Award Sophie Hunger receives award for her debut novel in Austria
Musician Sophie Hunger has been awarded the 2026 Rauris Literary Prize of the Province of Salzburg for her debut novel "Walzer für Niemand". The prize is endowed with 10,000 francs and is aimed at first-time publications of German-language prose.
03.02.2026, 14:12
SDA
The jury praised the fact that Hunger's text develops along the coming-of-age story of a symbiotic friendship relationship, creating "a dense atmospheric tension", "not unlike a waltz, whose circular movement simultaneously connects the dancers and gently separates them again". This was announced by Hunger's publisher Kiepenheuer & Witsch on Tuesday.
"Waltz for Nobody" tells of a symbiotic childhood friendship between the first-person narrator and nobody. The children of military attachés often have to move house and don't have much in the way of permanence: just themselves and their parents' record collection. The two find a home and answers in music. Together they listen to whale songs, the voices of Nina Simone or Tracy Chapman. In their youth, the friendship begins to crack. When the first-person narrator takes her first steps as a musician, Niemand painfully disappears from her life.
Born in Bern, Hunger made her debut in 2008 with her album "Monday's Ghost". Incidentally, this is exactly the year in which Niemand disappears from the first-person narrator's life in the novel. In 2010, Hunger was the first Swiss artist to perform at the Glastonbury Festival in England. And in 2017, she received the Prix Lumières in France for her film score "Ma Vie de Courgette".
Hunger will receive the Rauris Literature Prize on March 25 as part of the opening of the Rauris Literature Days.
