For her extensive and varied work as an author, Ulrike Draesner has been awarded this year's Konrad Adenauer Foundation Literature Prize. "Ulrike Draesner's works give valuable impetus to contemporary German-language literature," said the Chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Norbert Lammert, before the award ceremony in Weimar on Sunday. Their work reflects political and social discourses of contemporary history in a "captivating way", said Lammert. Her works testify "to a German that is knowledgeable in its words, with history, with responsibility, recognition of difference and with humor instead of purity."
Literature as food
Draesner is "one of the great rhythmists of German-language literature", emphasized the Germanist Frieder von Ammon in his laudatory speech, according to the speech manuscript. Her novel "Kanalschwimmer", for example, is a jewel: "If you read it carefully, you realize how polished it is, that it sparkles and shines." In her acceptance speech, the award-winner herself said, according to the script, that literature is not a luxury: "It is food."
