For the second time after Melinda Nadj Abonji, a novel from Switzerland has received both the German and the Swiss Book Prize.
Kim de l’Horizon performing at the Frankfurt Book Fair at the end of October.
And once again Kim de l’Horizon triumphed and, as in Frankfurt, now sings in Basel as a thank you for the award of the Swiss Book Prize: “What the Gugger do ig hie, I hear niene ane.” It may be that this quiet astonishment corresponds to Kim de l’Horizon’s general attitude towards life, that he doesn’t belong anywhere, and even that he keeps becoming a stranger to himself. At this moment, however, as the jury in the Stadttheater Basel awards Kim de l’Horizon’s debut novel “Blutbuch” with the Swiss Book Prize, the song also sounds a bit strange.
Rarely has the award of the Swiss Book Prize been so unsurprising, so predictable. After Kim de l’Horizon had already been awarded the German Book Prize in Frankfurt, anything else would have been a disappointment and at the same time a minor sensation. Thomas Hürlimann alone was last seen as a close co-favorite with his novel “The Red Diamond”. Paradoxically speaking, however, against his book was the flawless craftsmanship. It tells of a world where consistency reigns, where every cog in the narrative fits perfectly into the next.
stranger in life
Kim de l’Horizon wrote the counter-program. And in this respect, the song is true: “I hear niene ane.” The novel “Blood Book” comes from a different world of ideas, from one for which we lack the terms and language. But even the novel and its narrator have to find the words to talk about the unspeakable.
Because how “the Gugger” should you tell your father, mother or grandmother that you are different from the others? That the world is not divided into just men and women and knows no other genders. That is the question that stands at the beginning of the novel and, like a basso continuo, forms the basis of the whole story. But the problem of non-belonging and incomprehensibility begins even before that: How should a narrative character deal with himself, how should he name what he feels inside? Because she is neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, she is more than just one or the other or even both together. But then what is she?
Kim de l’Horizon has more questions than answers for herself and the world. The novel “Blutbuch” is an exact depiction of a person who is alien to life and struggles to find composure – knowing, of course, that this version can never exist because this gender-fluid self is currently characterized by unavailability. In the narrative style of the novel, this existential conflict takes the form of searching, of groping: the novel, too, has yet to find its language for an imaginary world beyond conventional terminology.
The book cannot free itself from this aporia. In the narration, this can only be brought up again and again as a fundamental insufficiency. “Blutbuch” is therefore also a novel that tells of beginnings: of the many beginnings of an ego that is entangled in some metamorphoses; Above all, however, the book deals with the beginnings of a storytelling that questions its own forms.
Artfully unfinished
Perhaps one of the best assets of this extraordinary novel is that it is so obvious, even ostentatious, that it is a beginner’s book. Nothing in it is finished, nothing suggests narrative impeccability. It has rough edges and shows a lot of insecurities. Rarely has a book that has been unfinished in such an artistic way been showered with so many prizes.
The other four books nominated for the book prize may be more coherent, more coherent or more precisely constructed. Meanwhile, Kim de l’Horizon has the courage not to smooth over the abysses and flights of fancy in this writing adventure. Rather, they become part of the novel. Even in its incomplete state, this sometimes ecstatic book bears witness to the happiness and despair of a narrative character who is constantly searching for words for the unspeakable and unthinkable – and who thus broadens the horizon of everything human into the open.