Bazyar receives Book Prize Full acceptance speech

Oct 5

After Schück's award segue, Guggolz announces the 2026 German Book Prize to Shida Bazyar for Die Lücken and reads the complete jury citation on German history, migration, narrative perspective and the interaction of fictional and documentary elements. Bazyar gives her full acceptance speech: she finds celebration difficult given the persecuted and murdered people behind the novel, dedicates the recognition to them, and invokes Heinz Kahn's skepticism toward honors. She says antisemitic and racist crimes are high, urges resistance to coded deportation rhetoric and draws on Hannah Arendt to warn about normalization and friends' conduct. She then thanks her husband, listeners, agency, publisher, editor and publishing supporters, fellow nominees, parents and sisters. She describes wanting prizes without wishing to compete with other writers, and credits her family's warmth for her humane view of characters. Schück thanks the winner, nominees, organizers and audience and closes the ceremony.

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 The novel's fictional and historical content stays literary context; Bazyar's subsequent anti-exclusion appeal is separately scoped.