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Kathrin Schmidt, the winner of the 2009 German Book Prize, in Frankfurt on October 12, 2009, with her book You're Not Going to Die (Du Stirbst Nicht).

(© dpa - Report)

Author Kathrin Schmidt has won the German Book Prize, a top annual award for German-language novels, its judges announced in Frankfurt on October 12.

She won for her semi-autobiographical novel You're Not Going to Die (Du Stirbst Nicht), about a woman named Helene Wesendahl who finds herself in a highly perplexing and frightening situation - having to regain a sense of orientation and learn to speak again after a debilitating stroke.

"The novel tells a story of regaining the world. Syllable by syllable, sentence by sentence, the heroine, waking from a coma after a brain haemorrhage, searches for her lost language, her lost memory," the German Book Trade Federation, which awards the prize annually two days before the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, states on its website.

"At times laconically, at times mockingly, at times uncannily, the novel describes the inner world of the sick woman, and with great eloquence, gives rise through this to the emerging story of her family, of her marriage, of an unplanned, unheard of love affair. The world she reassembles from the fragments also includes the disintegrating GDR, the years between reunification and the beginning of our century. Thus, the individual tale of a return from the brink of death is positioned both unobtrusively and with great skill in the echo chamber of the historical-political era of change."

Schmidt, who began writing poetry as a teenager, is known for her use of the German language in clever wordplays and for rich storytelling bordering at times on magic realism, which some critics have reportedly compared to early works by the great German writer Günter Grass.

In You're Not Going to Die, the German cultural affairs website signandsight.com suggests, Schmidt "enables the reader to feel what it's like to lose one's sense of orientation and ability to speak after a stroke, and she describes a road to recovery that takes two directions, backwards and forwards.

"This is a coming-of-age novel of a very unique kind: the reader is riveted by its inner dynamism and fascinated by the wholeheartedness with which the protagonist confronts both her past and present," it adds.
The German Book Prize is awarded by the German Book Trade Federation every year, two days before the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's premier book publishing event.

Modelled on the Man Booker Prize in Britain, the award is meant to identify novels that would appeal to a wide range of readers and perhaps generate international interest.

In just four years since it was founded, the German Book Prize has been widely acknowledged as the German-speaking world's most notable literary award. A panel of judges select a "long list" of 20 titles, then announce a shortlist of six by mid-September.

Schmidt, 51, was born in the city of Gotha in the eastern German state of Thuringia. She has worked as a psychologist, editorial journalist and social scientist. She has been awarded numerous prizes including the Leonce and Lena Prize in 1993. She lives in Berlin.

The 2008 German Book Prize went to Dresden-born Uwe Tellkamp for his novel Der Turm (The Tower), a monumental work describing the collapse of communist East Germany two decades ago.

The 2007 German Book Prize went to Julia Franck for her novel Die Mittagsfrau, about the life and difficult choices faced by a newly single young mother in World War II era Germany.

Related Links:

German Book Prize

German Book Prize 2009 - the shortlist (signandsight.com)

German Book Prize Winner Dissects Personal Struggle With Illness (Deutsche Welle)