Shida Bazyar wins German Book Prize 2026

To mark the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the winner of the prestigious Deutscher Buchpreis 2026 has been officially announced: Shida BAZYAR has been awarded  for her novel Die Lücken (Omissions - Kiepenheuer & Witsch). Italian rights have already been acquired by Fandango.

Set in Heimesbach, a rural village with a dark Nazi past, the novel follows the ghost of a young Iranian refugee as she narrates nearly a century of history in a powerful reflection on the selective omissions of memory.

The work was praised for its profound indictment of social indifference and its innovative, kaleidoscopic narrative structure that seamlessly blends reality and fiction.

From the jury's statement:

"Native to Heimesbach – is that possible? Shida Bazyar's novel reflects nearly 100 years of ambivalent German life through individual fates. It was neighbors who watched as Jewish people disappeared from the streets. It is neighbors who make decisions about whether people with a migration background feel at home. The author selects compelling literary strategies: the perspective of a dead narrator and the text's kaleidoscopic structure make it possible to jump across time periods and create both proximity and distance. The close interplay of fictional and documentary elements, of invented and historical figures who are given their own voices, also accounts for the text's powerful resonance. A novel against indifference."