Sharon Dodua Otoo won the €25,000 (about $27,665) Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for her short story "Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin" ("Herr Gröttrup Sits Down"). The Guardian reported that Dodua Otoo moved from England to Germany to work as an au pair in 1992, and 24 years later she "has just won arguably the most prestigious award in the German language, the Ingeborg Bachmann prize--for the first and only short story she has ever written in the language of her adopted homeland."
The jury "hailed Dodua Otoo's story as a surrealist parable grappling with fundamental philosophical issues around identity and otherness, drawing comparison with the work of Austrian absurdist Thomas Bernhard and the German comedian Loriot," the Guardian wrote, adding that the "accolade is likely to provide a major career break for a writer who has until now only published two short novellas with Edition Assemblage, a small left-wing German publishing house that specializes in nonfiction."