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Announcement of the winners on Deutschlandfunk Kultur on June 4

Internationaler Literaturpreis 2020

Prize for Contemporary Literature in Translation

Announcement of the winners on Deutschlandfunk Kultur on June 4

What forms does contemporary storytelling take on? The Internationaler Literaturpreis is dedicated to this question for the twelfth time – at a time when the response to global complexities is often to retreat into national egoisms and narratives of exclusion.

With the aim to respond sensibly and reasonably to the new worldwide state of affairs caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus, HKW, Stiftung Elementarteilchen and the jury decided to award the Internationaler Literaturpreis 2020 not to one single book, but to all six shortlisted titles. Instead of two winners, there will be twelve: the six authors and six translators on the shortlist.

The prize money was divided equally among the six authors and six translators. On June 4, this year’s winners were announced live on Deutschlandfunk Kultur as part of the program Lesart.

“They show us the world as a big realm of opportunity where not everything can be reduced to reproduction numbers. Regardless of the language they’re written in they testify to the world’s immense diversity of voices because thanks to the respective translator, each of the six books has its own tone and very own linguistic form.” – The Jury