German Non-Fiction Prize 2021

How can a dictatorship deal with the legacy of injustice and state crimes committed under its rule? This was the...

How can a dictatorship deal with the legacy of injustice and state crimes committed under its rule? This was the question the Chinese Communist Party faced after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. Drawing on previously unknown documents, Daniel Leese outlines a panorama of Chinese politics and society during the critical period of upheaval between 1976 and 1987.

Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim examines burning, controversial issues in our society, for scientific evidence underlies everything from pay equity and climate...

Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim examines burning, controversial issues in our society, for scientific evidence underlies everything from pay equity and climate change to compulsory vaccinations. She counters half-truths, fake news and conspiracy theories with facts – and shows where an absence of evidence justifies ongoing lively debate.

In his attempt to bring liberalism up to date, Christoph Möllers tries to carve out forms of an order that...

In his attempt to bring liberalism up to date, Christoph Möllers tries to carve out forms of an order that allows for both freedom of movement and social variability. Thus equipped, he promises no answers but rather new perspectives on various phenomena, including the function of territorial borders. Freedom, according to Möllers, is a practice of open-endedness that makes possible processes whose outcomes must be uncertain.

What is the secret of good style; how is language transformed into literature? Michael Maar explores this question in his...

What is the secret of good style; how is language transformed into literature? Michael Maar explores this question in his main and life’s work, for which he spent 40 years reading. What is style, what is jargon and what are the pitfalls that almost everyone falls into? How do the elementary particles need to interact in order to produce the perfect prose sentence? Through 50 portraits, Maar offers a history of German literature.

Andreas Kossert places the refugee movement of the early 21st century in a wide historical context. Always hewing closely to...

Andreas Kossert places the refugee movement of the early 21st century in a wide historical context. Always hewing closely to individual fates, Kossert shows the kinds of existential experiences of uprooting and hostility that accompany the loss of one’s homeland. Whether they have fled from East Prussia, Syria or India, refugees are active participants in world history.

Over the course of the decades of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s life, the world changed from the ground up, transformed...

Over the course of the decades of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s life, the world changed from the ground up, transformed by ideas that brought about revolutions – political, industrial, aesthetic and pedagogical. Jürgen Kaube recounts Hegel’s life, explains his work and shows how the epochal upheavals led to the attempt at an ultimate revolution – in thinking.

Nominated for the German Non- Fiction Prize 2021. Asal Dardan grew up in Germany as the child of Iranian parents,...

Nominated for the German Non- Fiction Prize 2021. Asal Dardan grew up in Germany as the child of Iranian parents, and the experience of exile has left its mark on her. In an illuminating examination of German society, she embarks on a search for a common language, for a way to bridge the eternal opposition between „us“ and „them“.

Heike Behrend’s account of her ethnographic research in Kenya and Uganda is not a heroic success story. Instead, it recounts...

Heike Behrend’s account of her ethnographic research in Kenya and Uganda is not a heroic success story. Instead, it recounts what conventional ethnographies usually leave out: the unheroic entanglements and cultural misunderstandings, conflicts, mistakes and situations of failure in foreign lands.