“A new voice in German literature”:
Chamisso Prize 2008 awarded to Saša Stanišic

Stuttgart, 28 February 2008 – The writer Saša Stanišic, who was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, will be awarded the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize 2008 today in Munich. The prize is endowed with 15,000 euros. The native Hungarian writer Léda Forgó and native Czech writer Michael Stavaric will both be awarded runner-up prizes of 7,000 euros each. Since 1985, Robert Bosch Stiftung has been awarding the Chamisso Prize to authors writing in German whose native language is not German. The awards will be presented at a ceremony held in Allerheiligen Hofkirche at the Munich Residence.

“The winners of the Chamisso Prize are all not only German writers, but also – whether consciously or unconsciously –builders of literary and linguistic bridges between German culture and the cultures of their own countries,” says Dieter Berg, the Chairman of the Board of Management of Robert Bosch Stiftung.

German literature has “found a new voice in Saša Stanišic,” Wolfgang Herles says in his honorific speech about the 29-year-old writer, who lives in Leipzig. His debut novel, “Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert” (2006), “is a sad and funny, light and heavy, poetic, and temperamental novel,” Herles continues, “and Stanišic is an outstanding talent.” Léda Forgó, in her debut novel “Der Körper meines Bruders” (2007), has succeeded in creating an extraordinarily dense work of conflicting emotional worlds in a contradictory age,” Lerke von Saalfeld says about the 34-year-old writer, who lives in Berlin. Jirí Gruša says that Michael Stavaric, the 36-year-old Czech writer based in Vienna, surprised him in particular with “the rhythmic structure” of his sentences and his “narrative full of punch lines.” “Terminifera” (2007) is his second novel.

The first joint reading by the Chamisso 2008 prizewinners will be held on 29 February at 8pm in the Munich Literaturhaus.