<i>Marzahn, Mon Amour</i> wins 2023 Dublin Literary Award

The 2023 Dublin Literary Award has gone to Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, translated from German by Jo Heinrich. The winning title was announced on 25 May.

The Dublin Literary Award is awarded for a work of fiction published in English, and is worth €100,000. If the title is a translation, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000. Since 2015, the Award has been sponsored by the Dublin City Council.

Each year, public libraries in major cities worldwide nominate titles for the longlist, which is then pared down to a shortlist of no more than ten titles. The winner is then selected and announced in a ceremony as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin.

The protagonist in the winning title is a failing writer approaching middle age who becomes a chiropodist, who treats ailments of the feet, in the German suburb of Marzahn. What she learns about her patients and co-workers ultimately forms an intimate portrait of the community.

The author, Katja Oskamp, was born in Leipzig and grew up in Berlin. She was a playwright at the Volkstheater Rostock and studied at the German Literature Institute. She published a collection of stories, Halbschwimmer, in 2003, followed by her first novel, Die Staubfängerin, in 2007. Marzahn, Mon Amour is her first work to be translated into English.

The judges found the novel to be a "funny, thoughtful, heartfelt portrayal of a community", viewed from the point of view of the protagonist. "As the novel progresses, we meet character after character as the narrator does, through their feet, and through this slow, deliberate culmination of vignettes, nimbly translated by Jo Heinrich, a greater portrait is achieved, that of how individuals are inevitably shaped by the ever-turning cogs of the machine of history."

Marzahn, Mon Amour was nominated for the award by Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf in Germany. Of the book, the library states: "It is a book that allows a deep insight into the daily lives of the so-called ordinary people. The author treats each of them with respect and approaches with careful empathy."