After 3 years of long wait, the Leipzig Book Fair finally returns this year, and so is the live ceremony of the much-anticipated Leipzig Book Fair’s Prize. This year’s prize for fiction goes to Dinçer Güçyeter’s debut novel “Unser Deutschlandmärchen” (Fairytales of Our Germany).
Dinçer Güçyeter is the son of a Turkish guest worker who came to Germany at the end of the 1960s. Growing up in Germany, Dinçer Güçyeter can always feel very strongly his identity as a Turk when he is in Germany, and a German when he is in Turkey. Before starting to write his first novel, Dinçer is already a very prolific poet, theatre maker and publisher. He works as a part-time forklift driver to support his publishing and writing career.
Dinçer uses his debut novel to retell a candid yet convincing family saga of his own. Told in the voices of three generations from the early twentieth-century to the present, “Unser Deutschlandmärchen” gives the voice not only to the many guest workers who had to experience racism and difficult working conditions, but also to the female figures like his own mother and grandmother who have to endure so much just to keep their frail families intact.
The book is available on Onleihe now (from 01.06.2023). And it will be available at the Goethe Library soon.
