The Libris Literature Prize will be awarded on Monday, so a bet on who will win it. The Libris Foundation made podcasts worth listening to about all six nominated books, entitled The shortlist (can be found via librisprijs.nl† Listen to it especially for a educated guess†
But let’s just run through the list. Each shortlist includes a book that is too hard to win and a book that is too cute to win. worm moon of Mariken Heitmans is the difficult case this year. ‘As a reader, you are not pleased but challenged to crack your brain’, writes the jury. The guilty pleasure of the jury this year was the creamy Willem who made Madoc† ‘An addictive adventure novel’, that says it all: Nico Dros doesn’t have to count on anything.
We come to the eternal m/f question. The jury will always put the literary quality of a work above all else, but this year they did make gender stacks, ‘to avoid blind spots’. The prize has now been won by a man five times in a row and that is why they will not have chosen a man lightly again. So we streak Deniz Kuypers with Atlas from everywhere and Auke Hulst with The Mitsukoshi Comfort Baby Company away.
Are we left with: Our children by Renée van Marissing and Alexandra by Lisa Weeda, two novels that are almost opposites. Respectively understated and natural versus exuberant and imaginative. Our children is according to the jury ‘an impressive exercise in self-control’, Weeda is praised for her daring and imagination. Van Marissing is already on his way as a novelist, Weeda is a debutant.
A debutant who wins the Libris Prize, that’s impossible, right? In any case, it never happened in the history of the prize. But it would be in line with the choices the jury has made so far. Big, well-known names (including Van der Heijden, Grunberg, Van Leeuwen and Kollaard) did not even make the long list; the focus this year is on new and experimental. Why not, very exceptionally, let a debutant win?
And then some. Traditionally, the jury meets one last time immediately after the announcement of the shortlist to choose the winner. This year it was on Monday 28 February. Four days after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It will not have left the jury untouched. Weeda’s already ‘exceptionally urgent novel’ about the ravaged Donbas suddenly became even more urgent. Alexandra will win.