Liberatur­preis 2022

Award of the Liberaturpreis from Litprom

Since 2019, Litprom awards the Liberaturpreis at Villa 102 during the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

The 2022 LiBeraturpreis awarded by Litprom e.V. goes to the Japanese author Chisako Wakatake for her novel Jeder geht für sich allein, translated by Jürgen Stalph, published by Cass Verlag. In it, Momoko begins to hear voices from her past. These speak dialect, which was translated into Erzgebirgisch (Central German dialect, spoken mainly in the Ore Mountains in Saxony) for the German version. When the novel was published in Japan, the then 63-year-old debut author Chisako Wakatake received two major awards. She is the first Japanese woman to receive the LiBeratur Prize.

The winner was selected by a jury consisting of Anita Djafari (Weltempfänger jury), Corinna Santa Cruz (Büchergilde), Monika Lustig (Litprom member), Florian Balke (FAZ) and Oliver Fründt (Büchergilde Buchhandlung und Galerie, Frankfurt). Nominated were 13 authors whose works were on Litprom's 2021 best list Weltempfänger. From this longlist, the jury selected seven shortlist titles, which were presented on 6 September at the Haus am Dom in Frankfurt.

Chisako Wakatake will travel to the Frankfurt Book Fair and be available for interviews. The award ceremony will take place on Friday, 21 Oct. at 7 p.m. in Villa 102 of KfW and its foundation. On Saturday, 22 Oct., Chisako Wakatake will appear on the Pavilion stage at the fairgrounds and at the Weltenleser bookstore.

The LiBeraturpreis 2022 is sponsored by the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art and the Kulturfonds Frankfurt Rhein-Main. The award ceremony takes place with the kind support of the KfW Stiftung.

All information about the event and the prize can be found on the Litprom website. Registration is not required, but please note that capacity is limited. 

Author Chisako Wakatake, born in 1954 in the northeastern Japanese prefecture of Iwate, attended a creative writing course for eight years after the sudden death of her husband, with whom she had long lived in Tokyo, in order, as she says, "to get her mind off things." For "Ora ora de hitori igu mo" ("Everyone Goes It Alone"), her literary debut, she became the oldest laureate ever to win the Bungei Prize in 2017 and the Akutagawa Prize the following year.

The LiBeraturpreis is an annual award for women writers from the Global South. It was established in 1987 by the LiBeraturpreis e.V. initiative and has been organized by Litprom e.V. since 2013. The prize is endowed with 3,000 euros and is awarded at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Nominated are the titles of female authors who were recommended in the Litprom best list "Weltempfänger" in the previous year of the award. Since 2019, the awards ceremony has been held in the Villa 102 of KfW and its Foundation.

Litprom e.V. has been making the literatures of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Arab world known in German-speaking countries since 1980. We connect cultural institutions and actors such as publishers, translators and critics. We facilitate literary encounters between the reading public and the diverse voices of the Global South.

Image Credits:

Preisträgerin Chisako Wakatake © Kisei Kobayashi