This year’s edition of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s oldest and largest book fair, begins with the announcement of the winner of the 2024 German Book Prize.
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Martina Hefter won this year’s German Book Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in German-speaking literature, for her novel “Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir?” (“Good morning, how are you doing ?”).
This announcement marks the launch of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest book trade fair in the world.
“Hey guten Morgen, what are you saying?” tells the story of a middle-aged woman who escapes the difficulties of caring for her chronically ill husband by engaging in online romance fraud.
Martina Hefter has already won the Grand Prize of the German Literature Fund and the Wiesbaden Literature Prize for this novel, his fourthpublished 16 years after her last prose work “Die Küsten der Berge” (“The Mountain Coasts”) in 2008. In the meantime, the author has published numerous poetry anthologies.
“Navigating between melancholy and euphoria, and questioning trust and deception, the novel fascinatingly combines everyday life with mythological characters and cosmic dimensions”says the German Book Prize jury about the novel.
As winner of the German Book Prize, Martina Hefter will receive €25,000 while the five shortlisted authors — Maren Kames, Clemens Meyer, Ronya Othmann, Markus Thielemann and Iris Wolff — will each receive €2,500.
The largest and oldest book fair
The announcement of Germany’s most prestigious literary prize coincides with the opening of the world’s largest book fair in Frankfurt. From October 16 to 20, the first three days of the show are dedicated to industry professionals and the general public is admitted on the weekend.
The 2023 edition of the fair attracted more than 200,000 visitors from 130 countries. Author Salman Rushdie received the Peace Prize last year.
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest fair in the world and also one of the oldest. Its history dates back more than 500 years, even before the advent of printed books. The initial fair was dedicated to the sale of handwritten books, before the development of printing in the 15th century.
Interrupted during the Second World War before being reestablished in 1949, the Frankfurt Book Fair celebrates its 76th edition in its current version.
The guest of honor for the 2024 edition of the fair is Italy, a first for the country since 1988.
As part of its guest of honor status, the Italian committee selected physicist and author Carlo Rovelli, writer Susanna Tamaro and philosopher Stefano Zecchi as keynote speakers.
More than 90 authors are expected at the fair this year. One of the program’s highlights: a discussion between “Sapiens” author Yuval Noah Harari and philosopher Kohei Saito on the theme “Is rebooting a system the only way to have a bright future?”
Other authors present include Roberto Saviano, Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, Eva Menasse and Omri Boehm.
To the controversies of 2023
Last year’s fair made the subject of controversy when the LitProm LiberaturPreis award ceremony for Palestinian author Adania Shibli was abruptly canceled. His novel “Minor Detail”, first published in 2020, detailed the true story of the rape and murder of a young Palestinian girl in 1949 by Israeli soldiers.
ADVERTISEMENTThe cancellation of the ceremony was criticized by many authors, with more than 1,000 signing an open letter against the decision, including Nobel laureates Abdulrazak Gurnah, Annie Ernaux and Olga Tokarczuk.
LitProm has since released a statement saying that it “officially apologizes to Adania Shibli” and that, given the escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas at the time, she “thought it wise to organize the awards ceremony at another time, in a more peaceful political context, in particular to avoid possible disruptions or even attacks against the person of Adania Shibli”.
In response to criticism, LitProm has decided to also suspend the prize this year.
