German Book Prize for Bazyar For her novel Die Lücken

Oct 5

Tagesschau reports the Frankfurt announcement awarding Shida Bazyar the 2026 German Book Prize for Die Lücken. Alex Jakubowski shows the announcement and Bazyar's ambivalent reaction: celebration feels difficult after writing about people persecuted, terrorized and murdered. The package describes her third novel's fictional Hunsrück village Heimesbach, modeled on her hometown Hermeskeil, and its gaps in historical knowledge and memory, including former Jewish families. It recalls her birth in 1988 to Iranian refugees and the hometown's Nazi-era history as reported. Jury spokesperson Cornelia Geißler praises the different perspectives, narrator and language. Bazyar receives €25,000; the reporter predicts bestseller success rather than reporting sales.

At the October 5, 2026 ceremony in the Kaisersaal of Frankfurt's Römer, Sebastian Guggolz announces Shida Bazyar's Die Lücken as the German Book Prize winner. The complete original jury citation praises its reflection on almost a century of German life, Jewish persecution and belonging for people with migration histories, using a dead narrator, changing periods and interwoven fictional and documentary elements. Tagesthemen's complete bulletin relays the Frankfurt decision and individual-fates rationale. Tagesschau's complete report adds Bazyar's ambivalence about celebrating a novel about persecution and murder, Cornelia Geißler's praise of the perspectives and language, and €25,000 prize money. Its bestseller forecast remains prospective. The novel's fictional and historical content stays literary context; Bazyar's subsequent anti-exclusion appeal is separately scoped.