Clemens J. Setz wins Georg Büchner Preis 2021
The Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Poetry) has awarded the prestigious Georg Büchner Preis to Austrian author Clemens J. Setz, published by Suhrkamp Verlag. The prize is endowed with € 50,000 and the ceremony will take place in November in Darmstadt.
From the jury’s statement:
With Clemens J. Setz, the German Academy for Language and Literature honours a master wordsmith who in his novels and stories repeatedly explores the liminal spaces of being human. His sometimes disturbingly drastic style strikes the heart of our present because it follows a profoundly humanistic impulse. Clemens J. Setz combines this humanitarianism with an encyclopaedic knowledge and a wealth of poetic and linguistic imagination. With astonishing versatility, he demonstrates a radical contemporaneity that, book after book, attests to the beauty and obstinacy of great literature.
Clemens J. Setz was born in Graz in 1982, studied mathematics and German literature, and over the years his poems, short stories and novels have won several awards (Leipzig Bookfair, Wilhelm Raabe and the Kleist Prizes).
His books are published in Italy by La nave di Teseo.
