At first glance, Echtzeitalter looks like a school novel, for which the thirty-one-year-old Austrian Tonio Schachinger won the prestigious German Book Prize this Monday evening. However, according to the jury, the book’s title is deceiving. In fact, it follows the long tradition of the social novel.
As the DPA agency writes, the story focuses on the coming of age of fifteen-year-old Till in an elite Viennese school that requires students to do hard work. Hoch, whose father also dies, escapes from the oppressive environment embodied by the Mephisto teacher into the world of computer games, specifically the strategy Age of Empires II. The title of the book already refers to the digital environment, Echtzeitalter can be translated as Age in Real Time.
“The world of computer games offers itself as a place of fantasy and freedom,” states the jury, according to which the text asks what place belongs to literature in today’s social life. At the ceremony, the author thanked his wife, saying that he learned everything he knows from her, writes the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
Writer Tonio Schachinger visited Prague last month. | Photo: Anna Breit
Schachinger was born in the Indian metropolis of New Delhi, where his father was working in diplomacy at the time. However, he mainly writes about Vienna. He studied there and still lives in the Austrian capital. He made his debut in 2019 with prose from a football environment Nicht wie ihr, Echtzeitalter is his second novel. Last month, the author presented it to the people of Prague at the Literature in the Park festival, where he was invited by the Austrian Cultural Forum.
A festival bringing German-language literature closer to Czech readers evaluated in a Czech TV report. “There is a closeness between Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. But at the same time, we are also very far away, because of the languages,” he said, adding that it is important that Slavic languages are also taught in Austrian schools.
This year, the jury of the German Book Prize chose from 196 works published between last October and this September. Last year, Czech-German author Jan Faktor was among the finalists with his novel Trottel. However, the award went to the novel Blutbuch, whose author Kim de l’Horizon identifies outside of gender polarity.
Since 2005, the German Book Prize has been awarded by the Stock Exchange Association of German Booksellers always before the Frankfurt Book Fair. It will open to professional visitors on Wednesday, and to the public on the weekend, this year’s main guest will be Slovenia. The award includes a reward of 25,000 euros, which translates to about 620,000 crowns.
