Logo, image: Leipzig Book Fair

Last weekend in Leipzig. Hecticness, disoriented tourists blocking the streets, dressed up teenagers. During this year’s book fair in Leipzig, the city definitely wasn’t the calmest place to be. You could even wonder, why booksellers and publishers always complain about how decreasingly people read. Who needs printed books anymore? Why endanger the rainforests when we could read everything digitised? However, e-book-readers weren’t the most popular thing in Leipzig. Actually, they seemed to be banished to a single hall while the rest of the fairground was completely filled with madness.

Not a comfy story this one. But the award ceremony was surely something else. A very yawny event, no surprises, people waving with flower bouquets for hours. In short: endless boredom. Some may have hoped for a scandal, flying eggs and Helene Hegemann crying, because she got so lucky winning the award in the fiction category. Well, actually, she may have cried because of all the reproaches she would have had to listen to.

Cover, image: Rowohlt

Anyway. It could have been a great show bringing a little bit of anarchic excitement into the dull literary business. But of course, a 17-year-old girl, who used lots of other texts (especially of Airen’s blog) for her own novel without quoting them properly, couldn’t win. So the author on stage with the biggest bouquet of flowers was the well-established Georg Klein. He received the prize for his novel “Roman unserer Kindheit” (novel of our childhood), which takes place in early 60’s Germany. Between ugly new buildings, the children in Klein’s novel spend their summer holidays waiting for something to happen. And it does – a murder. Strange messengers start to appear. Klein’s novel is a thrilling text between autobiography and fantasy.

“Roman unserer Kindheit” surely deserves high praise and tons of awards. But why does this always have to be such an annoying affair? By the way, during a recent interview Helene Hegemann stated that she doesn’t want to write another book anymore. She would prefer studying law.