OREANDA-NEWS. The winner of the prize for the best debut in literature, awarded by the Lubeck «House of Buddenbrokes», was a German writer Yulia Marfutova. Announcing the award on Tuesday, December 21, the founders of the award called the novel brilliant and written with linguistic virtuosity. The first novel of the 33-year-old writer «Der Himmel vor hundert Jahren» (can be translated as «Heaven a hundred years ago») describing events in a Russian village cut off from the world in 1918.

«In his individual style, the author managed to connect the superstitions deeply rooted in the Russian hinterland and the first meetings with science», according to the press release of the «House of Buddenbrokes». The award ceremony is scheduled for spring 2022. The amount of the premium is 2 thousands euros.

Yulia Marfutova was born in Moscow in 1988, studied German studies and history at the Humboldt University of Berlin, defended her doctoral thesis on epistolary novels and dialogue novels of the XVIII century in Munster. She currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

The «House of Buddenbrokes» Award for the best literary debut has been awarded every two years since 2003. It is awarded in memory of the most successful debut novel of German literature — «Buddenbrokes» by Thomas Mann. It is in the Lubeck Buddenbroke House, which now houses the Heinrich and Thomas Mann Museum, that the action of this novel about the history of the death of the German merchant dynasty takes place.