Antje Rávik Strubel wins German Book Prize 2021 for her novel Blue Woman

S.Fischer Verlag author Antje Rávik Strubel has been awarded the German Book Prize 2021 for her novel Blaue Frau (Blue Woman).

To us, it has always felt a bit like Antje Rávik Strubel`s  writing has been somewhat ahead of her time – and that makes us even happier to accompany this fantastic breakthrough. As her long-time publisher we are delighted to let you know that the author`s work is almost completely to be discovered around the globe.

S.Fischer Verlag Foreign Rights

The jury said:

“With existential force and poetic precision, Antje Rávik Strubel describes a young woman’s escape from her memories of being raped. Layer by layer, this unsettling novel exposes what happened. The story of female self-empowerment expands into a reflection on competing cultures of memory in Eastern and Western Europe and the power imbalance between the sexes. In a tentative narrative movement, Antje Rávik Strubel succeeds in giving voice to what is actually unspeakable about a traumatic experience. In her dialogue with the mythical figure of the Blue Woman, the narrator sums up her interventional poetics: literature as a fragile counterforce against injustice and violence in the face of despair.”

You can read more about the book and a sample translation in English by Zaia Alexander here.

See the six shortlisted books here.

Book image credit: © vntr.media

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