Berliner is the best reader in Germany

Even the professional could hardly believe his ears: "I just looked into the audience to see if anyone was playing the audiobook, but that was you reading," said Tim Gailus after student Ayla Uluçam's presentation on Wednesday in the finals of the German Book Trade Reading Competition. And because one can assume Gailus, who works as a presenter, audiobook narrator, and actor, has a certain knowledge, it was a kind of accolade when he then described the twelve-year-old as having a "thriller voice."

Another accolade followed when the competition jury declared Ayla Uluçam the winner of the final. It's official: Germany's best reader comes from Berlin, from Mariendorf, where she attends the Eckener-Gymnasium.

Judith Hermann, Oliver Rohrbeck: Many winners later made careers

The reading competition, co-founded by Erich Kästner, has been held since 1959. And the names of some of the award winners are equally impressive: Before his career as a radio play icon, Oliver Rohrbeck brought the title to Berlin in 1977, and in 1982, the later author Judith Hermann succeeded.

Now Ayla Uluçam is repeating this feat, for whom the final round was a home game: While the other national winners traveled hundreds of kilometers, she only needed “40 minutes” to get to the venue in the RBB studio.

550,000 students participated nationwide

At the same time, it was a long road to the finals for Uluçam, too, which spanned several rounds in a competition in which around 550,000 students nationwide participated. In April, for example, the young reader prevailed in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district competition, "impressing the jury with an exceptional performance," as the district announced at the time.

And it was already clear that Ayla Uluçam would make it far in the competition: When she read from Deva Fagan's book "Game of Noctis - Playing for Your Life" in the final, she did so with "a balanced, mature voice," praised the trade magazine Börsenblatt, noting how she "broadened the moods of her characters." Uluçam's own mood, on the other hand, could be summed up quite succinctly in a single word: joy.