German writer, Lutz Seiler wins $56,000 Georg Büchner Prize

 

DARMSTADT – Writer Lutz Seiler has been awarded the annual Georg Büchner Prize, one of the most important literary awards in the German-speaking world.

The jury from the German Academy for Language and Culture said on Tuesday that it “honours an author who began with sonorous volumes of poetry, from there found his way to narrative, but always remains a lyricist as lucid as he is enigmatic and darkly luminous.”

Seiler’s work was sincere and full of wonderful echoes from a long literary tradition, it added.

The prize is to be awarded in the western German city of Darmstadt on November 4. The winner receives €50,000 ($56,000).

Since 1951, the academy has awarded the Georg Büchner Prize annually to authors who write in German. It is given to writers “whose work is considered especially meritorious and who have made a significant contribution to contemporary German culture.”

Seiler was awarded the German Book Prize in 2014 for his debut novel “Kruso.” In 2020, he received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for his novel “Stern 111.”