauer won the audience and 3sat prize with her satire "The Gurkerl", which centers around a pickled gherkin incident in the media.
- Ingeborg Bachmann, for whom the prize is named, was a prominent German-language author known for her traumatic literature and her own struggles with mental health.
