For his queer debut novel “Hundesohn,” the Berlin-based author and political scientist Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç is this year awarded the ZDF-“aspekte”-Literature Prize.
Keskinkılıç, born in 1989, studied political science in Vienna, Berlin, and Cambridge. In 2022, his poetry debut “Prinzenbad” appeared. Keskinkılıç’s first novel “Hundesohn” follows a young man named Zeko from Berlin who longs to reconnect with his summer love Hassan in Adana, Turkey — the place where his grandfather Dede once lived. The time until then he fills with Grindr dates, with his best friend in the campus cafeteria (Mensa), with therapy sessions, and with visits to Kreuzberg’s Prinzenbad (book review by Fabian Schäfer).
“Internally torn, he loses himself in memories and wrestles with his longing and the vulnerability of his queer identity,” the jury of the “aspekte” literary prize writes in their justification. “The novel is a confident and explicitly crafted swirl of motifs, poetic forms, languages, religious quotes, personal memories, and migrant experience. Bodies, desire, origin, and spirituality intertwine to create a densely told, literarily precise debut that possesses both social sharpness and poetic power.”
The ZDF-“aspekte”-Literature Prize is being awarded this year for the 47th time; it carries a 10,000-euro prize. The awards ceremony will take place on Thursday, October 16, 2025 at 11:50 a.m. on the Literature Stage of ARD, ZDF, and 3sat at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The winner will be announced in the “aspekte” program on ZDF on Friday, October 17, 2025, at 11:30 p.m.
