The German Book Prize 2022 goes to the Swiss author Kim de l’Horizon for his novel “Blood Book”. The artist, who identifies as non-binary, turned the awards ceremony in Römer in Frankfurt into a memorable event with his dazzling cross-dressing disco outfit and his performative and political acceptance speech. A razor also played an important role in this.
Kim de l’Horizon tearfully thanked his family and his grandmother, who turns out to be the main character of his novel. After playing a song himself, he also interpreted the jury’s decision as a signal against hate and for love, as a sign of support for all those who fight against conventional gender boundaries, but also for women in Iran, “to who we all belong look” and admire them for their courage and strength. There were long standing ovations from the audience, who were again amazed when the prize winner pulled out a battery-operated razor and shaved off his long hair as a sign of solidarity.
It’s a surprising win: a book that has nothing mainstream about it. The 300-page work is a wild ride through themes and styles. The conceptual starting point is a copper beech. She stands in her grandmother’s garden, who becomes demented in the course of the story. Part of the book consists of carefully researched material about this tree, another part consists of fabricated biographies of all of the grandmother’s female ancestors dating back to the Middle Ages.
grandmother and finding your identity
But the novel is also a sensitively observed family drama: the Swiss “Großmeer” is an eternally monologizing dragon. During periods of stress, the unhappy mother turns into an “ice witch” who terrifies the child with her cold. The father doesn’t matter – or at most as a terrifying example, a man who says “Hmrgrmpf”, just “don’t say it with letters. But with limbs.”
Interwoven into this is the story of how the narrator found his or her identity. The “liquid” child becomes first a gay teenager and then a person so little defined that the language for it must first be invented: “This horror story of only two genders (…) which are the exact opposite of each other, I won’t tell anyone else.”
This is how the jury justified their decision
The jury’s reasoning was: “The non-binary narrative character in Kim de l’Horizon’s novel ‘Blutbuch’ searches for his own language with enormous creative energy. What stories are there for a body that defies conventional notions of gender? Central to the story is her own grandmother, the ‘Großmeer’ in Bernese German, in whose ocean the child Kim threatened to drown and from which she now swims free while writing. The new form is constantly in motion. Every attempt at language, from the plastic scene to the essay-like memoirs, develops an urgency and literary renewing force that provoked and inspired the jury.”
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
