IN THE FALL OF 2009, Kathrin Schmidt found herself in the limelight when she was awarded the prestigious German Book Prize for her novel Du stirbst nicht (You are not going to die). This honor suggests that Schmidt, previously known only to a small audience, now emerges as an eminent writer who enjoys the potential to stand the test of time. The judges emphasize that “the novel tells a story of regaining the world. … [This] individual tale of a return from the brink of death is positioned both unobtrusively and with great skill in the echo chamber of the historical-political era of change.” While politics are much less important than in Kathrin Schmidt’s earlier novels, Du stirbst nicht seems significant because it is much more than a tale of illness and recovery. It is a woman’s quest for agency and positionality, which has been altered due to her ailment and changed by a love affair outside the heteronormative realm even before she fell ill. Born in Gotha (GDR) in 1958 and trained as a psychologist, Schmidt was engaged in the Berlin Round Table talks for the opposition movement during the so-called Wende (1989/90). She debuted in the GDR as a poet, and published her first novel, Die Gunnar-Lennefsen-Expedition (The Gunnar-Lennefsen expedition) in 1998. Her first three novels investigate family and world history, essentially focusing on incidents from the former GDR that cast their clouds over the present of individuals in unified Germany. Set in the GDR, Die Gunnar-Lennefsen-Expedition rewrites German and European history, contradicting hegemonic historiography with a radical feminist point of view. Like her subsequent novels, Koenigs Kinder (Koenig’s children, 2002) and Seebachs schwarze Katzen (Seebach’s black cats, 2005), it sports a distinctive writing style that evokes magic realism in the South American tradition, Günter Grass, and particularly the late East German author Irmtraud Morgner.

By comparison, Du stirbst nicht is stylistically much less challenging, something Schmidt suggests might explain the wider public reception of the novel. I would even argue that the less problematic access to the novel might have aided the decision to award Kathrin Schmidt the German Book Prize. After all, Du stirbst nicht promises to sell well and serves to establish Schmidt as an emerging writer for a larger audience.