Valeria Gordeev wins Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2023

Valeria Gordeev has won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize this year. With her meticulously observed and designed text about a man with cleaning neurosis, the writer from Tübingen won 11 competitors at the 47th Day of German Literature in Klagenfurt, Austria.

The renowned literature prize, which commemorates the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-73), has a cash prize of 25,000 euros and is awarded by the city of Klagenfurt. Ana Marwan, who is from Slovenia and lives near Vienna, won it last year.

In the reading competition, Gordeev won the jury with her short story “He cleans”. In it, she linguistically dissects a man’s cleaning neurosis, but presents him not as a clinical case, but as a devoted person who cares for his mother and sister. Jury chairman Insa Wilke praised the text on Sunday as a “plea for sensitivity”.

Gordeev has been working on her debut novel for several years, which is about modern-day Russia, among other things. Her parents emigrated from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, Gordeev was born in 1986 in Tübingen. The author also works as an illustrator and songwriter.

During the literary competition, 12 authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland read their texts from Thursday to Saturday. This time there were two new members in the seven-member jury: the German cultural scientist, journalist and author Mithu Sanyal (“Identitti”) and the Swiss literary scholar Thomas Strässle. (sda/dpa)