Zora del Buono receives the Swiss Book Prize for “Seinetwegen”
Published: Sunday, Nov 17th 2024, 13:20
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The 17th Swiss Book Prize goes to Zora del Buono for her research novel "Seinetwegen". The prize was awarded on Sunday as part of the Buch Basel literary festival in the foyer of Theater Basel.
In "Because of Him", author Zora del Buono explores the death of her father in August 1963. She herself was eight months old at the time, her father 33. He died in a car accident. Sixty years later, the author sets out in search of his "killer".
Del Buono has written a text "that concerns everyone, even though it is about the death of her father", the jury wrote in a statement on Sunday. "With surprising ease", she interweaves statistics, court documents and scenes from her life in her research novel. "In an independent language, del Buono deals with the question of guilt, loss and reconciliation", said the jury. "Seinetwegen" is a "quiet, unpretentious text full of existential impact".
In addition to del Buono, this year's nominees were Mariann Bühler with "Verschiebung im Gestein", Martin R. Dean with "Tabak und Schokolade", Béla Rothenbühler with "Polifon Pervers" and Michelle Steinbeck with "Favorita". It is striking that Dean also uses his own family history as a theme. And Steinbeck takes the death of her narrator's mother as her starting point to denounce femicide today and in the 1940s. Bühler was nominated for her first novel. She uses the genre of the Heimatroman to tell a quiet story of emancipation. And Rothenbühler entered the competition with a dialect novel that pokes fun and humor at the cultural industry, cultural funding and politics.
The Swiss Book Prize is endowed with a total of CHF 42,000, the main prize with CHF 30,000 and CHF 3,000 for each of the other four nominees. The award, which was established in 2008, is sponsored by the LiteraturBasel association and the Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association (SBVV).
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