Penguin Random House | Chemnitz, 11/16/2023

Heyne Author Receives Carlowitz Sustainability Award

The Saxon Hans Carl von Carlowitz Society for the Promotion of Sustainability has conveyed its 2023 Sustainability Prize to Kim Stanley Robinson for his book “Das Ministerium für die Zukunft” (“The Ministry for the Future”) published in German in 2021 by the Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe publisher Heyne. Last Friday, the award ceremony took place at the Carlowitz Congress Center Chemnitz in the presence of 500 guests. Other award winners are EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius for his work on the European Nature Restoration Law, Professor Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen for the commitment of his foundation “Healthy Earth - Healthy People”, and Professor Dr. Antje Boetius for her creative combination of science, theater, music and art in communicating sustainability issues. The author Ulrich Grober, a Carlowitz award winner, honored Kim Stanley Robinson’s work: “Tonight, we celebrate and honor a special kind of treasure: The literary work which you, dear Kim Stanley Robinson, have created over the past 30 years. Your narratives are an urgently necessary resource in our current extremely dangerous and precarious situation. The Carlowitz Society is happy to have discovered this treasure.” The novel “The Ministry for the Future” is set in 2025 in India, which is hit by a merciless heat wave. Hundreds of thousands of people die. Development worker Frank May moves to Switzerland to settle accounts with those he believes are responsible: The Ministry for the Future, whose job it is to prevent such disasters.