The Ukrainian Tanja Maljartschuk wins the 2018 Ingeborg Bachmann Award

Tanja Maljartschuk reads her text from Klagenfurter Wettlesen. (Photo: ORF / ORF-K / Johannes Puch)

Tanja Malyarchuk has the jury and the audience of their text "frogs in the sea" on a refugee who threw his passport into the Danube and lover of An old mad woman is unanimously enthusiastic. The Ukrainian living in Vienna wins the 2018 Ingeborg Bachmann Award. The prize is worth 25,000 euros. "Everything hangs in this text," said juror Stefan Gmünder in his eulogy. He had invited the author to Klagenfurt

Once again, a writer won the Bachmann Prize, which does not write in her mother tongue. Maljarchuk was born in Ukraine in 1983 and studied philology at the Ivano-Frankivsk University. She worked for several years as a cultural journalist and investigator in Kiev. She lives in Vienna since 2011 and has been writing in German since 2014.

The award ceremony left her speechless. She was shocked, said Tanja Malyarchuk after the awards ceremony, but also a little happy. She wrote the text specifically for the contest. The subject is of course close and familiar to her because she herself has experience of emigration. "Frogs in the sea" simply means that frogs do not live in their natural habitat as migrants. They sacrifice their lives and think that they come from the bad life and hope to have a better one. But for many, it's a failure.

In 2004, Tanja Maljartschuk's first book, "Adolfo or Rose for Lisa", was published. 2006 followed "From top to bottom. The book of fears. The narrative volume "Nine Percent Household Vinegar" (original title "Sprechen") was published in German for the first time in 2009 (Residenz-Verlag). In 2013, his novel "biography of a random miracle" followed.

Geeks of the company seem to have the best chance in Klagenfurt for quite some time. Once a poet wins the award (Nora Gomringer, 2015, this year as a juror in Klagenfurt) or a playwright (Ferdinand Schmalz, 2017). Or they receive authors whose mother tongue is not German (Sharon Dodua Otoo, 2016, Katja Petrovskaya, 2013)

Other awards

The German writer Bov Bjerg receives the Deutschlandfunk award for its text "Serpentinen" the amount of 12,500 euros. The Kelag Prize, worth 10,000 euros, goes to Özlem Özgül Dündar, born in Solingen in 1983, for his text "And I'm Burning". In her text, she connects the flow of thought of four mothers: three are affected by arson on the asylum, while the fourth mother is the murderer.

The 3sat prize, endowed with 7500 euros, goes to those living in Zurich The writer Anna Stern, who has risked a lot with her text "Waiting for Ava" and won just as much. The jury had a very controversial discussion between puzzlement and enthusiasm about their words. A reward was not expected because of this situation. But now the author, invited by Hildegard Keller in Klagenfurt, is rewarded with one more prize for his subtle text and his courage.

Anna Stern herself is very surprised and did not expect a price. His text is an excerpt from a novel and might sound a little confusing. She hopes, she says after the awards ceremony, that the riddles will be clarified.

The Public Prize of 7,000 euros awarded to the public goes to Viennese Raphaela Edelbauer.

The other two authors of La Suisse could not completely convince the jury with their texts. Martina Clavadetscher and Corinna T. Sievers have not reached the final selection of the seven candidate awards. In Clavadetscher's "schema" a dead body speaks: it begins with the death of 92-year-old Luisa and ends with her metamorphosis into a moth. The emancipatory approach in the text appealed to the jury

Corinna Sievers – an orthodontic practitioner – tried to provoke the jury with a pornographic text: her protagonist in "Next, please!" Is a nymphomaniac dentist who usually puts patients on the dentist's chair violated. The jury parried the attack on good taste by accusing the text of "too little radicality".