Maren Kames: Hasenprosa

In the organizer's words:

"If that's all there is to it, I'm moving out!" shouts one of them and sets off in her mile boots and travel socks. On the back seat: a rabbit. The journey takes them across time, through the ages and out into the darkness of space. In a streaky plane through the sky and memories: of two grandmothers, one light, one dark, one whole, one sore. A grandfather, his scary hands. A brother and his tree. Of racing dreams, crooked fairy tales and a purple rain.

Maren Kames' rabbit prose is mercurial and close to the heart. It is full of "punk, punk, punk" and tenderness. The finely spun is juxtaposed with a precisely captured perception of the world. We hear Glenn Gould and Billie Eilish, see Lionel Messi dribbling through the universe and abseil down fixed stars with the rabbit. A book like a childhood summer, extravagant, "open to the storm" and radiantly beautiful.

German Book Prize 2024 (shortlist)

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Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize 2024 (shortlist)