Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2024 goes to Barbi Markovic
We are pleased to announce that Barbi Marković won the Leipzig Fair Prize 2024 in the fiction category with her book Minihorror, published by Residenz Verlag in October 2023.
In Minihorror, ordinary nightmares become reality. The protagonists Mini and Miki seem to have stepped out of the Disney world, but instead they take the reader on a journey between Vienna and Belgrade through the monsters and dangers of the middle class. Between the most disparate atmospheres and genres - from fantasy to horror -, between self-mockery and a lot of humour, this book is extremely unsettling and at the same time it makes us feel deeply understood.
The Leipzig Book Fair Prize celebrates outstanding new publications written in German. There are three prizes awarded – fiction, non-fiction/essay and translation – making this a true recognition of contemporary literature. It is endowed with a total of 60,000 euros.
The seven-member jury ensures a diverse range of opinions and selected Marković's book on the following grounds:
Barbi Marković's new book, which you'll want to read in one go without interruption. Because the enjoyment of her witty and seemingly simple sentences, which measure the absurd depths between everyday life and the existential world situation, should never end. Barbi Marković tells an enchantingly funny and bitterly serious story about our present: war crimes at the back, climate change at the front, and the banality of our everyday lives in between. In ‘Minihorror’, Barbi Marković exposes the uncanniness of every situation, no matter how harmless, the horror of everyday life, the horror of one's own family. In the process, people in late capitalism inevitably become the butt of jokes.”
Minihorror also won first place in the SWR Bestenliste 2024 and in the ORF-Bestenliste in January 2024 and was nominated for the Literaturpreis "Text und Sprache" des Kulturkreises der deutschen Wirtschaft 2024. The author also won the Outstanding Artist Award 2023 der Sparte Literatur.
