Catherine Chidgey is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer and university lecturer. She has published eight novels. Her honours include the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters; the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France; Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize ; the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on two occasions; and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize.
Sibylle Berg is a German-Swiss contemporary author and playwright. They write novels, essays, short fiction, plays, radio plays, and columns. And they are as of 2024 a member of the European Parliament. Their 18 books have been translated into 30 languages. They have won numerous awards, including the Thüringer Literaturpreis, the Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis, and the Johann-Peter-Hebel-Preis. They have become an iconic figure in German alternative sub-cultures, gaining a large fan base among the LGBT community and the European artistic communities. They live in Switzerland and Israel. Their 2019 work GRM. Brainfuck, a science fiction novel set in a dystopian near future won the Swiss Book Prize and was noticed by The Washington Post, and reached fourth place on the Spiegel Bestseller list, with the sequel, RCE, entering the list as highest entry of the week at place 14. On 1 March 2023 Berg was invited as special guest to open the high-profile Elevate Festival in Graz.
Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland. She was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Her works include Primeval and Other Times, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob.
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
Karl Ove Knausgård is a Norwegian author. He became known worldwide for a series of six autobiographical novels titled My Struggle. The Wall Street Journal has described him as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations".
"Send Me an Angel" is a 1983 song by Australian band Real Life. The song was released in May 1983 as the band's debut single from their debut studio album Heartland. The song peaked in the top 10 in Australia and is the band's best-known song. This version peaked in early 1984 in the US at No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song was No. 1 in Germany and New Zealand and Top 10 in other countries.
Christian Kracht is a Swiss author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
The German Book Prize is awarded annually, in October, by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association to the best new German language novel of the year. The books, published in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, are nominated by their publishers, who can propose up to two books from their current or planned publication list. The books should be in shops before the short-list is announced in September of the award year. The winner is awarded €25,000, while the five shortlisted authors receive €2,500 each. It is presented annually during the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The Swiss Book Prize is a literary award awarded annually by a jury on behalf of the Swiss Booksellers' Association. The prize amount is CHF 30,000. The award was instituted in 2008 following the example of the German Book Prize. Only German language works of authors living in Switzerland or of Swiss nationality are eligible.
Ingo Niermann is a German novelist, writer, and artist.
David James Woodard is an American conductor and writer.
Benedict Wells is a German-Swiss novelist.
Imperium is a 2012 satiric novel by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht. It recounts the story of August Engelhardt, a German who in the early 20th century founded a religious order in German New Guinea based on nudism and a diet consisting solely of coconuts. The fictionalized narrative is an ironic pastiche.
The Underground Railroad is a historical fiction novel by American author Colson Whitehead, published by Doubleday in 2016. The alternate history novel tells the story of Cora, a slave in the Antebellum South during the 19th century, who makes a bid for freedom from her Georgia plantation by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as a rail transport system with safe houses and secret routes. The book was a critical and commercial success, hitting the bestseller lists and winning several literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award for Fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. A TV miniseries adaptation, written and directed by Barry Jenkins, was released in May 2021.
The Dead is a 2016 gothic novel by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht, his fifth novel. It is set in the film industry at the end of the Weimar era and tells the story of a (fictional) Swiss director, Emil Nägeli, and a Japanese government official who try to create a collaboration between German and Japanese cinema. The plot centers around the May 15 Incident.
Shuggie Bain is the debut novel by Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart, published in 2020. It tells the story of the youngest of three children, Shuggie, growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes in 1980s post-industrial working-class Glasgow, Scotland.
Five Little Indians is the debut novel by Cree Canadian writer Michelle Good, published in 2020 by Harper Perennial. The novel focuses on five survivors of the Canadian Indian residential school system, struggling to rebuild their lives in Vancouver, British Columbia after the end of their time in the residential schools. It also explores the love and strength that can emerge after trauma.
Der gelbe Bleistift. Reisegeschichten aus Asien is a 2000 book by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht. It is a collection of travel writing originally published in Welt am Sonntag.
