Wilhelm Raabe Longlist

They announced the longlist for the prestigious Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize, which is awarded by Deutschlandradio and the City of Braunschweig and worth €30,000.

Mirko Bonné: Nie mehr Nacht

Gunther Geltinger: Moor

Thomas Glavinic: Das größere Wunder

Ernst-Wilhelm Händler: Der Überlebende

Georg Klein: Die Zukunft des Mars

Brigitte Kronauer: Gewäsch und Gewimmel

Hartmut Lange: Das Haus in der Dorotheenstraße

Rainer Merkel: Bo

Clemens Meyer: Im Stein

Terézia Mora: Das Ungeheuer

Hans Pleschinski: Königsallee

Marion Poschmann: Die Sonnenposition

A lot of big books on this list - Geltinger read from something that became this novel at Klagenfurt in 2011 and I liked it, Bonné, Merkel and Klein have adventure books for boys, Kronauer and Poschmann give us mental health issues, as does Mora, perhaps, in a sequel to her last book, and Pleschinski's book is a Thomas Mann novel (surely a genre of its own by now, the novel about major German novelists).

My favourite, though, is obviously Clemens Meyer's Im Stein, which is out on 22 August. I'm not allowed to review it until then, which is tough because I've been loving it with a passion since April and talking about little else.

The award is a little complicated. It goes to a writer for a book out this year, but it also takes in all their previous work. And it's gone to some really top writers in the past, from Max Frisch to Ralf Rothmann and Sibylle Lewitscharoff.