Esther Kinsky awarded Kleist Prize 2021

We are delighted to announce that author and translator Esther Kinsky has been awarded the Kleist Prize 2022 for her œuvre.

According to this year's juror Paul Ingendaay, Kinsky had created »a literary oeuvre of impressive stylistic ingenuity, topical diversity and distinctive originality«. In Kinsky’s texts, human stories were »only part of the natural history that surrounds them«, and they paid particular attention to the earth’s movements, geology, flora and fauna. »Far from any greenie flights of fancy, without lament or criticism, Kinsky’s novels and poems put humans into a relationship with the ruins they have created and with the remains of nature that still surround them.«

Kinsky has received great critical acclaim and been honoured with prestigious prizes for her work, including the Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse 2018 and the Düsseldorfer Literaturpreis 2018 for Grove, which was also shortlisted for the Europese Literatuurprijs 2021, longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021, and the 2021 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. An unpublished and anonymously entered extract from her latest novel Rombo was awarded the newly founded W.-G.-Sebald-Literaturpreis 2020.

Past recipients of the Kleist Prize include Bertolt Brecht, Robert Musil, Anna Seghers, Alexander Kluge, Monika Maron, Herta Müller and Clemens J. Setz. This year's award ceremony will be held on November 27 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.

For more information please visit the author's Foreign Rights Website or contact the respective Rights Manager.