Novel
Iris Hanika was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2021 for her novel Echoes Chambers.
The jury's statement:»Iris Hanika proves to be a clever, witty and wild narrator. As one of the most headstrong voices in contemporary German literature, who can look at social conditions with a brutally clear and unabashed view. And then again incredibly funny.«
In Echoes Chambers, Iris Hanika impressively demonstrates her skills as artful, ingenious storyteller. We are travelling to New York to accompany the poet Sophonisbe. She follows an invitation to come to the »City of Dreams« for ten weeks before returning to Berlin, where Roxana, the novel’s second protagonist and a successful writer of self-help books, takes over.
The two women get caught up in various incidents, excesses and digressions, including with a young bourgeois who gives the story another sharp twist. Nevertheless, this book does not just speak of mature delusional love – it is also about Echo and Narcissus. The intricately woven episodes are brimming with a boisterous thirst for knowledge, a good dose of life’s reality and merciless criticism of capitalism.
Echoes Chambers, a travel as well as a romance novel, but also an action novel and self-help book, provides for great literary joy.