Frank Witzel has received the German Book Prize
The German author Frank Witzel has received the German Book Prize for his novel Die Erfindung – and can’t believe it.
His winning the award was a surprise. When the German writer Frank Witzel heard his name and the unwieldly title of his novel Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager im Sommer 1969 (i.e. The Invention of the Red Army Faction by a Manic-Depressive Teenager in the Summer of 1969) announced at the award ceremony of the German Book Prize, he could not believe it himself. He was regarded as an outsider in the race for the best German-language novel of the year. The arts pages had tipped Jenny Erpenbeck’s refugee novel Gehen, ging, gegangen (i.e. Go, Went, Gone) as a much more likely winner of the coveted award, which traditionally is awarded at the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair.
But instead of the novel about refugees and the interior of society, Witzel’s 800 pages work received the award. German newspapers had judged the novel in advance as “extravagant”, “daring”, a “brilliant piece of literature” and a “novel with long-term effect”. Witzel himself was uncertain: “When I finished writing the novel, I actually didn’t know whether I had succeeded or whether I’d let myself be carried away”, he said, visibly moved by receiving the award. Witzel, a native of the federal state of Hesse, worked on his book for fifteen years more or less unnoticed by the literary scene. “I was totally unprepared, but have tried to make the best of it”, he says about his appearance at the ceremony. “It’s all still completely unreal.”
Pop, politics and paranoia
Frank Witzel is not only a writer, but also an illustrator and musician. After finishing school in 1955, Witzel, who was born in Wiesbaden, was trained at the city’s conservatory. Even today, he says, he reaches for his guitar in stress situations. “It earths me.” He has published poems since the 1970s, and in 2001 published his first novel. Witzel has now given everyone permission to abridge the title of his prize-winning novel to Die Erfindung (The Invention).
It tells at a rapid pace the story of a 13-year-old teenager in the German state of Hesse in 1969. It resurrects the universe of the old Federal Republic. “Frank Witzel’s work is an exorbitant novel-construct in the best sense”, according to the jury’s statement. And: “The novel, in its mixture of madness and wit, formal daring and panoramic of contemporary history, is unique in German-language literature. The award of the German Book Prize has honored this brilliant literary work, which is a vast quarry, a hybrid compendium of pop, politics and paranoia”.
