Wilhelm Genazino

autograph

Wilhelm Genazino (born 22 January 1943, Mannheim^[1]) is a German journalist and author.

In the 1960s, he studied German, philosophy and sociology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. He worked as a journalist until 1965. During this time, he worked, inter alia, for the satirical magazine Pardon and co-edited the magazine Lesezeichen. Since 1970 he has been working as a freelance author. In 1977 he achieved a breakthrough as a serious writer with his trilogy Abschaffel. In 1990 he became a member of the Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt. After living in Heidelberg for a long time, Genazino moved to Frankfurt in 2004. That same year he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize,^[2] the most prestigious award for German literature.

Selected works

• Laslinstrasse, 1965
• Abschaffel-Trilogie:
  • Abschaffel, 1977
  • Die Vernichtung der Sorgen, 1978
  • Falsche Jahre, 1979
• Der Fleck, die Jacke, die Zimmer, der Schmerz, 1989 (The mark, the jacket, the room, the pain)
• Die Kassiererinnen, 1998 (Road works ahead)
• Ein Regenschirm für diesen Tag, 2001 (An umbrella for one day)
• Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman, 2003 (A woman, a flat, a novel)
• Der gedehnte Blick, 2004 (The extended gaze)
• Die Liebesblödigkeit, 2005 (The love stupidity)
• Mittelmäßiges Heimweh, 2007 (Moderate homesickness)

In Translation

• Ein Regenschirm für diesen Tag has been translated into English (by Philip Boehm as The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt, New York: New Directions, 2006), Chinese, French, Italian, Greek and Lithuanian.
• Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman has been translated into French, Spanish, Polish, Chinese, and Hebrew.
• Translations of works by Wilhelm Genazino have also been published in Greek, Latvian and Russian.

Honours

• “Förderaktion für zeitgenössische Autoren”, 1982
• “Bremer Literaturpreises“, 1990
• Solothurner Literaturpreis, 1995
• “Berliner Literaturpreis der Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung“, 1996
• “Stadtschreiber von Bergen-Enkheim“, 1996/97
• “Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der schönen Künste“, 1998
• “Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis“, 2001
• Kunstpreis Berlin, 2003
• “Hans-Fallada-Preis“, 2003
• Georg Büchner Prize, 2004
• Kleist Prize, 2007^[1]
• Rinke Language Prize Guntram und Irene Rinke Stiftung, 2010
• Kassel Literary Prize, 2013

References