German Book Prize 2025 - the Longlist

A first love caught between holding on and destruction, extinction and survival....

A first love caught between holding on and destruction, extinction and survival.

It's burning. In the forests and on the screens. Fifteen-year-old Era lives with her mother on the edge of a forest. She tries to counteract the process of destruction by documenting the extinction of birds. She watches her classmate Maja and her sister Merle blowing up hard drives in the neighbouring clearing. Maja, the daughter of two momfluencers, is trying to erase the memories of her public childhood. While Era fills notebooks with drawings and tries to organise all the knowledge she can access, Maja acts as a destructive counterforce. Nevertheless, Era and Maja are connected in their search for intimacy and analogue stimuli. As the turtle dove becomes extinct, the two girls fall in love. However, it is not only the birds that are under threat: when a large-scale fire destroys the forest, the girls also lose a significant part of their habitat.

In Blinde Geister (Blind Spirits), Lina Schwenk tells a moving family story spanning the 1950s to the present day. In...

In Blinde Geister (Blind Spirits), Lina Schwenk tells a moving family story spanning the 1950s to the present day. In her powerful debut novel, she writes about a time when pressing questions are met with profound silence. Olivia, the daughter of Rita and Karl, has always been aware of the adults' fear of another war, even though Germany has been at peace for years. Karl persistently checks the pantry for supplies, and time and again the family seeks refuge together in the cellar when their father fears an invasion by the Russians. For Olivia and her sister Martha, it is a game they quietly submit to, partly because they have long known that their parents lack the words to explain and that the more they ask, the louder the silence becomes. ‘I'll be dead soon,’ Olivia thinks, as her parents' anxiety creeps into her own. In her first apartment, Olivia misses the cellar – that little protective bunker of her childhood, which at least meant one thing: family time. She only recognises the long cracks that stretch from her parents to her own generation when she later tries to protect her own daughter from that feeling of threat. But then February 2022 arrives, and what previously seemed like a phantom suddenly becomes frighteningly real. 

Blinde Geister is a multi-layered and moving novel that exposes deeply rooted fears against the backdrop of German contemporary history and explores the strange and otherworldly in human beings with great sensitivity.

Belgrade, 1942: On the day that occupied Serbia is declared 'free of Jews', Isak Ras sets out on what may...

Belgrade, 1942: On the day that occupied Serbia is declared 'free of Jews', Isak Ras sets out on what may be his final journey through the city. He is searching for the remnants of his buried past. What happened 21 years ago when his mother disappeared without a trace? Did anarchists Rosa and Milan have anything to do with it? Or the mysterious doppelgängers who roamed the city? Ultimately, eight chapters and eight different perspectives reveal the solution to the mystery at the heart of this great novel. 

Marko Dinić has succeeded in creating an impressive text: a history of Serbia and Europe in the 20th century. His Book of Faces is modern memory literature.

The first-person narrator is called 'Motte' by her father. He is a labourer, a gambler and a drinker. Motte has...

The first-person narrator is called 'Motte' by her father. He is a labourer, a gambler and a drinker. Motte has two fathers: one who can run fast, knows all the hiding places when playing games, and can answer any question; and the other who is transferred from the factory floor to the office so that he doesn't saw off his hand when he's drunk. The other is transferred from the factory floor to the office so that he doesn't cut off his hand when he's drunk. According to her mother, all the men in the family were the same with the alcohol.Motte has also been drinking more than is good for her for a long time. Even as a child, she played waitress at the shooting festival and drank the leftovers until she felt warm. Now, as a young woman, she sometimes sleeps in the hallway because she can no longer find the lock with her key. Her boyfriend supports her, but most of the time he can't stand properly himself. Only her brother, who has become a teacher, checks on her every day. When their father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Motte looks for a way to say goodbye — to both her father and alcohol.

Das Schwarz an den Händen meines Vaters (The Black on My Father's Hands) by Lena Schätte is a moving novel about growing up in modest circumstances and the importance of family. It is a tender yet harsh novel about love for a difficult father and the path to life. 

Measuring the Unspeakable...

Measuring the Unspeakable

On the last day of exams in 2002, gunshots are heard at Gutenberg High School in Erfurt. Our narrator, who was eleven years old at the time, was evacuated with his classmates. In the following weeks, he observed the helplessness of adults in the face of this act. More than twenty years later, the event unexpectedly re-enters his life, triggering an obsessive preoccupation with the subject that results in a novel project. But why reopen old wounds after so many years? Does he have the right to do so? What about his memories? Which stories has he told so often that they have become true?

Kaleb Erdmann's novel Die Ausweichschule (The Alternative School) skilfully plays with perspectives. This piece of autofiction is critical of its audience, asking how voyeuristic our interest in coming to terms with acts of violence is, and is also self-critical, asking what gives the author the right to write about that day. It is a pointed, personal and harrowing text about a phenomenon that preoccupies us worldwide.

The narrator, an unnamed writer, pulls over to the side of the road when she receives an unexpected phone call,...

The narrator, an unnamed writer, pulls over to the side of the road when she receives an unexpected phone call, accompanied by flashing warning lights. On the line is a renowned theatre producer trying to recruit her for his latest project: a play set in the tropics about a real-life case. A few weeks later, she sets off to join the theatre company on their journey deep into the jungle. 

Dorothee Elmiger tells the disturbing story of people and monsters, fear and violence, lostness in the universe, and failed narratives.

It's a simple story, told poetically and with crystal clarity: Parker and Kasimir emigrated from Poland to the USA as...

It's a simple story, told poetically and with crystal clarity: Parker and Kasimir emigrated from Poland to the USA as boys with their mother, hoping for a better life. Following this ordeal, their mother lost her zest for life, and the brothers became two lonely individuals, struggling to survive in a foreign country where they never felt at home. 

Parker drives through the night as a private chauffeur while Kasimir never leaves the house. When Luzia, a vagabond, moves in with them, she brings with her a zest for life that shatters the almost wordless closeness between the brothers. However, when the young woman runs off to Panama, it becomes clear that Kasimir must follow her, even if it means going to the ends of the earth.

In the early seventies, Johann arrived in the city to study, his head full of confused dreams. There he met...

In the early seventies, Johann arrived in the city to study, his head full of confused dreams. There he met Christiane and Tommi, a couple who took him into their circle. Together, they explored the light and dark sides of love, caught in an ever-tightening love triangle.

When Johann was a child, his father asked him what he wanted most in life. Johann didn't dare answer, 'Once in my life, I would like to kill a man.'

Michael Köhlmeier's fascinating novel tells the story of a false life within a real one. Of past guilt and lifelong innocence. Die Verdorbenen (The Corrupted) will not let anyone go.

This is a quiet yet eloquent book that tells the story of losing one's homeland to war and the pain...

This is a quiet yet eloquent book that tells the story of losing one's homeland to war and the pain and loss of language that accompanies it. In this moving debut, the author discovers her magnificent voice. The unusual title ë represents a letter that plays an important role in the Albanian language despite not usually being pronounced. The narrator, the child of refugees from Kosovo, is searching for language and voice. Growing up in Germany, she attends kindergarten, school and university, seeking understanding, but repeatedly encounters attributions, cluelessness and ignorance. When the Kosovo War rages at the end of the 1990s, she experiences it from a safe distance. However, war and death are also present in the diaspora; they are simply experienced differently. 

The novel ë recounts the little-known Kosovo War and the suffering of families who lost their homes and had relatives murdered, buried anonymously and still missing or unidentified to this day. 

Jehona Kicaj gives a voice to a past that cannot be forgotten because it is ingrained in every fibre of her being.

To what extent can a person with mental illness exercise self-determination? What does someone who has nothing left to lose...

To what extent can a person with mental illness exercise self-determination? What does someone who has nothing left to lose desire? And what might ultimate happiness look like? Welcome to the House in the Sun, an institution that is both a wish-fulfilment machine and a death-with-dignity clinic. Terminally ill people and those tired of life check into this state-funded clinic to have every wish fulfilled before departing from life without much fuss. But do those who no longer want to live really want to die?

Thomas Melle explores our longings and death drives, offering a radical sketch of the human condition.

It is night-time in the south of France. Jina is sitting at her desk with her phone in hand. Her...

It is night-time in the south of France. Jina is sitting at her desk with her phone in hand. Her Instagram feed updates every second. She reads: "Jina Mahsa Amini was beaten into a coma by the morality police in Tehran." She realises that the young woman with the same name as her has died. Images of protests in the streets follow in her feed, showing girls and women with uncovered hair, including Jina's sister Roya and her niece Nika.What begins as an attempt to understand the present becomes a journey into the past. The events awaken memories in Jina of her own time in Iran: the hospitality of the people, her aunts' lavish spreads, encounters in shared taxis and a road trip to the fire temple of Zarathustra in Yazd, as well as a secret love. But also of the protests during the Green Movement in 2009, in which Jina took part, and which were a life-changing experience.

A West German province in the 1990s: prefabricated houses on one side of the village and traditional farms on the...

A West German province in the 1990s: prefabricated houses on one side of the village and traditional farms on the other. There was a sports field, a pub, a bakery and a bus turning loop. And an insurance office. In Kathrin Bach's prose debut, the first-person narrator is born into a family of merchants. Her parents continue the work of her grandfathers, who brought insurance to the up-and-coming villages after the war. This brings modest prosperity, but also an ever-present fear. The next disaster could be just a phone call away.

In Kathrin Bach's Lebensversicherung (Life Insurance), memories, images, and lists converge to create a tragicomic family narrative. She recounts the deeply German desire for security and the realisation that one cannot purchase freedom from risks and dangers. It is a story of a milieu in which time is money and freedom is limited to two weeks' holiday a year. She also tells the story of a protagonist who confronts her fears through writing to affirm her vitality.

Spring has come to Rome, and Peter Wawerzinek is a scholarship holder at Villa Massimo. He roams the city, gathering...

Spring has come to Rome, and Peter Wawerzinek is a scholarship holder at Villa Massimo. He roams the city, gathering inspiration for his new novel, and is presented with a wealth of impressions: beauty, chaos and a vibrant liveliness that offer promise for the future. However, his time there is clouded by the pandemic, which puts a stop to his walks. His technology fails and all his writing is lost. Peter Wawerzinek moves to Trastevere and decides to write about Pasolini. However, something still seems amiss: cold, white fingertips in the midst of the most beautiful spring sunshine. His body no longer fits into the picture. A visit to his family doctor in Berlin finally yields a diagnosis: cancer. However, even the prospect of death does not deter him. He is drawn back to Rome and the intensity of the Eternal City — the beginning of his journey back to life.

Peter Wawerzinek writes about human transience and the imminent threat of death, yet every line of his novel is full of intensity. He finds the strength to heal in literature, music and art, but above all in the chance encounter with love at just the right moment. His language is poetic and visually powerful, and simultaneously breathtaking and liberating, expressing an existential upheaval that demands everything of him, but which he ultimately triumphs over all the more clearly. 

In his new novel, Dmitrij Kapitelman writes in a bittersweet and deeply political style about family, and the possibility of...

In his new novel, Dmitrij Kapitelman writes in a bittersweet and deeply political style about family, and the possibility of understanding in times of war, both old and new. 

A family from Kyiv sells Russian specialities in Leipzig: They sell vodka, pelmeni, SIM cards and sailor shirts, as well as a somewhat Eastern European sense of belonging. However, this has been lost since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The mother supports Putin. Her son, who loves no language more than Russian, no person more than his mother and no city more than Kyiv, is despairing. It would be unwise for him to return to Ukraine in the middle of the war. But what can he do when there is no other way to rescue his mother from fascism and the lies of Russian television? 

This is a book that only Dmitrij Kapitelman could have written: tragic, tender and funny all at once.

Annett Gröschner recounts the life of Hanna Krause, a flower arranger and crane operator, with a force and poetry that...

Annett Gröschner recounts the life of Hanna Krause, a flower arranger and crane operator, with a force and poetry that can only arise where literature is steeped in reality.

Hanna Krause was a florist before life turned her into a crane operator. She lived through two revolutions, two dictatorships, an uprising, two world wars, two defeats, two democracies and the reigns of the Kaiser and other leaders. She gave birth to six children, two of whom she was unable to bury, an experience that affected her deeply until the end of her life. Later, long after her flower shop had closed, she had a good view of the relationships between the people ten metres below her from a crane in the hall of a heavy machinery factory in Magdeburg. She died just in time, before she could no longer understand the world. Until her death, Hanna Krause remained someone who took life as it came. Her only credo was to stay decent. 

Annett Gröschner's novel tells the story of a century through a single life, giving a face to those who are all too often invisible. It is a novel about the end of the industrial age and its heroines in eastern Germany, and about an ordinary woman in an incomprehensible 20th century.

There are three English women, one German woman and four single mothers. Kayla, Tamara, Antje and Lina are friends who...

There are three English women, one German woman and four single mothers. Kayla, Tamara, Antje and Lina are friends who are as quick to criticise each other as they are to support each other unconditionally. When the Momfluencerinnen-Cocaine-Moms clique infiltrates their monthly supper club, a generational clash ensues. Through bitingly humorous episodes, we follow the women and their children as they navigate everyday life, from children's birthday parties where cocaine is hidden in the family bathroom, to parents' evenings where there are crushes on the new class teacher. 

In her new novel, British author and Berlin resident Nandi explores life among Germans, bureaucratic hurdles for single parents, generational conflicts among mothers, class, origin and betrayal, as well as the unexpected places where comfort can be found.

Son Without a Father tells the poignant and moving story of a grieving son, family solidarity, deceptive memories, and a...

Son Without a Father tells the poignant and moving story of a grieving son, family solidarity, deceptive memories, and a journey to a foreign country to visit his mother and deceased father.

Early one morning, his mother calls to tell him that his father has died. The narrator does not know what to do. He is alone in his grief. Who can help him? Who can comfort him? Gradually, he realises that he must go to Turkey. He must support his mother and stand at his father's grave to say goodbye.

However, the narrator, a writer from Kiel, suffers from a fear of flying. He asks two friends to let him join them on their motorhome trip. Together, they plan the trip: via Linz, Szeged, and Edirne to Edremit, and then back again. Over five thousand kilometres. This marks the beginning of an adventurous road trip across Europe, filled with shimmering memories of his father and his many lives: as a husband, a pieceworker, a storyteller or a seventy-year-old man with dyed sideburns who could cause an entire holiday resort to erupt in turmoil.

In his new novel, Feridun Zaimoglu considers how we remember the people closest to us, who sometimes seem strangely alien yet love and shape us, and whom we must ultimately let go of.

Fog hangs over the fields and the canal. It's as if winter is refusing to end in the small town...

Fog hangs over the fields and the canal. It's as if winter is refusing to end in the small town of Lassersen in the Emsland region. Not much happens here in the flat countryside year in, year out. Anyone looking for work has to go to Möllring, the huge poultry slaughterhouse on the outskirts of town. For a handful of people, this Monday morning begins with high hopes. Sonia, a single mother, hopes to find a job far away from the chicken-cutting line. For young engineer Anna, the test run of a new automation process at Möllring means that virtually everything is at stake. Merkhausen, an abandoned husband with a penchant for Polish women who is responsible for process optimisation at the slaughterhouse, is eagerly awaiting an evening date. Then there's Nassim, a refugee from Afghanistan who's involved with Justyna, twenty years his senior. He firmly believes that his poems will win over the German officials. Roshi, a German-Iranian author who has travelled from Cologne to translate Nassim's poems, is also present. After a reckless cyclist breaks Nassim's white cane in the middle of town, he achieves local fame with the help of the local radio station. He also makes people face their own truths.

Ingeborg Bachmann Prize winner Nava Ebrahimi immerses herself in the life of a small town in Emsland, weaving the stories of six people into a stirring social novel that asks: How do we remain human when life becomes increasingly difficult?

An Algerian soldier finds himself caught up in the first German poison gas attack. He decides that someone has to...

An Algerian soldier finds himself caught up in the first German poison gas attack. He decides that someone has to put a stop to it, so he stands up and leaves. In future Cairo, a stand-up comedian watches an android laugh at her jokes. A Bohemian weaver is replaced by an automated loom and steals a hammer to attack the machine. What do we humans of the capitalist era dream of? What do our increasingly rebellious machines dream of? In this novel's unique mirror room, no conflict is over and every story is still possible. Funny and sharp, clever and insane, Jonas Lüscher's stories are at the height of his art.

A love story as beautiful and daring as only Christine Wunnicke could write. Set in 18th-century France, it encompasses both...

A love story as beautiful and daring as only Christine Wunnicke could write. Set in 18th-century France, it encompasses both the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods. Two women who are very different from each other fall in love: Marie Biheron dissects corpses at a young age to create wax models of their inner workings, while Madeleine Basseporte draws the anatomy of flowers to avoid distractions from people who usually have no idea what they're talking about. Beautiful supporting roles are also played by men, including a nervous bestselling author, a young good-for-nothing, and Diderot, who drinks coffee and talks a lot. This captivating love story swings back and forth between a time when pasqueflowers grew peacefully by the wayside, and the days of horror when not only the queen was beheaded like a beautiful flower.