Shortlist for the 2025 Internationaler Literaturpreis

As diverse as the titles on this year’s shortlist are, they all explore a threatened self that also proves to be a resistant self. A self that holds fast, unwilling to surrender unseen and unheard to the cycle of violence in this world.

In So gehn wir denn hinab, we encounter a defenceless girl fighting for survival, whose extraordinary voice belongs equally to herself and to history. With linguistic and emotional force, she resists the dehumanization and uprooting that constitute the crime of enslavement.

Sankofa skilfully connects several life stories with formative historical moments that continue to have an impact on our present, revealing that history is neither final nor clear-cut, and that political violence is never predetermined, but always the result of individual decisions.

The narrator in Übung in Gehorsam shows just how closely these are linked to power relations. She brings us so close to a morally ambivalent victim that all certainties are confounded. Far removed from established narratives, the question arises as to what personal consequences can be drawn from collectively experienced stories of oppression and persecution.

Trauriger Tiger demands that we confront the reality of child abuse through the eyes of an adult victim who insists on autonomy as much as on the relatability of their experience of violence. In this impressive reflection, we encounter the brutality of ordinary people, but above all the nagging question of complicity.

Complicity also plays a decisive role in Ich ertrinke in einem fliehenden See, a painful look back at a romantic relationship and, at the same time, a relentless examination of one’s own role in the grand scheme of world events. Lost in destructive desire, the protagonist finds her way back to herself through her political awakening.

In Autobiographie des Todes, we are greeted by a choir, each voice demanding a personal and therefore dignified death for itself. It celebrates both the fragile, enigmatic, and unique inner world of each human being and the connecting timelessness of cultural images, stories, and worlds of thought.

All six titles on the shortlist, presented here in detail by my colleagues on the jury, have been translated into German with confidence and skill. Their translation work is therefore twofold: experience has been turned into language, and language into literature.
—Asal Dardan on behalf of the jury