Swiss Book Prize 2022 – Kim de l’Horizon wins the Swiss Book Prize – Culture

Double victory: The Swiss book prize for Kim de l’Horizon follows the German. “Blutbuch” not only captures the zeitgeist, but also breaks the boundaries of language.

What a triumph – and with a debut! Kim de l’Horizon was awarded the German Book Prize in October for the novel “Blutbuch”.

Now the Swiss Book Prize is added. The jury chose “Blutbuch” as the best German-speaking Swiss book of 2022.

The decision was announced on Sunday afternoon at the award ceremony in Theater Basel. Kim de l’Horizon can look forward to prize money of CHF 30,000.

“Blood Book” and “The Red Diamond” were considered favorites

However, the award de l’Horizons is not a big surprise. In the feuilleton, “Blood Book” has long been a favorite – alongside Thomas Hürlimann’s novel “The Red Diamond”.

The jury must have found it difficult to choose between de l’Horizon and Hürlimann. Hürlimann’s current novel is an excellent, worldly and cleverly constructed text.

In addition, for Thomas Hürlimann, who will soon be 72, an award with the Swiss Book Prize would have been tantamount to honoring his life’s work. An honor that the Zug author would have long since earned.

Radical, eloquent, complex

However, according to the regulations, the task of the jury is to choose “the best narrative or essayistic German-language work in Switzerland” of a year. The jurors therefore had to ignore Hürlimann’s impressive body of work and consider the nominated books in isolation.

Against this background, the decision for Kim de l’Horizon’s “Blood Book” seems correct. “Blood Book” is an extremely complex book. Urgent, radical, existential, powerful in language.

Kim de l’Horizon worked on it for eleven years. Each line resonates with the struggle that had to be fought for each of these lines.

Debut novel close to his own life

Kim de l’Horizon, born in 1992, grew up in Ostermundigen (BE) and studied at the Literature Institute in Biel, among other places. “Blutbuch” is a debut, but de l’Horizon has been writing for a long time. At the Berne stage, de l’Horizon is currently the resident author.

Kim de l’Horizon feels neither the female nor the male gender belongs. This non-binarity is also the main theme of «Blood Book». The narrator who writes in the first person is also called «Kim».

In a binary-fixed world

In the story, Kim turns to her own grandmother. She suffers from dementia, and only this circumstance allows Kim to break the silence. On a good 300 pages, the narrator unrolls his own suffering, his own trauma.

What is it like growing up and living as a non-binary person in a thoroughly binary-fixated world? The book revolves around this question – and touches on numerous other topics: the oppression of women, class affiliations, writing, language.

«Narrative new territory»

In the jury’s statement it says: With “Blood Book” Kim de l’Horizon turned experience into literature and entered “new narrative territory”.

Much could be added to this judgement. For example: The decision for Kim de l’Horizon is not purely contemporary, but above all a literary one. Kim de l’Horizon shows us the limits of the German language – and breaks them.