The writer Emine Sevgi Özdamar will receive the Georg Büchner Prize 2022. This was announced by the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt on Tuesday.
The award, which is worth 50,000 euros, is to be ceremoniously presented on November 5th. It is one of the most important literary prizes in the German-speaking world. Özdamar is the twelfth woman to receive the award.
“With Emine Sevgi Özdamar, the German Academy for Language and Poetry is honoring an outstanding author to whom the German language and literature owes new horizons, themes and a highly poetic sound,” said the jury in its justification. Born in Turkey on August 10, 1946, the writer, actress and theater director has been enriching the German-language literary scene with her novels, short stories and plays for more than three decades.
Since 1951, the Academy has awarded the prize to writers who write in German. According to the statutes, the prizewinners must “stand out in a special way through their works and creations” and “have made a significant contribution to the shaping of current German cultural life”. The prize is financed by the federal government, the state of Hesse and the city of Darmstadt.
The winners include Max Frisch (1958), Günter Grass (1965) and Heinrich Böll (1967) and most recently Rainald Goetz, Marcel Beyer, Jan Wagner, Terézia Mora, Lukas Bärfuss, Elke Erb and Clemens J. Setz.
It is named after the dramatist and revolutionary Georg Büchner (“Woyzeck”). He was born in the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1813 and died in Zurich in 1837.
