User:Sole-of-Air/Christine Wunnicke

Christine Wunnicke (born 29 September 1966 in Munich) is a German writer und translator.

Life
Wunnicke studied linguistics, medieval German studies and psychology in Berlin and Glasgow. Since 1991, she has worked as a freelance writer. She has published prose, radio documentaries and radio dramas. Her most successful novels have been translated into multiple languages.

Christine Wunnicke is a member of the PEN Centre Germany. She lives in Munich.

Work
In addition to a biography of the castrato Filippo Balatri, Wunnicke has published a series of novels and a novella. From 2015 to 2020, three of her titles were considered for the German Book Prize longlist. Her 2020 novel Die Dame mit der bemalten Hand (The Lady with the Painted Hand) was the most successful. It was shortlisted for the German Book Prize and awarded the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize. It portrays a fictional encounter between the German explorer Carsten Niebuhr and a Persian astronomer.

Amongst Christine Wunnicke's characters are a Scottish rock musician, the film pioneers William Nicholas Selig and Francis Boggs and the Japanese neurologist Shimamura Shun’ichi. Her characters are often “not only eccentric and each blessed with a very particular obsession, but also historically authentic”, developing, in spite of this, a life of their own in her books. As the author herself states, they are “disintegrating individuals, fragmented characters”. She repeatedly describes "intermediate states, transgressions, dubious identities, doppelgängers."

In their justification for the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize, the jury stated: Wunnicke has created an independent work in which genres are mixed, ranging from erudite grotesques and historical miniature novels, through to scientific satires. In addition to this, she has mastered the scientific jargon of different periods, mythological and religious idioms as well as their parodies.

Novels, Short Stories, Novellas

 * Fortescues Fabrik, Munich 1998 (Knaus), ISBN 3813500942.
 * Jetlag, Munich 2000 (Knaus), ISBN 3813501558.
 * Die Kunst der Bestimmung, Berlin 2003 (Kindler)
 * Missouri, Hamburg 2006 (Männerschwarm Verlag), ISBN 3935596448. English translation by Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver 2010
 * Re-edition: Missouri, Albino, Berlin 2020, ISBN 9783863003081.
 * Serenity, Berlin 2008 (Osburg), ISBN 3-940731064.
 * Nagasaki, ca. 1642. Novelle, Edition Epoca, Zürich 2010, ISBN 978-3-905513-51-6.
 * Selig & Boggs. Die Erfindung von Hollywood, Berenberg Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-937834-59-7.
 * Der Fuchs und Dr. Shimamura; Berenberg, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-937834-76-4.
 * Katie, Berenberg, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-946334-13-2.
 * Die Dame mit der bemalten Hand, novel. Berenberg, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-946334-76-7.

Biographies

 * Die Nachtigall des Zaren. Das Leben des Kastraten Filippo Balatri, Munich 2001 (Claassen), ISBN 3546002482.

Awards

 * 1998 Prix Marulić
 * 1999 Munich Literary Grant
 * 1999 Kurt Magnus Prize
 * 2002 Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis in the category Literature
 * 2008 Toucan Prize for Serenity
 * 2015 German Book Prize longlist for The Fox and Dr. Shimamura
 * 2016 Franz-Hessel-Preis for The Fox and Dr. Shimamura
 * 2017 German Book Prize longlist for Katie
 * 2019 Ernst-Hoferichter-Preis – refused. By refusing she wanted to express her indecisive position on the controversy surrounding the co-recipient of the prize, cartoonist Dieter Hanitzsch.
 * 2020 Literaturpreis der Stadt München "for her outstanding literary oeuvre"
 * 2020 German Book Prize shortlist for Die Dame mit der bemalten Hand
 * 2020 Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize for Die Dame mit der bemalten Hand
 * 2020 October: First place of the SWR Best List for Die Dame mit der bemalten Hand

Reception
The novel Katie (2017) was selected as book of the week by the SWR in March 2017. Ulrich Rüdenauer judged: "With Katie, Christine Wunnicke has created a grotesquely comic novel, a book full of magical power, a literary masterpiece."