German Nonfiction Prize Names Its First Round of Finalists
Eight titles now are in contention for the €25,000 honor, in the delayed first award cycle of the German Nonfiction Prize.
Winner Announcement: June 14 in Berlin
Because of the circumstances of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, the German Nonfiction Prize has become one of the longest awaited events in the dense forest of world publishing’s many awards programs. Created in May 2019 by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels,Germany’s publishers and booksellers association, its expected first year was scuttled by the timing of the contagion.
So it is that only today (April 6), this two-year-old €42,500 (US$50,227) prize program is issuing its first list of finalists. And not unlike the issue-driven Aspen Words Literary Prize, a criterion of this honor is that the winning title is not only to be a work of nonfiction written in German but also one that “inspires social debate.”