The award ceremony

Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2023

Ein Hof und elf Geschwister

Ewald Frie

More about the awardee

Awardee

Jury evaluation

People everywhere are quietly bidding farewell to rural life. Ewald Frie takes a surprising and personal perspective on this process of change. Using his family from the Münsterland region as an example, he describes tensions that have developed between town and country, and which we are currently grappling with intensely. With his astonishingly simple yet also poetic language – always empathetic, never nostalgic – Frie allows us to enter a world in transition. Based on interviews with his siblings, Ewald Frie has written a profound work of historical non-fiction that is also accessible and entertaining. This history of everyday life is rooted in details that are easy to overlook and from which great ideas develop. An inspiring example of innovative historiography.

The speech of the awardee

© Daniel Müller

The German Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2023

© Christof Jakob

The award ceremony took place on 1 June 2023 at the Elbphilharmonie cocert hall in Hamburg. It was hosted by Katja Gasser (cultural journalist and literary critic). After speeches by Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, President of the Börsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhandels, and Katharina Fegebank, Hamburg’s Second Mayor and Senator for Science, the nominated non-fiction books were presented and Katja Gasser talked to jury spokesperson Jeanne Rubner (Technical University of Munich).

About the German Non-Fiction Prize

The German Non-Fiction Prize is presented to the non-fiction book of the year as an annual award of the Stiftung Buchkultur und Leseförderung (Foundation for Book Culture and the Promotion of Reading). The award is given to outstanding non-fiction in German-language original edition that inspires social debate. The German Non-Fiction Prize is endowed with a total of 42,500 euros. The winner receives 25,000 euros, the seven nominees 2,500 euros each.

Publishers could submit two German-language monographs each from their current or planned programme. The seven members of the jury have reviewed 244 titles and nominated eight non-fiction books for the award. Now they have chosen the German Non-Fiction Book of the Year from this selection.

A recording of the award ceremony can be found here soon.