Deutscher Buchpreis: Congrats to Jung und Jung Verlag and winning author Melinda Nadj Abonji (and a quick foot note)!

With Melinda Nadj Abonji winning the Deutscher Buchpreis very unexpectedly (and Jung und Jung Verlag proving in a most stunning way that a very small publisher can land a very big hit in German language lands indeed!) I am, first of all, in line for all the best wishes! What an accomplishment!

This said – and in an earlier bet on this blog, based on Amazon.de market data, wrongly  predicting a head on head race between Autrian Doron Rabinovici and German Bachmann Prize winner Peter Wawerzinek, I must add that I am of course very pleased with the final result.

This just adds evidence that book landscapes are much more diverse and open to new voices, and new publishers, small and big, than many would suspect. Initiative, good knowledge of literature AND the trade pay off, and it is just not true that successful literature in Europe is more or less always much of the same. NO.

So we will very closely map incoming data about what this surprise evening will set off – and report here as well as through the channels of professional publishing media.