jubilee issue 30 - New Books in German

AUTUMN 2011
NEW BOOK
BOOKS IN
KS IN GERM
N GERMAN N
A SELECTION FROM AUSTRIA,
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND
n JUBILEE ISSUE 30
Novels n Crime Fiction n Thrillers
Debuts n Short Stories n Poetry
Children’s and Young Adults’ n History
Religion n History of Science
Prize-Winners n Book News
WWW.NEW-BOOKS-IN-GERMAN.COM

DEBUTS
2 Antonia Baum: vollkommen leblos, bestenfalls tot
3 Ursula Timea Rossel: Man nehme Silber und Knoblauch,
Erde und Salz
4 Max Scharnigg: Die Besteigung der Nordwand
unter einer Treppe
5 Michel Božiković: Drift
FICTION
7 Albert Ostermaier: Schwarze Sonne scheine
8 Michael Kumpfmüller: Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens
9 Sibylle Lewitscharoff: Blumenberg
10 Ilija Trojanow: EisTau
Christoph Hein: Weiskerns Nachlaß
11 Sherko Fatah: Das weisse Land
Larissa Boehning: Das Glück der Zikaden
SHORT STORIES
13 Peter Stamm: Seerücken
CRIME & THRILLER
18 Cay Rademacher: Der Trummermörder
19 Linus Reichlin: Er
Jan Costin Wagner: Das Licht in einem dunklen Haus
20 Simon Urban: Plan D
FICTION
30 Jo Lendle: Alles Land
31 Kathrin Gerlof: Lokale Erschütterung
32 Angelika Klüssendorf: Das Mädchen
33 Christoph Poschenrieder: Der Spiegelkasten
34 Monika Helfer: Oskar und Lilli
35 Peter Henisch: Grosses Finale für Novak
CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS’
37 Agnes Hammer: Nacht, komm!
38 Frank Schmeißer: Schurken überall!
Kirsten Reinhardt: Fennymores Reise
39 Kathrin Schrocke: Freak City
Andrea Weibel: Freya und das Geheimnis der Großmutter
NON-FICTION
42 Werner & Elisabeth Heisenberg: “Meine liebe Li”.
Die Korrespondenz
43 Jürgen Gottschlich: Der Bibeljäger
44 Thomas Großbölting & Rüdiger Schmidt:
Der Tod des Diktators
45 Michael Martens: Heldensuche
A FORGOTTEN GEM
46 Brigitte Reimann: Die Geschwister
POETRY
47 Ulrike Almut Sandig and Judith Zander,
translated by Bradley Schmidt
CRIME FEATURE
16-17 Criminal Masterminds in German Fiction by Sam Hancock
21 Swimming with Sharks: Heinrich Steinfest by Dan Toller
AUTHOR FOCUS
6 F. C. Delius: Stuart Taberner and Blake Morrison celebrate
the winner of the 2011 Büchner Prize
27 Alois Hotschnig, by Tess Lewis
ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS
12 Literature, Nature and Thermal Spas: Leukerbad
Literature Festival, by Donal McLaughlin
14-15 Cat Mountains. An extract from Katzenberge by
Sabrina Janesch
23 An interview with Stefan Tobler, founder of publisher
And Other Stories
36 Emily Ruete’s Memoirs of an Arabian Princess,
by Kate Roy
NEWS AND INFORMATION
22 Initiatives for Translators
24-26 NBG Choices – New and Forthcoming Publications
in English Translation
28-29 Frankfurt Book Fair: Graphic novels, new media and more
40-41 Book News: Prizes and Literary Festivals
48 Information for Editors: Applying for Translation Grants

Dear Reader,
I have the pleasure of writing this from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, an event that earns its ‘international’
stripes several times over every year. To be precise, I write from the festival’s Spiegeltent, one of several luscious mirrored
marquees that spring up in the city every August. Belgian-made, with a German-English name and a French title – Moulin
Rouge, to suit the Parisian cabaret-style decor – it is a fitting place to rest between readings and to reflect, here, on the
exciting developments in the German- and English-language book world.
This year Edinburgh hosts a stunning array of seven authors from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The first up is Croatian-
German Nicol Ljubić, one of the many authors writing in German who was not born in one of those three countries. The
intercultural impulses in German-language literature today make it even more vital and diverse, and amongst the wonderful
new books in this issue we have several examples of this trend – from Ilija Trojanow’s Antarctic activism to Larissa
Boehning’s epic tale of exile from Russia.
The intercultural is not new in this literature, of course, as is eloquently displayed by Kate Roy in her fascinating account
of the life story of Emily Ruete, a nineteenth-century ‘Arab princess’. Ruete married a German colonist and migrated from
Zanzibar to Hamburg, leaving behind memoirs that have been – and continue to be – reinvented across a range of media.
The idea of exile and returning to one’s roots also takes centre stage in our exclusive translation of an extract from Sabrina
Janesch’s novel Katzenberge. After her novel was reviewed in last autumn’s issue of NBG, Janesch was invited to be writerin-residence
at this year’s British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School. We are delighted to present the fruits
of that exciting week: ample proof that collaborative translation can produce elegant versions. Here, the novel’s German
protagonist re-imagines her Polish grandfather’s birth in a passage that shifts seamlessly between the real and the magical.
New birth is there in F. C. Delius’s novel Portrait of the mother as a young woman, too, following the ‘mother’ shortly
before the birth of her son. This issue would not be complete without a celebration of Delius’s work, as this year he was
awarded Germany’s prestigious Büchner Prize. Stuart Taberner introduces readers to his remarkable oeuvre, and British
author Blake Morrison shares his thoughts on Portrait, the first of Delius’s novels to make it into English – but not, we are
sure, the last.
Prizes are already on my mind in Edinburgh, as the German Book Prize longlist has just been released. It honours several
books and authors featured in NBG, including Angelika Klüssendorf’s Das Mädchen and Sybille Lewitscharoff’s
Blumenberg. Reviewed in this issue, these two very different novels highlight the quality and range of writing in
German today.
Austria’s Ingeborg Bachmann Prize takes a different form, judging extracts from unpublished novels rather than the
finished product. This innovative and often controversial prize provides an ideal forum for debut novelists, and indeed
three of the four excellent debuts that open this issue have been awarded shortlist places this year and last. A mark of great
literary distinction, but also a baptism of fire for new authors as their texts are scrutinised by critics, authors and audience.
Travellers stepping off the train at Edinburgh’s main station during the festival are greeted by a huge billboard advertising
Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, and Sam Hancock addresses precisely this phenomenon at the beginning of his thrilling journey
through the German-language crime fiction scene. Accompanying Sam’s case for the significant talent and originality
amongst German-language crime writers, we review four new novels of the genre that take the reader from occupied
Hamburg in 1947 to a re-imagined Berlin of 2011 (a Berlin, that is, which is capital of a still-existing German Democratic
Republic), from the snows of Finland to the Scottish island of Lewis. This special crime feature is capped by Dan Toller’s
introduction to the absurd and wonderful world of Austrian crime writer Heinrich Steinfest.
Edinburgh has played host to Clemens Meyer this week, too, the justly feted young German author whose writing has
found its first home in the English language with the brand new publisher And Other Stories. It is due not least to the
commitment and innovation of organisations like these that more and more translated fiction is appearing on British
bookshelves, and in the programmes of our literary festivals. This issue celebrates these developments in an interview
with And Other Stories publisher Stefan Tobler.
But our attention is focused not only on the UK, as this issue marks a new collaboration with the German Book Office in
New York. Many thanks are due to Riky Stock for this co-operation and for the co-ordination of the first American NBG
editorial committee, and also to Brittany Hazelwood for her sterling transatlantic work on this issue. NBG could not
happen without the commitment and support of our steering committee and expert editorial committee in London,
and I am very grateful, too, to NBG’s Editorial Assistant, Vanessa Norhausen.
The vibrant international atmosphere here in Edinburgh testifies to the renewed energy, range and vitality in both the
German- and English-language book worlds. We trust that you will find yet more proof in these pages.

Hitler would have loved techno
Taking up where Helene Hegemann’s Axolotl Roadkill
(NBG Spring 0 0) left off, Baum’s uncompromising
portrait of modern life links the past of National Socialism
with present-day capitalism in a way that is compelling,
persuasive, and relevant. Her ability to combine multiple
narrative strands through a first-person narrator makes the
novel an intense reading experience.
Teenage Rosa feels she does nothing but wait. Her parents
are divorced, and her relationship with her father and his
second wife is turbulent. She decides to move to the city,
but fails to gain entry to university and finds herself
unhappily attached to Patrick, whom she dubs the ‘remotecontrolled
gardener’ due to his propensity for the ciphers
of success: the right clothes, fashionable home furnishings,
desirable career (he works for a magazine). Rosa quips
that his idea of a perfect girlfriend is one who is ‘perfectly
lifeless, and ideally dead’. The stifling nature of their
relationship means that Rosa often escapes for long periods,
losing/finding herself in drink and drugs. After marrying
Patrick and working for the magazine for a brief period,
Rosa’s mental health deteriorates to such an extent that
she sabotages the online newsfeed by inserting random
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
DEBUTS
© juergen-bauer.com
Antonia Baum
Vollkommen leblos, bestenfalls tot
(Perfectly Lifeless: Ideally Dead)
Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, September 2011, 240 pp. ISBN: 978 3 455 40296 4
Antonia Baum
was born in 1984 and studied literature
and history. She is currently studying
for a masters degree in cultural studies
at the Universität der Künste in Berlin.
She has published several short stories
and this is her first novel.
Nazi-inflected obscenities. Her violent fantasies then
culminate in a particularly graphic scene in which she
envisages torturing and dismembering Patrick.
Rosa subsequently leaves and falls in love with Jo, an actor.
However, this new relationship is equally unsatisfying,
and Jo soon distances himself from Rosa, who becomes
pregnant. Rosa is reunited with her mother briefly, who
advises her to have an abortion – regretting her own
decision as a young woman to keep Rosa. Rosa decides in
favour of an abortion and attempts to carve out a life of
her own by enrolling in university. However, she drops out
and descends into self-imposed isolation, anorexia and
self-harm. With Rosa intent on suicide, the novel ends as
she is about to jump from a tall building, leaving it unclear
whether she will or not.
Baum’s narrative style is as violent as the fantasies of her
protagonist. Innovative neologisms and compound nouns
command the reader’s constant attention. The protagonist’s
lengthy reflections are juxtaposed with moments of
irrational action, which lend the narrative its dark humour.
An astonishing debut.
Translation rights available from:
Hoffmann und Campe Verlag
Harvestehuder Weg 42, 20149
Hamburg, Germany
Tel: +49 40 44188 281
Email: nadja.mortensen@hoca.de
Contact: Nadja Mortensen
www.hoffmann-und-campe.de
Shortlisted for the Ingeborg
Bachmann Prize 2011 (see page 40)
Hoffmann and Campe Verlag
is a publishing house with a long
tradition. Founded in 1781, the
publishing house was graced in its
early days by such authors as Heinrich
Heine and Friedrich Hebbel, as well as
other members of the rebellious group
of young writers known as ‘Junges
Deutschland’. Hoffmann and Campe
is one of Germany’s largest and most
successful general publishers with a
portfolio which embraces the works of
famous authors and young talent. Since
1951, all works by the eminent writer
Siegfried Lenz have been published by
Hoffmann and Campe, and it also holds
the world rights to authors such as
Irene Dische, Matthias Politycki, Nicol
Ljubic and Wolf Haas. The non-fiction
list includes Stefan Aust, Joachim Bauer,
Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder and
Peer Steinbrück.

Curiosity killed the cat
Rossel’s quirky novel is reminiscent of the David Mitchell
bestseller, Cloud Atlas: stories within stories, each narrative
strand happening in a different time and place, and the
‘reincarnating’ of a character. And the book opens with
a bang.
Anyone who is a non-reader is asked to stop before the
story begins proper. This narrative voice (whom we later
find out has the same name as the author) is struggling
to find writing work so she takes an assignment to guard
a ‘Schrödinger box’ instead. This is a box with a cat in it,
as per Schrödinger’s thought experiment. When she gives
in to curiosity and opens the box, a lion jumps out.
This is apparently the spur she needs to start work as a
‘crypto-geographer.’ So she goes to Morocco and there she
steals a notebook which turns out to be Wigand Behaim’s
first draft of his global atlas, an attempt to chart the
whole world in all its forms.
From his notebooks, we learn about Wigand’s life and
adventures as an atlas maker, travelling to the South Pole
to look for Atlantis, meeting the god Atlas and falling in
love with Sibylle Blauwelsh. Sibylle is reincarnated, so that
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Switzerland (see page 48)
© Adrian Moser
Ursula Timea Rossel
Man nehme Silber und
Knoblauch, Erde und Salz
(Take silver and garlic, add soil and salt)
Bilgerverlag, August 2011, 340 pp. ISBN: 978 3 037 62018 2
Ursula Timea Rossel
was born in 1975 in Thun, Switzerland,
and now lives in Olten. She worked as
a journalist and editor on numerous
publications, writing articles, reports
and satirical texts. Since 2006 she has
been a freelance author.
‘ An overwhelming book that whistles
around your ear like wind suddenly
passing by.’ (Peter von Matt)
she has four different lives: she lives as a self-taught dentist
in Switzerland, a camel-herd to a rich man in the desert,
with guerilla fighters in the jungle, and with a team making
a film about lions in the Himalayas. The final section is an
imaginative re-telling of the life of St. Ursula on behalf of
the Vatican.
The narrative includes passages where the author is
directly addressing the reader or even her characters as
though they were real. It also includes letters, extensive
notes from Wigand’s atlas, and short descriptions of the
different ways in which cultures measure time. It ends with
a fake bibliography of books ‘written’ by the characters,
such as a book about yaks by a Sherpa from the Himalayan
segment. There are often very original nuggets that are
only mentioned once, such as when Wigand periodically
disappears without explanation and it turns out he is going
off to donate ‘time’ at his local time bank.
This book is more about the telling of stories and adventures
than an attempt to have a clear structure and plot. The
themes of time and place and how they interact run through
the entire book. A wonderfully original tour de force.
Translation rights available from:
Bilgerverlag GmBh, Zürich
Josefstrasse 52, 8005 Zürich,
Switzerland
Tel: +41 44 2718146
Email: bilger@bilgerverlag.ch
Contact: Ricco Bilger
www.bilgerverlag.ch
Bilgerverlag
was founded in 2001 by Ricco Bilger
and specialises in contemporary
Swiss literature. Authors include
Katharina Faber, Urs Augstburger,
Kaspar Schnetzler, Urs Mannhart,
and Christoph Simon. Ricco Bilger
opened his Zurich bookshop in
1983, and ten years later, another
bookshop in mountain spa town of
Leukerbad, where he went on to found
the successful Leukerbad Literature
Festival. In 2007 Bilger was the driving
force behind the formation of SWIPS,
the forum for Swiss Independent
Publishers.
DEBUTS

Max Scharnigg
Die Besteigung der Eiger-Nordwand
unter einer Treppe
(Climbing the North Face of the Eiger Under the Stairs)
Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, February 2011, 144 pp. ISBN: 978 3 455 40313 8
‘An axe for the frozen sea within us’
With Kafka-like moments of surreality and pathos, Scharnigg’s
disarming debut novel is an absurd epic, assured, ironic and
full of charm. Slight but tightly structured, and spanning just
a few days, its appeal lies in its bathetic descriptions, beautiful
clear images, and lyrical moments between characters.
Nikol has moved out of the flat he shares with his girlfriend,
M., and taken up residence under the stairs of his apartment
building. Together the couple had become more and more
isolated from the outside world, and M. has not left the
house in more than a year. Journalist Nikol has become
used to no one seeming to notice him anymore, so it’s quite
comfortable in the stairwell. And he’s busy composing in his
mind an article about the heroic ascent of the north face of
the Eiger in 9 7. He has retreated to this burrow because
of the sight, in front of his apartment door, of a pair of
shoes. Who could have been visiting? Nikol is now too far
outside his comfort zone and would rather not go into the
apartment to find out.
At first, Nikol claims he is perfectly happy just sitting
unnoticed under the stairs, making cynical observations
about the identical lifestyles of the yuppie couples who
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
DEBUTS
© Christina Maria Oswald
Max Scharnigg
was born in 1980 and works as a
journalist and author. He is one of the
editors of jetzt.de, the Süddeutsche
Zeitung’s magazine for young people,
and writes among others for AD,
Cosmopolitan and das SZ-Magazin.
His regular column in the Süddeutsche
Zeitung recently appeared in book
form under the title Das habe ich jetzt
akustisch nicht verstanden (‘I didn’t
quite catch that’). Die Besteigung der
Eiger-Nordwand is his first novel, for
which he won the Munich City literary
bursary and was nominated for the
Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2010.
Max Scharnigg lives in Munich.
Translation rights available from:
Hoffmann und Campe Verlag
Harvestehuder Weg 42, 20149
Hamburg, Germany
Tel: +49 40 44188 281
Email: nadja.mortensen@hoca.de
Contact: Nadja Mortensen
www.hoffmann-und-campe.de
‘ In his first novel the author and
columnist Max Scharnigg writes a
miniature play which takes the reader
first under a dark staircase, then over
the north face of the Eiger, and finally
up to the mysterious door of a
second-floor apartment.’
(Süddeutsche Zeitung)
‘ This little book of 140 pages is wonderful and resembles either a perfectly
moulded sculpture or a flawlessly composed sonata, according to your taste.’
(Hamburger Abendblatt)
ascend and descend above his head, running through his
memories of his relationship with M. and trying to figure out
why and when she became ill and reclusive, and composing
his epic. The Eiger narrative is interwoven with Nikol’s
story to wry effect, the gripping tale of four historical
mountaineers a sardonic commentary on the narrator’s
absurd struggle to climb the stairs back up to his flat.
Then Schmuskatz, an eccentric old man living opposite,
invites him over to his flat for paprika chicken and a few
drinks. Nikol talks about his Eiger project, Schmuskatz of
his days as a pioneering glacier photographer; Nikol talks
about his relationship with M., Schmuskatz kits both of them
out in antiquated mountaineering equipment. Roped up,
they embark on the perilous climb two stories up to Nikol’s
apartment. Will Nikol, blind drunk, emotional and lost,
manage to emulate his Eiger heroes and complete the ascent?
The book has a lovely originality and pulls off its highconcept
structure superbly. It is funny, genuinely moving
and very readable. The combination of literary ambition,
historical adventure and affecting love story make for an
extraordinarily accomplished debut.
Hoffmann and Campe Verlag is a
publishing house with a long tradition.
Founded in 1781, the publishing
house was graced in its early days by
such authors as Heinrich Heine and
Friedrich Hebbel, as well as other
members of the rebellious group
of young writers known as ‘Junges
Deutschland’. Hoffmann and Campe
is one of Germany’s largest and most
successful general publishers with a
portfolio which embraces the works of
famous authors and young talent. Since
1951, all works by the eminent writer
Siegfried Lenz have been published by
Hoffmann and Campe, and it also holds
the world rights to authors such as
Irene Dische, Matthias Politycki, Nicol
Ljubic and Wolf Haas. The non-fiction
list includes Stefan Aust, Joachim Bauer,
Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder and
Peer Steinbrück.

The spoils of war
Michel Božiković
Drift
(Drift)
Klett-Cotta Verlag, August 2011, 320 pp. ISBN: 978 3 608 50211 4
Božiković’s arresting debut novel is structured as a story
within a story: Martin, a journalist, is interviewing Julien,
a veteran of the Balkan conflicts of the early 990s in which
he fought as a volunteer. Martin is a wreck – unemployed,
left by his girlfriend, and a heroin addict – but desperate
to turn his life around, hoping for a major break-through
by publishing Julien’s story.
Julien, a second-generation Yugoslavian immigrant, was
nineteen when he stole his mother’s car to drive to Croatia
to fight and to give meaning to his life. Fiercely determined,
he manages to get through to the front line, and the first
clash with the enemy proves that he is a natural. Julien soon
falls in love with Marina, another member of his squad.
On a mission to kill a high-ranked Serbian officer Julien and
Marina both get badly injured. After recovering sufficiently
to leave hospital, Julien visits Marina at her home and
they spend their one and only night together, both high on
heroin. For him, it’s the first experience of hard drugs, but
for Marina heroin has become the only way to cope with the
unbearable pains of her injury. The next morning she is dead,
killed by an overdose. Julien is devastated and cannot return
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Oliver Nanzig
Michel Božiković
was born in Zurich and studied
philosophy, political science, journalism
and communication studies in
Constance and Zurich. From 2000 to
2006 he ran his own studio (with his
own label) as well as managing a
publishing house. He wrote scripts and
also skippered a yacht. Since 1992 he
has worked in advertising, both writing
texts and coordinating strategy. Today
he lives in Zurich and works in Basel.
Drift is his first novel. A second work is
now on the way.
to the fighting. He ends up becoming a drug runner
to Switzerland, where years later he gets the chance
to recount his story to Martin.
Yet at this point in the narrative Martin is also in a state
of despair, seeing no chance of escaping from the drugs
and alcohol. Finally he takes Julien’s gun in order to commit
suicide. By the end of the book, it seems that Martin and
Julien might actually be the same person, maybe already
dead or maybe still alive, but definitely on the final drift
away from real life in one way or another, despite visions
of what might have been.
Božiković’s style is strong and involving, drawing the
reader through the scenes of violence and despair that are
mixed with images of happier days. Being published on the
twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Yugoslav war,
Drift is an unconventional and compelling take on a conflict
that is far from being forgotten in today’s Europe. Julien and
Martin’s shared stories demonstrate with an unerring eye
how war not only kills but also destroys lives.
Translation rights available from:
Klett-Cotta Verlag (J. G. Cotta’sche
Buchhandlung Nachfolger GmbH)
Rotebühlstr. 77, 70178 Stuttgart,
Germany
Tel: + 49 711 66721257
Email: r.knappe@klett-cotta.de
Contact: Roland Knappe
www.klett-cotta.de
Shortlisted for the Ingeborg
Bachmann Prize 2011 (see page 40)
Klett-Cotta Verlag
has a reputation as a prestigious
literary and scientific publishing house
dating back to 1659. Cotta was the
original publisher of Goethe and
Schiller. Klett-Cotta publishes both
classical and contemporary fiction
by German and foreign authors as
well as books on the humanities,
psychology, philosophy, history, politics,
management, educational theory and
ecology. Klett-Cotta authors include
Stefan George, Ernst Jünger, Doris
Lessing and Seamus Heaney.
DEBUTS

This year, F.C. Delius was awarded
Germany’s most prestigious book
prize, the Büchner.
Stuart Taberner and Blake Morrison introduce
readers to the author’s significant oeuvre.
When it was announced that
Friedrich Christian Delius had
been awarded the Büchner Prize
for 2011, few industry insiders
were surprised. Indeed, the only
question was why it had taken the
committee so long to recognise
the talents of one of the country’s
foremost writers.
Delius, born in Rome in 1943,
published his first poetry
collections in the mid-sixties,
along with satirical exposés of the
collusion between big business
and the dominant Christian
Democratic Union in the early
days of the Federal Republic. In
the mid-seventies, he began to
write novels, most notably his
‘German autumn’ trilogy: Ein
Held der inneren Sicherheit
(‘Hero of Internal Security’, 1981);
Mogadischu Fensterplatz
(‘Window Seat at Mogadishu’,
1987); Himmelfahrt eines
Staatsfeindes (‘Ascension of an
Enemy of the State’, 1992). This
thematises the German experience
of terrorism in the 1970s but also
tackles important questions about
the balance between security and
civil liberties that are central to
debates raging today after 9/11
and the 7/7 attacks on London. In
addition, Delius is also a prolific
essay-writer, newspaper columnist,
and political activist.
Much of Delius’s writing is socially
and politically engaged, and often
looks back over post-war German
history in order to make sense of
the intertwining of the political
and the private – of what it means
to be there when epoch-defining
events occur. The short novel
Amerika-Haus und der Tanz
um die Frauen (‘America House
and the Dance around Women’,
1977), for example, looks back
to the late 1960s and the heady
mix of political protest and selfdiscovery
that characterised that
period for many young people. The
more substantial Mein Jahr als
AUTHOR FOCUS
Mörder (‘My Year as a Murderer’,
2004) revisits the same era and
examines the temptations to
political violence in a country in
which former Nazi judges are
acquitted while the wife of a
resistance fighter is hounded by
the courts. In Der Sonntag, an
dem ich Weltmeister wurde
(‘The Sunday That I Became
World Champion’, 1994), on
the other hand, the victory of
the West German team at the
1954 World Cup is experienced
by a young man (who bears a
strong resemblance to the author
himself) as a liberation, both from
his restrictive upbringing and from
Germany’s past, and also as the
symbol of a new, democratic spirit.
The short work Die Flatterzunge
(‘Flutter-Tongue’, 1999) and the
novel Königsmacher (‘King-
Maker’, 2001), by contrast, deal
with political correctness and
the pitfalls of marketing. In Die
Flatterzunge a musician is
ostracised after jokingly signing
a bar tab in Israel with ‘Adolf
Hitler’, whereas in Königsmacher
a middle-aged writer struggles to
get published in a contemporary
world in which looks matter more
than substance.
Delius is at his best when he
is most personal. Bildnis der
Mutter als junge Frau (‘Portrait
of the Mother as a Young
Woman’, 2006), published in
English by Peirene Press (2010,
tr. Jamie Bulloch), is a singlesentence
125-page re-imagining
of one day in his mother’s life as
the wife of a German army officer
in Rome in 1943. In this highly
rhythmical work, Delius gently
tests the limits of his mother’s
understanding of her situation
and of the Nazi propaganda
with which she has grown up.
The result is a subtle, empathetic
yet probing examination of
the (self-)delusions of one very
ordinary woman during the Nazi
period. Mein Jahr als Mörder
and Der Sonntag, an dem ich
Weltmeister wurde also have
autobiographical roots, inviting
the reader to experience the
author’s own fallibilities, whether
for the self-righteous anger of
the would-be assassin of an
unrepentant former Nazi judge or
for the illusion that football can
change the world. These books,
which meld German history and
individual life stories with broader
issues relating to the capacity
we all possess for self-delusion,
transcend the borders between
countries and cultures and would
surely appeal to an international
audience. Die Flatterzunge,
too, though less directly
autobiographical, challenges us to
identify with a protagonist whose
motives are ambivalent at best
— is his ‘Hitler joke’ a defiant
act of protest against political
correctness or a childish attempt
to draw attention to himself and
mask his mediocre career and
failed personal relationships?
Delius’s prose is highly readable.
His style is modest and understated,
Writer Blake Morrison picked Delius’s Portrait of
the Mother as a Young Woman as one of his top
reads of last year. Here, he tells NBG why.
In Portrait of the Mother as
a Young Woman, F.C. Delius
defies the normal meanings of
the words ‘small’ and ‘large’. His
book consists of a single sentence,
but that sentence stretches to
125 pages. It describes a walk
that takes only an hour but
which assimilates the whole of
a young woman’s life. It is set in
a particular place (Rome) at a
particular time (January 1943) but
the fears, hopes, experiences and
memories it recounts are timeless
and universal. Alone in a strange
city, pregnant, afraid and badly
missing her husband, the young
woman at its centre doesn’t pity
herself but counts her blessings:
how much worse it is for the
with a lightness of touch and
an unobtrusive but compelling
musicality that translate well into
English. The plotlines are strong
and drive the narrative forward,
drawing the reader into the
everyday psychological dramas
experienced by the author’s
unexceptional protagonists as they
struggle with a set of dilemmas
that are as universal as they are
individual. At what point does
moral indignation turn into selfrighteous
self-delusion? Are we
more than simply the products of
a particular past and a particular
present? How can we tell our story
and be understood?
A worthy winner of the 2011
Büchner Prize, F. C. Delius is long
overdue for translation into English.
Stuart Taberner is Professor
of Contemporary
German
Literature,
Culture and
Society at the
University of
Leeds
Italians, she
reflects,
and how
fortunate to
be in the Eternal City, on which
the Allies will surely never drop
bombs. There’s something deeply
engaging about her innocence and
compassion as she struggles with
her ambivalent feelings, not least
about Hitler and Nazism. ‘On her
own she could not work out what
you were allowed and not allowed
to say, what you should think and
what you ought not to think,’ she
reflects. Yet implicitly, by the end,
she does work these things out,
finding in music and Christianity
an antidote to racial hatred and
military triumphalism.
© Getty Images © private

‘Belief and the unbelievable’
Albert Ostermaier
Schwarze Sonne scheine
(Shine, Black Sun)
Suhrkamp Verlag. May 2011, 360 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42220 5
Ostermaier, leading poet and playwright, is a maximalist,
and his eagerly awaited, possibly autobiographical, second
novel is magnificent and baroque: a wonderfully over-thetop
self-examination of the artist as a young man, and a
profound investigation into our deepest fears.
It is 99 and Sebastian is a reluctant Law student who
spends most of his time working on his poetry. Two years
ago, he returned from a trip to Yemen seriously ill. Even
though he has since made a full recovery, when an old
family friend suggests he see a specialist who saved
his own life, Sebastian agrees. The old family friend is
Silvester, the Prior of the monastery in Sebastian’s home
town, and the first person actively to encourage his artistic
ambitions. The specialist is Sybille Scher. When the results
of Scher’s examination come in, Sebastian’s world implodes:
apparently, he carries a deadly virus and has a maximum
of six months to live. His girlfriend Klara, a Protestant
who is inherently suspicious of Silvester and the Catholic
establishment he represents, insists that he get a second
opinion. This shows Sebastian to be healthy; and the
professor who examines him also makes inquiries into
Scher and finds out that she is, by all accounts, an impostor.
‘In Shine, Black Sun everything is
vital, powerful, complex and thrilling.
Albert Ostermaier’s expressionistic
verve ought to be exemplary for
young writers.’ (Die Zeit)
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Susanne Schleyer / Suhrkamp Verlag
Albert Ostermaier
is one of Germany’s foremost poets and
playwrights. He was born in Munich in
1967 and has been writer-in-residence
at the National Theatre in Mannheim
and at the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel
in Munich. Albert Ostermaier has
received various prizes for his dramatic
works and has published more than
twenty books and twenty-eight plays
with Suhrkamp.
Previous works: Zephyr (2008)
‘Shine, Black Sun is a beautiful book.
It is sad and oddly funny, absurd and
warm.’ (Frankfurter Rundschau)
‘The book vibrates and pulses;
unharnessed and extreme in its
reactions.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
For a second time, Sebastian’s world implodes: has he
been betrayed by Silvester, the one person he trusted more
than anybody else in the world? However, the question of
Silvester’s involvement with Scher remains unanswered
because Sebastian’s parents beg him not to take the story
to the media – as small business owners in a provincial town
they cannot afford to alienate the Catholic establishment.
For the next twenty years, silence reigns in Sebastian’s
family about these events. Finally, Sebastian has to undergo
emergency surgery and, coming to after the operation,
decides that he will remain silent no longer.
By making his protagonist and narrator a young writer,
Ostermaier cleverly manages to justify, and at the same time
ironically undercut, even his most outrageous flourishes.
So the real pleasure in reading the novel is in the ongoing
interior monologue Sebastian conducts with himself
throughout the book, a monologue that’s rich in allusions
to literature and culture high and (occasionally) low and
that is clearly, and charmingly, in love with its own verbal
inventiveness. The language makes Shine, Black Sun what
it is. A darkly sparkling gem.
Translation rights available from:
Suhrkamp Verlag
Pappelallee 78-79, 10437 Berlin,
Germany
Tel: +49 30 740744 0
Email: hardt@suhrkamp.de (USA),
mercurio@suhrkamp.de
(UK & Commonwealth)
Contact: Dr. Petra Hardt (USA), Nora
Mercurio (UK & Commonwealth)
www.suhrkamp.de/foreignrights
‘An almost unbelievable story told
in a tragicomic style. A daredevil
rollercoaster ride examining every
facet of an electrically wired mind.’
(Herbert Grönemeyer)
Suhrkamp Verlag
was founded in 1950 by Peter
Suhrkamp and directed for over forty
years by Dr. Siegfried Unseld. The
independent publishing company
now includes Insel Verlag (founded in
Leipzig in 1899), the Jüdischer Verlag
(founded in Berlin in 1902), as well
as the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag
(established in 1981) and the newly
founded Verlag der Weltreligionen
(established in 2006). Suhrkamp
focuses on both contemporary
literature and the humanities. Its
distinguished list includes leading
writers from Germany, Switzerland
and Austria, many of whom made their
debuts with the firm, besides major
international authors of both fiction
and non-fiction, including several
Nobel Prize winners.
FiCTiOn 7

Kafka’s last stand
Michael Kumpfmüller
Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens
(The Glory of Life)
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, August 2011, 240 pp. ISBN: 978 3 462 04326 6
Much of this intriguing novel about Franz Kafka’s last year
is mediated through letters, telegraphs, and the telephone;
the author has genuinely captured the excitement of
modernity, a world with cinema, mobility, and long-distance
communications. At the same time The Glory of Life achieves
a meditative quality and offers beautiful insights into what
really makes life worth living.
To say that Franz is indecisive would be an understatement,
and it is precisely this aspect of his character that gives the
book its structure. Twelve chapters describe his tentative
‘coming’ to Berlin, twelve more cover his difficulties
‘staying’ there, and the last dozen depict Franz slowly
‘leaving’ this life, nursed by his lover Dora and a friend
called Robert. Friendship nourished by communication
and loyalty is skillfully portrayed. There are touching
descriptions of the physical intimacy shared by both Robert
and Dora with the dying Franz, as they wash and feed him
together. Beginning with a holiday-cum-convalescence on
the Baltic Sea in July 9 , and ending with his death in a
sanatorium near Vienna in July 9 , it is surprising that
the last year of Kafka’s life can be told as a love story. The
perspective shifts between Franz and Dora. Dora is in her
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
FiCTiOn
© juergen-bauer.com
Michael Kumpfmüller
was born in 1961 and now lives as
a freelance writer in Berlin. In 2000
his celebrated debut novel Hampels
Fluchten was published, in 2003
his second novel Durst, and in 2008
Nachricht an alle. He was awarded the
Döblin Prize for this most recent novel.
Previous works:
Hampels Fluchten (2000); Durst
(2003); Nachricht an alle (2008)
Translation rights sold to:
Kumpfmüller’s previous works have
been published in translation in
Finland (Tammi), France (Denoel), UK
(Weidenfeld), Italy (RCS Libri), The
Netherlands (Ambo Anthos) and Spain
(Seix Barral).
mid-twenties, while Franz is already forty. Yet as the pair
fall in love, Franz impulsively decides to move to Berlin in
order to join Dora there.
The problem is that 9 was not a good year for anyone
to move to Berlin. Inflation was sky-rocketing, and for
Franz and Dora there are occasional glimpses of the anti-
Semitism that was deeply ingrained in early twentiethcentury
European society. Franz himself has ambivalent
feelings towards Judaism, the Hebrew language, and even
to Jews. But the greatest obstacles he has to overcome
are the influence of his domineering sisters, his fear of an
authoritarian father, and his resulting inability to assert
himself. There are several well-observed passages about
Franz’s psychology, notably regarding the difficulty of telling
lies over the phone, or analysing the facts that are not
written about in his letters.
A very convincing combination of historical research and
fictional reconstruction of events, The Glory of Life will
appeal to a wide audience not only for its contribution to
our appreciation of Kafka but also its depiction of Weimar
Germany and central European society.
Translation rights available from:
Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH
& Co. KG
Bahnhofsvorplatz 1, 50667 Köln,
Germany
Tel: +49 0221 376 85 22
Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de
Contact: Iris Brandt
www.kiwi-verlag.de
‘ An unbelievably tender, beautifully
poetic love story at the end of a
life.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine
Sonntagszeitung)
Kiepenheuer & Witsch
was founded in 1949 in Cologne by
Gustav Kiepenheuer and Joseph Caspar
Witsch. The press’s early authors
included Joseph Roth, Heinrich Böll
and Erich Maria Remarque. Today
Kiepenheuer & Witsch continues to
publish leading contemporary German,
Austrian and Swiss writers, as well as
international authors in translation.
Its list includes among many others
the book prizewinner Kathrin Schmidt,
Frank Schätzing, Uwe Timm, David
Foster Wallace and J.D. Salinger. Its
non-fiction subjects cover sociology,
psychology, history and biography.
Kiepenheuer & Witsch is part of the
Holtzbrinck Group.

The lion-hearted philosopher
Sibylle Lewitscharoff
Blumenberg
(Blumenberg)
Suhrkamp Verlag, September 2011, 220 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42244 1
Not a word is wasted by Lewitscharoff in this superbly
written novel where everything is significant. Themes and
style alike contribute to the overall effect: a clever blend of
poetry, philosophy and comedy by an author who is a master
of her craft.
The novel centres on a fictionalised version of the German
philosopher Hans Blumenberg, most famous for his concept
of ‘metaphorology’, who died in 99 . Suhrkamp has
recently reissued Löwen, a volume of notes on ancient
and modern stories about lions taken from Blumenberg’s
unpublished papers, and Lewitscharoff’s narrative gives
the philosopher an actual lion, which turns up in his study
one evening in 9 , and becomes his silent companion
for the rest of his life. The lion is an ontological puzzle: is
he real, tangible, or simply a lengthy hallucination? When
Blumenberg’s wife eventually finds him dead in 99 , there
is a smell of lions in the room, and a few yellow hairs cling
to his clothes.
Running parallel to the philosopher’s narrative are those
of a handful of his students in the year the lion appears.
Isa is in love with Blumenberg, though he doesn’t know it,
‘ Sibylle Lewitscharoff is capable
of a particular kind of linguistic
excitement which is unique in
German literature.’
(Paul Jandl, Neue Züricher Zeitung)
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Susanne Schleyer / Suhrkamp Verlag
Sibylle Lewitscharoff
was born in Stuttgart in 1954 and
now lives in Berlin. She has received
numerous awards for her writings,
including the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
and the Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize.
Her recent novel Apostoloff earned
her the prize of the Leipzig Book Fair,
and is forthcoming in English with
Seagull Books.
Previous works:
Consummatus (2010)
Apostoloff (2009)
Translation rights sold to:
Apostoloff has been published in
translation in English (Seagull), Spanish
world rights (Hidalgo), Italy (Del
Vecchio Editore), Bulgaria (Atlantis),
Estonia (Atlex), Macedonia (Magor)
and in despair she throws herself off a motorway bridge.
Richard imagines Blumenberg reading his dissertation, and
is so crippled by the professor’s imagined disdain that he
cannot complete it. He travels to South America, where he
is brutally murdered in an alleyway. Hansi, an oddball who
torments his fellow students and the general public by
relentlessly reading poems at them in bars and restaurants,
becomes even more eccentric after leaving university, and
eventually drops dead whilst being arrested for creating
a public nuisance with his aggressive philosophising. Only
Gerhard, a dedicated ‘Blumenbergian’, manages an academic
career, and even he turns up in the book’s final chapter, set
in a kind of waiting room in the afterlife, where Blumenberg
and his lion are reunited with his dead students.
Interesting stylistic twists make Blumenberg difficult to
pigeonhole. The lion takes the narrative into the territory
of magic realism, and the final chapter in the afterlife goes
beyond this. There are also interventions from the narrator,
who, for example, having told us what is going through Isa’s
mind in the seconds before her death, muses on whether it’s
actually possible for a narrator to know this, and how much
of it is plausible. A highly original work.
Translation rights available from:
Suhrkamp Verlag
Pappelallee 78-79, 10437 Berlin,
Germany
Tel: +49 30 740744 0
Email: hardt@suhrkamp.de (USA),
mercurio@suhrkamp.de
(UK & Commonwealth)
Contact: Dr. Petra Hardt (USA), Nora
Mercurio (UK & Commonwealth)
www.suhrkamp.de/foreignrights
‘Apostoloff is brimming with ferocity,
plays on language and impertinence.
Sparkling, enjoyable literature.’
(Der Spiegel)
‘The most dazzling stylist of
contemporary German literature.’
(Die Welt)
Suhrkamp Verlag
was founded in 1950 by Peter
Suhrkamp and directed for over forty
years by Dr. Siegfried Unseld. The
independent publishing company
now includes Insel Verlag (founded in
Leipzig in 1899), the Jüdischer Verlag
(founded in Berlin in 1902), as well
as the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag
(established in 1981) and the newly
founded Verlag der Weltreligionen
(established in 2006). Suhrkamp
focuses on both contemporary
literature and the humanities. Its
distinguished list includes leading
writers from Germany, Switzerland and
Austria, many of whom made their
debuts with the firm, besides major
international authors of both fiction
and non-fiction, including several Nobel
Prize winners.
FiCTiOn 9

Ilija Trojanow
EisTau
(Melting Ice)
Carl Hanser Verlag, August 2011, 176 pp. ISBN: 978 3 446 23757 5
Like unto whited sepulchres
Melting Ice is an activist’s book that recognizes the problem
of activism – an angry, powerful, and often funny book.
Zeno Hintermeier, a glaciologist, is working as a lecturer on
a cruise ship in the Antarctic. He is surrounded by his beloved
ice – and passengers and journalists who, for all their concern
about the environment, will soon return to their usual lifestyles.
Hintermeier, on the other hand, is plagued by a nightmare in
which he is sitting on a rock, clutching a handful of melting ice.
Things come to a head during an art installation. The passengers
line up on the ice to spell out an SOS. For Hintermeier, only a
genuine distress signal could do justice, so he invites the crew to
join the formation, returns alone to the cruise ship, and sails off.
When the ship is found, there is no sign of the hijacker, just
a notebook, the text of which we have been reading.
Hintermeier’s narrative, full of arresting images and poetic
descriptions, is interspersed with memories of his childhood,
his failed marriage, and the end of his academic career. These
alternate with short, untitled and fiercely poetic chapters
written as single sentences that provide an angry, energetic
and anonymous commentary.
Translation rights available from:
Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
Tel: +49 89 998 30 509
Email: Friederike.Barakat@hanser.de
Contact: Friederike Barakat
www.hanser-literaturverlage.de
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
0 FiCTiOn
© Thomas Dorn
Ilija Trojanow was born in 1965 in
Sofia, Bulgaria, grew up in Kenya and
now lives in Vienna. His work has won
numerous awards, most recently the
2008 Berlin Prize for Literature, and has
been translated into several languages.
Previous works:
Angriff auf die Freiheit.
Sicherheitswahn, Überwachungsstaat
und der Abbau bürgerlicher Rechte
(‘The Assault on Liberty‘, 2009, with
Juli Zeh); Der entfesselte Globus
(‘The Raging Globe’, 2008); Der
Weltensammler (The Collector of
Worlds, 2006);
Translation rights sold to:
Brazil (Companhia das Letras), Bulgaria
(Ciela), France (Libella), Netherlands
(De Geus)
For information on Carl Hanser
Verlag contact NBG
Christoph Hein
Weiskerns Nachlass
(Weiskern’s Estate)
Suhrkamp Verlag, August 2011, 319 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42241 0
Crash landing
Weiskern’s Estate is classic Hein. In a case study at once social
and psychological, the reader experiences the protagonist’s
bewilderment at contemporary society and anguish as he recalls
incidents from his past that have led to his current plight.
Life doesn’t seem to accord literature professor Stolzenburg the
respect due to his age and profession. He slaves part-time at an
institute for cultural studies, and finds it increasingly hard to uphold
his high standards at a time of cutbacks and apathetic students. His
real passion is his life work, a Complete Works of obscure librettist
Weiskern. But will anyone publish it?
Soon the cracks in Stolzenburg’s life start to show: an unexplained
tax bill; being suspected by the police of offering faked documents
for sale; assault by a group of schoolgirls. Everything comes to a
head when he is on a flight to give a guest lecture, and suddenly
the propellers stop working…
Hein’s works have consistently achieved wide appeal, and this novel
also turns a mirror on some universal aspects of European societies:
ageing, the crisis of higher education, the plight of older people,
rising street violence, generation gaps, and the marginalisation
of literature in the digital age.
Translation rights available from:
Suhrkamp Verlag
Tel: +49 30 740744 0
Contact details: see page 7
www.suhrkamp.de/foreignrights
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Jürgen Bauer
Praise for Frau Paula Trousseau:
‘ A courageous novel, beyond great
gestures’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
‘The most beautiful work Christoph
Hein has written so far.’ (Frankfurter
Rundschau)
‘Christoph Hein’s novels […] have a
charismatic aura.’ (Neuer Zürcher
Zeitung)
Christoph Hein was born in 1944 and
currently lives in Berlin. He has written
novels, novellas, short stories, plays,
essays and children’s books. Suhrkamp
Verlag acquired the world rights to
Hein’s works in 2002. He has garnered
numerous literary awards for his work.
When the Pen centres in East and West
Germany merged, Christoph Hein was
President of the German Pen Centre
from 1998 to 2000.
Selected previous works:
Frau Paula Trousseau (2007; World
English Rights sold to Metropolitan
Books); In seiner frühen Kindheit
ein Garten (2005; World English
Rights sold to Metropolitan Books);
Landnahme (Settlement, 2004) ;
Willenbrock (2000)
For information on Suhrkamp Verlag
see page 7

Sherko Fatah
Ein weißes Land
(A White Land)
Luchterhand Literaturverlag, September 2011,
480 pp. ISBN: 978 3 630 87371 8
‘Good at killing’
Translation rights available from:
Luchterhand Literaturverlag
Tel: + 49 89 4136 3313
Email: Gesche.Wendebourg@
randomhouse.de
www.randomhouse.de
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Jens Oellermann
‘ Where is there such a thing in
German literature? Adventure in
high art? Here we have it, with
Sherko Fatah.’ (Die Zeit)
‘ With Fatah, a new quality enters
German literature.’
(Der Tagesspiegel)
Following his successful 00 novel, Das dunkle Schiff, which told
the story of a young Iraqi during the first Gulf War, Fatah turns his
considerable powers to an epic story exploring the relationship
between Iraq and Germany during the Nazi period, and the history
of the Jewish community in Iraq.
A White Land is packed with character and incident, opening
in 9 when Anwar, an Iraqi veteran of the Second World War,
spots a German doctor in a local hospital. Can it be the same Dr
Stein who treated Anwar during the war? The plot shifts back in
time to Anwar’s youth in Baghdad, when he betrayed the trust
and affection of his Jewish friends and became involved with the
Black Shirts, and progresses chronologically through his posting to
Berlin as a bodyguard to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and into his
years as an SS soldier on the Eastern Front, where he participates
in the systematic massacre of Russian partisans and civilians. The
final chapter returns to 9 and solves the mystery of what has
brought Dr Stein to Iraq.
A unique perspective on the Second World War, and a shocking
picture of a young man who apparently commits atrocities
without motivation.
Sherko Fatah was born in 1964 as
the son of an Iraqi Kurd and a German
mother. He grew up in East Germany
and, in 1975, moved with his family
to West Berlin, via Vienna. He studied
philosophy and the history of art. He
has received numerous awards and
grants for his narrative work including
the Hilde Domin Prize, the Alfred
Döblin Grant, the honorary Award
of the German Critics’ Prize, and the
Literarisches Colloquium Berlin Grant.
Ein weißes Land is his fourth novel.
Previous works: Das dunkle Schiff
(The Dark Ship, 2008; forthcoming
in English with Seagull Books, 2012);
Onkelchen (2004); Donnie (2002),
Im Grenzland (2001)
A sample translation of this title is
available on the NBG website
Larissa Boehning
Das Glück der Zikaden
(The Song of the Cicadas)
Galiani Berlin, July 2011,
320 pp. ISBN: 978 3 86971 039 6
‘… Since they all have silent wives’
Belief and betrayal, illusion and disillusion run through the
heart of The Song of the Cicadas, as it traces the lives of three
generations of women, from 9 0s Moscow to a divided Berlin.
These personal themes are echoed in the political settings, from
communist repression to the emotional cost of comfortable living
in a capitalist society.
The three main characters have been silenced by external forces
or inner compulsion. Nadja is an actress forced to leave her native
Russia because she married a German. Nadja’s daughter must
choose between following her true love, the father of her unborn
child, to East Germany or settling for a safe existence with a man
she does not love. Nadja’s granddaughter suffers from an acute
sense of isolation that leaves her prey to the lies of a compulsive
gambler. In a twist on the title of the book, however, none of the
men is happy either, bound up as they are with women who do not
feel free to express themselves.
The narrative perspective of this arresting novel is reminiscent
of Fallada’s Alone in Berlin, swinging between different points of
view and keeping the main characters at a tantalising distance
from the reader.
Translation rights available from:
Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Tel: +49 221 376 85 22
Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de
Contact: Iris Brandt
www.kiwi-verlag.de
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Julia Baier
‘ An engrossing family history that
you read hungrily from beginning
to end.’ (Spiegel Online)
‘ A great epic about the search for
love and a self-determined life.’
(Petra)
Larissa Boehning, born in 1971,
grew up in Hamburg and has lived
in Spain and Berlin. She works as
a graphic designer, lecturer and
freelance writer. She was awarded the
Literaturpreis Prenzlauer Berg (2002)
for the story ‘Schwalbensommer’ from
a previous collection. Her debut novel
Lichte Stoffe was longlisted for the
German Book Prize in 2007 and earned
her the Kulturpreis der Stadt Pinneberg
and Mara Cassens Prize for the best
debut novel of the year.
Previous works: Schwalbensommer
(Swallow Summer, forthcoming with
Comma Press), Lichte Stoffe (‘Light
Materials’, 2007)
A sample translation of this title is
available on the NBG website
FiCTiOn

Literature, Nature & Thermal Spas
The sixteenth International
Literature Festival in Leukerbad
took place on what, for me, was
my final weekend at Translation
House Looren, aka heaven on earth
for literary translators: perfect
working conditions, the tranquillity
of the setting, great conversations
with staff and fellow translators.
For four weeks, Zurich had (mostly)
failed to lure me away. Leukerbad,
or Loèche les Bains – 1411m above
sea-level in Valais, south-west
Switzerland – succeeded, though.
Leukerbad lured me away.
Arriving via Visp and Leuk, even
regular visitors are stunned each
year by what James Baldwin
called an ‘absolutely forbidding’
landscape; the sheer verticals that
surround this mountain village.
Part of the charm of the festival is
its ability to combine international
writing – in the form of readings,
interviews, workshops, and literary
walks – with an eclectic mix of
venues: the Dala Gorge; the former
railway station; the gardens of
plush hotels; the restaurant at
the top of the Gemmi (2322m);
and the thermal baths. This time,
a permit had been denied for the
former swimming pool. Would
Saturday’s Literarischer Abend
be the same without the cafestyle
set-up in what was once the
pool itself? Bad Rehazentrum
Leukerbad, built in the 1950s
and now a listed building, proved
the perfect substitute.
This year, co-directors Hans
Ruprecht and Anna Kulp had
invited twenty-three authors
from Austria, Belarus, France,
Germany, Hungary, Iceland,
Russia, the UK, the Ukraine
– and, of course, Switzerland.
Most congregated on the Thursday
evening in the Rinderhütte,
a ‘Panoramarestaurant’ on the
Torrent (2350m) to enjoy views of
twenty 4000m peaks in the Valais
Alps and Rhône Valley; a dramatic
thunderstorm; much talk of books;
and the best raclette in the world.
We took the cable-car back down
late evening, and ‘work’ would
begin the next day.
Poet Rolf Hermann led the twohour
walk through the Dala Gorge
on Friday morning. A guide from
Leukerbad Tourismus explained
the various springs en route,
while – when there was space to
gather round – Rolf entertained
ARTiClE
The Literary Evening in the ‘new swimming pool’
with various performance pieces.
The walk ended at Hotel Regina
Therme, in time for Peter Stamm
to read two of the stories in his
latest collection, Seerücken.
Peter Stamm reads on the Alpina
Terrasse
An important feature of the festival
is that invited authors read at
least twice, sometimes with a
separate ‘in conversation’ event,
thus allowing readers to negotiate
clashes. Just as well for this visitor,
too – as I learned of a Swiss novel
I am to translate just as short story
writer Anna Weidenholzer, Leipzig
Book Prize winner Clemens Setz,
and Belarusian poet Valžhyna Mort
were next up. The news had to be
celebrated. With the author.
Rolf Hermann was back, late
afternoon: first, as part of a session
devoted to Lyrik; then, assisted
© Beat Schweizer
The Literary Evening in the ‘new swimming pool’
by Walter König and Alexander
Tschernek, with a stunning
account - including audio and film
footage – of black author James
Baldwin’s visits to Leukerbad in the
1950s. A meal followed, with Pro
Helvetia representatives and their
‘cultural mediator’ guests; before
the surprise of what was soon
being labelled the ‘new swimming
pool’ – and stand-out readings
by German and Swiss Book Prize
winner Melinda Nadj Abonji,
supported by musician Balts
Nill; Ukrainian novelist Oksana
Sabuschko; and German author
Katja Lange-Müller. At midnight,
up the Gemmi, TV presenter
Monika Schärer and publisher Gerd
Haffmans presented translations of
Samuel Pepys.
Saturday began with the focus on
a translation workshop, conducted
during the week in nearby Leuk,
where Abonji had worked closely
with translators (or potential
translators) of Tauben fliegen
auf, courtesy of the LCB and Pro
Helvetia. Jürgen Becker chaired
with customary aplomb as the
Swedish, French, Romanian,
American, Slovene and Serbo-Croat
translators aired the challenges
involved, before reading versions
of that great passage in which the
immigrant family plays Monopoly.
© Beat Schweizer
© Beat Schweizer
The Swiss version of that board
game counted amongst the
translators’ first ‘difficulties’.
Saturday afternoon offered
chances to catch up with
Sabuschko, Setz, and Lange-
Müller. And a first chance to hear
Michail Schischkin, a Zürich-based
author, writing in Russian, whose
Venushaar makes brilliant use
of Schischkin’s experience as an
interpreter for asylum-seekers
in Switzerland. Even better, for
me, was a last-minute, stop-gap
event: Katharina Narbutovic
in conversation with Swiss
novelist Urs Mannhart (recently
returned from Finland and Minsk)
and Belarusian poet, Valžhyna
Mort. Narbutovic, who chaired,
interpreted, and read her own
translations of Mort, was nothing
short of sensational.
And so to the traditional ‘Long
Literary Evening’, the programme
for which becomes available on
the day: three 15-minute readings
per hour, from eight till late. It
isn’t meant to be a contest, but
this particular cross-section of the
festival demonstrated the strengths
of that generation of Swiss writers
still under fifty. Melinda Nadj
Abonji (again with Balts Nill and
his tins and plastic bottles), Pedro
Lenz (Das Kleine Lexikon der
Provinzliteratur) and Christoph
Simon (Spaziergänger Zbinden)
raised the bar – and the roof
– when it came to performance.
Sunday morning, traditionally,
is time to get your bathing
cossie out. This year, Nina Maria
Marewski read at the Roman-Irish
bath. A trio of prose readings
– Weidenholzer, Simon and
Schischkin – then concluded the
festival, and Schischkin’s take on
asylum-seekers’ interviews with
immigration officers provided
a sobering counterpoint to the
pleasures of literature, mountain
landscapes, and hot springs.
Donal McLaughlin will feature
as both author and translator in
Best European Fiction 2012
(Dalkey Archive
Press). He will
also accompany
Swiss writer Urs
Widmer on a
reading tour of
India in January.
© private

Homelessness of the soul
Peter Stamm
Seerücken
(Beyond the Lake)
S. Fischer Verlag, March 2011, 189 pp. ISBN: 978 3 10 075133 1
This year the New York Times described Stamm as ‘one
of Europe’s most exciting writers.’ Beyond the Lake, his
fourth volume of short stories, which was shortlisted for the
prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize 0 , demonstrates why.
Against the background of various alienating and utilitarian
settings, Stamm describes the inner lives of individuals
struggling to come to terms with the circumstances of their
existence – loneliness, fear, loss, failure – yet occasionally
enjoying brief moments of enlightenment or momentary
connection with other individuals. In this way Stamm’s short
stories capture fleeting thoughts and events in lives which
are in a constant state of flux and uncertainty. But, like
photographs, they offer neither judgment nor simple solution.
‘Sweet Dreams’ focuses on the hopes, doubts and fears of
Lara, who’s recently moved into her first flat together with
her boyfriend. Stamm is particularly good at portraying the
tensions in the relationship between the sexes, for example
with a childless couple on holiday in ‘The Way of Things’.
Sometimes there are indications of mental instability in
Stamm’s characters, as in the collection’s opening story,
‘Summer Guests’. ‘In the Forest’ tells of the life of a girl who,
‘In Seerücken, too, Stamm proves
himself as master of the personal
failure, the private disaster.’
(Frankfurter Rundschau)
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Switzerland (see page 48)
© Gaby Gerster
Peter Stamm
was born in 1963 and now lives
near Zurich. He had his international
breakthrough with his debut novel
Agnes in 1989. Since then his
books have been translated into
thirty languages. For his novels and
collections of stories he has received
various prizes, including the Ehrengabe
des Kantons Zürich (1998 and 2001),
the Rauris Literary Prize (1999), the
Rheingau Literary Prize (2001), the
Schiller Prize, the Carl-Heinrich-Ernst-
Kunstpreis (2002) and the
Alemannischer Literaturpreis (2011).
Previous works:
Sieben Jahre (2009); Wir Fliegen
(Stories, 2008); Heidi (children’s book,
2008); An einem Tag wie Diesem
(2006); Agnes (1998)
having been subjected to the drunken and violent behaviour
of her parents, spends three years living in a nearby forest
while still attending school. There are intimations that living
in the natural environment of the forest enables the girl
to experience a contentment which is denied to her first
by her unhappy home life with her parents, and then later
when she lives on an anonymous new housing estate with
a faithless husband and two children. The girl’s mind is
haunted by the image of a hunter whose potential to end
her life she perceives as a source of comfort.
Described as a ‘master of minimalism’, and of ‘linguistic
asceticism’, Stamm writes in a concise, unpretentious
and understated manner which conveys a sense of quiet
reflection, humour, humanity and honesty. With subtle
gestures and brief exchanges of dialogue, he is able to
articulate elusive insights into a variety of universally
recognisable issues and dilemmas concerning life and
relationships. His portrayal of contemporary life expresses
a sense of unease and alienation in an uncertain world in
which it’s increasingly difficult to feel at home. Furthermore,
the twists and turns of the plotlines are unpredictable and
thought-provoking, raising questions in the reader’s mind.
Translation rights sold to:
World English (Other Press), France
(Christian Bourgois), Spain (Acantilado)
Translation rights available from:
Agentur Liepman AG
Englischviertelstrasse 59, CH-8032
Zürich, Switzerland
Tel: + 41 43 268 23 81
Email: info@liepmanagency.com
Contact : Marianne Fritsch
marianne.fritsch@liepmanagency.com
For UK English rights please contact
Carol Lazare, clazare@otherpress.com
‘ There is nothing coincidental about
Peter Stamm’s short stories; the chains
of motifs are as carefully arranged
as the intertextual allusions. Each
one of the ten stories in Seerücken
has its own independence and force.’
(Süddeutsche Zeitung)
S. Fischer Verlag
was founded by Samuel Fischer in
Berlin in 1886. He was the first to
publish many now famous authors
such as Franz Kafka, Arthur Schnitzler,
Hugo von Hoffmannsthal and Thomas
Mann. Both S. Fischer Verlag and
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag focus on
literature, psychology and history.
Contemporary authors writing in
German include Julia Franck, Michael
Lenz, Marlene Streeruwitz, Christoph
Ransmayr and Wolfgang Hilbig. The
firm’s distinguished list also includes
many leading international authors in
translation.
‘ Extraordinary, intoxicating, brilliant:
with his new collection Seerücken,
Peter Stamm proves once again his
exceptional talent.’ (Die Weltwoche)
SHORT STORiES

Sabrina Janesch
Cat Mountains
Translated by the participants of the BCLT Summer
School 2011, with Shaun Whiteside.
Every summer, the British Centre for Literary Translation holds a Summer School,
bringing together aspiring and experienced translators from several languages for a week
of intense and inspirational workshops, seminars and lectures. The focus of the school is the
group translation of a text whose author joins the translators for the whole week. This year
the German author was Sabrina Janesch, whose novel Katzenberge was reviewed last year
in NBG. Here, Shaun Whiteside, who ran the German workshop, introduces the fine results
of that lively week.
Does wheat grow tall or high? If it grows high, then what do you do with ‘high summer’? Are we
going with ‘yards’ or ‘metres’? Does ‘St George’s Cathedral’ sound a bit, well, Anglican, for a church
in Lviv? And what about those catfish – would an English-speaking reader have any idea what we
were talking about? These were some of the more straightforward issues we pondered at this year’s
BCLT Summer School at the University of East Anglia, when the German working group was joined
– thanks to New Books in German – by the young German novelist Sabrina Janesch, author of the
wonderful Katzenberge (Cat Hills or Cat Mountains? We settled for ‘mountains’ – they’re a real range
in western Poland, with, as Bryn pointed out, their very own Wikipedia entry.)
We had eleven students this year, from undergraduates to academics, gifted amateurs and professional
translators, and it made for a very lively, often very funny series of discussions. Sabrina generously
joined in with enthusiasm, moving from group to group (we divided first into three, then into two
groups), joining in the process with what looked like genuine fascination, and explaining as best she
could what was meant by a ‘Blütenrispe’ (a cluster of blossoms, in this instance on a false acacia tree),
or what the ‘Platz’ in front of a Polish-Ukrainian farmhouse might look like. Katzenberge is a family
saga told on two time levels at once – Nele, a Polish-German girl, attends her grandfather’s funeral in
western Poland, and is impelled to discover the truth about his life, in particular his origins in a village
in the East, in the present-day Ukraine. The passage she chose for the workshop is perhaps a bit more
upbeat than some other bits of the novel, and with a hint of magic realism about it.
So what particular challenges did the passage pose (leaving aside the question of pronunciation
when we presented the translation in semi-dramatised form at the end of the Summer School)?
In the end the major difficulties arose around the exotic and unfamiliar setting. Units of measurement
and unfamiliar foodstuffs – for a few glorious moments we came close to rendering ‘meterlange
geräucherte Welse und Zander’ as ‘ells of eels and perches of perch’, before settling for the rather
more sober ‘yards of smoked catfish and pikeperch’. (In the process discovering the monstrous Wels
Catfish, which is well worth Googling if you have a spare moment.) Did we want to risk overstressing
the Biblical echoes of the birth in the story, by having the villagers ‘bearing gifts’ as they waded
through the white acacia blossom? Would readers automatically know that ‘Janeczkowa’ was
Janeczko’s wife? And ‘schnapps’ or brandy? We settled for ‘schnapps’, but ‘brandy’ had much to be
said for it. And what of that ‘blutjunge Zigeunerin’ who magically blessed the birth? A difficult one:
a word to suggest a girl on the cusp of womanhood. We settled
in the end on ‘lass’, even though we were aware that it might
carry incongruous suggestions of northern dialect.
Shaun Whiteside
ARTiClE
© private
Translation is usually a solitary process, and the opportunity to
work intensely on a short text, in teams and with the author, is
invaluable – you carry the voices with you for weeks afterwards.
Sabrina seemed to have a great time – she’s mentioned the
‘inspired atmosphere’ at the Summer School, and her delight at
hearing her text ‘become so incredibly alive’. It was a great week,
I hope everyone enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoy our translation.
Sabrina Janesch
Grandfather said the place where
he was born was surrounded by
fields of wheat so tall that in the
height of summer it could barely
be seen. Only those who knew
exactly what the tops of the beech
trees in the middle of the village
looked like could get through to it.
And that’s why the midwife was
late, even though his mother had
been in labour for more than
twelve hours. Lula Timofjejew
said later that she had set off
from Rosalki in plenty of time,
but that soon after leaving her
village she had lost her way in
a thicket of wheat and rye, and
met a raven who pointed her
in the wrong direction. In the
end she had emerged, soaked
in sweat and covered in wheat
husks, not in · Zd · zary Wielkie but in
Krawcze, where the curious clan
of the Yellow Bellies lived. No one
believed her, but even years later
she still swore blind that the Yellow
Bellies had waylaid her, forcing her
to join in their celebrations and
dance on the table.
Sławomir Janeczko stood
outside the kitchen window and
listened to the piercing cries of
his wife from the bedroom. Old
Romanyszyn’s wife was with her,
and together they had hauled the
kitchen table into the bedroom
and heaved Bogdana onto it. As
soon as Romanyszyn’s wife had
placed a wad of cloth between
Bogdana’s teeth and pushed her
skirts up, Sławomir Janeczko had
gone outside. Beside him, on the
garden bench, sat his first-born
son, Leszek, who was picking his
nose as he strained to hear the
cries coming from the bedroom.
His father fixed his gaze on the
acacias that bordered the well and
the entrance to the cellar. Their
© Milena Schlösser

anches had become so full that
they almost touched the eaves.
Sławomir Janeczko remembered
his own grandfather once telling
him that when he was a boy the
acacias had been so small that
they were barely taller than he was.
They had blossomed particularly
late that year: it had been a cold
spring with snow-storms well into
April. The farmyard was strewn
with white sprigs of acacia;
relatives and neighbours who had
come with gifts to marvel at the
newborn child waded ankle-deep
through white blossoms. But the
baby kept them waiting.
Hour upon hour went by without
anything happening, without
anyone coming out of the house
to say, ‘The child is born,’ or ‘Go
home, everyone, and put on your
mourning clothes.’ The first of the
visitors had appeared early in the
morning once word went round
that Janeczko’s wife was in labour.
And by now it was long past noon.
Some of the villagers had sat
down in the nearby meadow and
were starting to feast on the gifts
they had brought: loaves as big as
cartwheels and yards of smoked
catfish and pikeperch.
When they saw Sławomir
Janeczko sitting on the bench
they waved him over to join them
in the meadow. He pretended
not to understand and instead
paced anxiously up and down the
yard. Only Kovalczuk took pity on
him: he brought him a glass of
schnapps, patted him
on the shoulder and went back
to the villagers, who had by now
produced an accordion and were
singing songs, some Ukrainian,
some Polish. They had chosen a
spot where they could clearly be
seen from the bench. They didn’t
want him to forget who had
turned up to pay their respects to
his second-born son. After all, he
owned most of the surrounding
fields: get on his good side, and
he would let you grow turnips or
potatoes in one, maybe two, of his
fields without asking anything in
return, and that was worth losing
a day’s work for.
However, no one in Zd · zary Wielkie
had really believed that Janeczko’s
wife, whose hair was already
heavily streaked with grey, would
make it through a second birth.
In their hearts they had said their
goodbyes weeks before, sure that
she would die together with the
child. There had already been
complications with the birth of her
first son, Leszek, two years before,
and for two whole days and nights
Bogdana Janeczko’s wails had
echoed around the village, robbing
them of their sleep. When, on the
evening of the second day, Mihail
Kovalczuk, the blacksmith, told his
wife Hanka he was going to fetch
his gun and go over there, she
gave him such an earful that they
didn’t even notice when Bogdana’s
cries finally fell silent and Leszek
was born.
In the days before Stanisław’s
birth, when Bogdana had realised
how often the women of the
The Summer School group, with Sabrina Janesch.
From left to right: Elizabeth, Bryn, Sabrina, Bradley, Chenxin, Laura C, Laura W,
Peter, Shaun, Jamie, Rebekah, Emma, Barbara
village were dropping by, she
threw them and their gifts out,
yelling that such behaviour was
the surest way to bring the devil
and all his flea-ridden henchmen
into the house.
Taras Romanyszyn, the oldest
Ukrainian in the village and also
the producer of its strongest plum
schnapps, would later proclaim
that the birth of Stanisław
Janeczko was a miracle and that,
as proof of their God-fearing
ways, all the villagers should
make a pilgrimage to the icon of
Saint George’s Cathedral in Lviv,
preferably on their knees.
In response, the priest of · Zd · zary
Wielkie, Marian Strzelnicki, let
it be known that if it really was
a miracle then it was a Catholic
one, and that if Taras Romanyszyn
wanted to mark the happy
occasion he might more usefully
contribute a few jugs of plum
schnapps rather than a load of
sanctimonious drivel which was
in any case utterly misguided.
Most of the villagers paid no heed
to either Romanyszyn or Strzelnicki
because they knew the real reason
why the birth had turned out well:
it was the lingering magic of the
gypsies, who had passed through
·
Zd · zary Wielkie just months before
and been allowed to pitch their
tents on Janeczko’s field. Everyone
had seen that gypsy lass standing
in front of Janeczko’s house, peeing
in a high arc. And that was what
had spared Bogdana and Stanisław
Janeczko from dying in childbed,
that and nothing else. Grandfather
said being born late at night in a
village like that, particularly with
the wind from the Galician steppes
blowing pollen and dust into
people’s faces, was bound to lead
to bloody-mindedness. Fate might
easily have intended for him to be
born in Lviv or Krakow, in Kiev or
Warsaw, but his unborn spirit only
consented to become flesh when
it happened upon · Zd · zary Wielkie:
the village on the River Bug,
where childhood was all about
teaching frogs to talk and hiding
in the forked branches of trees in
autumn, lying in wait for the king
of the foxes and then pelting him
with a shower of walnuts. Tasks
that elsewhere demanded sweat
and toil seemed to take care of
themselves in this place, for no
sooner had the seeds been sown
than they started growing at such
a rate that the villagers found
it impossible to store the entire
harvest in their barns, and had to
take much of it to the markets in
the larger towns.
The earth: so rich and plump,
almost good enough to eat. There
were mushrooms in the woods
so large that anyone able to
harvest them from the loamy soil
could carry them home over their
shoulders like an umbrella. Then
the people: they too were tall,
their hair the colour of the wheat
that grew in their endless fields.
And even though they were rural
folk, they had a strong sense of
language and culture. This was
no wonder: while thousands of
people of different backgrounds
were scattered across hundreds
of streets in the cities without
ever having spoken to each
other, in · Zd · zary Wielkie Poles
and Ukrainians lived together in
close proximity and spoke both
languages. The only things to
fear were the spirits of cold who
throughout those six long months
of winter would rattle on the doors
and windows, demanding to be
let in. And wherever those spirits
spied a gap in a roof or gate, they
told their allies, the wolves and
the bears.
Grandfather said, all the
deliberations must have taken
place before his birth – how else
could you explain his feelings of
familiarity, in his earliest years,
with places he had never been to?
– that had in the end led to him
being born in · Zd · zary Wielkie and
nowhere else. Of course it was the
soil that he would live on that he
chose, rather than the family he
was born into. But as soon as he
took his first steps towards that
field of sunflowers, he knew he
had come into the world in exactly
the right place.
Janesch’s novel Katzenberge
is published by Aufbau Verlag
(see page 31).
ARTiClE

Criminal Masterminds
in German-Language Fiction
Sam Hancock seeks out the German crime writers that might rival the current wave
of Nordic thrillers – and finds a stash of exhilarating tales that stretch from Finland
to Namibia, many of which are already available in English translation.
Walking down the street these
days is to risk being avalanched by
placards championing the latest
Stieg Larsson novel, film, spin-off
or gaudy branded mug.
Other Scandinavian authors are
not far behind. Camilla Läckberg
has sold an astounding number of
books in her native Sweden (more
than one for every second person).
Publishers – mine included
– are bombarded with reams of
Scandinavian manuscripts, as
agents desperately seek to make
their clients the next Stieg,
Jo or Camilla.
So far, so good: Stieg et al are
proving something that all NBG
enthusiasts should cherish, that
quality crime fiction can – and
indeed does – work in translation.
But where are the Germanlanguage
crime writers in all this?
The language whose speakers
invented the much-celebrated
Krimi? Where are Dürrenmatt’s
successors hiding? Not far behind.
In fact, I recently saw Jan Costin
Wagner’s latest work, Silence,
sitting snugly alongside Stieg
on the front-of-store tables at
a bookshop in Piccadilly. Costin
Wagner, though, is just one of the
Sorry, by Zoran Drvenkar
ARTiClE
plethora of stunningly original
German-language authors
seamlessly moving into the
English-language market.
Croatian-born and Berlin-bred,
Zoran Drvenkar is a case in point.
Already the author of a wonderful
range of books for children and
young adult fiction, Drvenkar
turned to writing adult crime in
2009 with Sorry, a harrowing
thriller. Sorry sees a group of four
young and disaffected Berlin adults
come up with a breathtakingly
simple yet highly lucrative idea
to extricate themselves from
economic misery: an agency which
vicariously apologises for the
misdeeds of others.
Their notion takes off spectacularly,
and soon they are acting on behalf
of a rag-bag of corporate, private
and frankly bizarre clients. Things
are going well – almost too well
– when one of their clients seems
to turn on them. They arrive at
a deserted flat in Kreuzberg to
discover a woman’s mutilated
corpse nailed to a wall – she has
been crucified. The group is terrified:
their idea has been taken to the
extreme, and somehow they end
up apologising vicariously through
a series of murders across Berlin
and beyond. In a denouement
centred around a villa in Wansee,
the reader is taken on an
emotional journey at the end of
which – really – these crucifixions
seem justified.
But what is it about Drvenkar
that really sets him aside from his
contemporaries? What is his work’s
standout feature? Drvenkar’s
British publisher, Patrick Janson-
Smith of Blue Door, is unequivocal
in his answer to this question:
‘Quite simply, Sorry is the best
thriller I have read since Thomas
Harris’s Red Dragon. It’s a tough,
brutal and complex novel, but
utterly, utterly compelling from
first page to last. I can think of
no British writer – and I admire
many of those who write in the
crime/thriller genre, not least Mo
Hayder, Simon Beckett and Val
McDermid – who could deliver
such a story in such a fashion.
It’s not really a question of there
being something “lacking” in
British or, indeed, American writers,
it’s just that Zoran Drvenkar has
written a very special novel that is
deserving of the widest possible
audience.’ Drvenkar’s ability to pull
off the second-person narrative
voice (rarely executed successfully
by writers of any genre, and a
feature which crops up throughout
his oeuvre) is testament to the
originality Janson-Smith touches
upon. This feature lends the novel
a unique sense of directness.
Indeed, I read much of the book
as if in a trance.
Drvenkar’s latest novel You is
just as magnificently original
– and bone-chillingly terrifying
– as Sorry. The novel opens in
medias res, directly addressing a
man known only as ‘The Traveller’,
who proceeds to kill a vast
amount of people in their cars on
a grid-locked Autobahn. Drvenkar
never allows the pace to slip from
thenceforward, relating the story
from the perspectives of a group
of young, colourfully-named and,
again, maladjusted Berliners: Taja,
Stinke, Rute, Mirko, Nessi and
Schnappi. The theft of five kilograms
of heroin by one of the gang kicks
off a fight with a group of ruthless
Turkish men, led by Rangar, which
can only end in death.
Drvenkar’s labyrinthine plot
takes us to the heart of the Berlin
criminal underworld, leading us on
a journey in a stolen Range Rover
to an abandoned house in Norway
– with a denouement intricately
linked to the key characters’ dark
histories. Again, this is all executed
with an originality and deftness
which leaves the reader feeling like
they’ve never before read anything
even remotely similar. Drvenkar
takes fate, coincidence, filial loyalty
and interconnectedness as his
central themes, stretching these
to extremes and in the process
exposing an array of deep, dark
secrets within the characters’
psyches.
But Drvenkar and Costin Wagner
are not alone. What is behind
this renaissance in enthusiasm
for German crime, I wonder?
Janson-Smith puts it down to a
liberalisation in attitudes toward
publishing commercial fiction in
translation in general, asserting,
‘It takes only a few foreign-language
successes for us publishers to
start jumping on the bandwagon.
The extraordinary success
internationally of the Scandinavian
writers has helped fuel British
publishers’ resolve. But even before
the “Scandinvasion” there were
the one-off successes: for example,
Perfume by Patrick Susskind, The
Name of the Rose by Umberto
Eco, etc. I think we, the British
reading public, have finally woken
up to the fact that there are literary
(and not so literary) treasures to be
found from all around the world.
Thank goodness!’
One such recent gem is Bernhard
Jaumann’s latest novel, German
Crime Prize-winning The Hour
of the Jackal. Set in modern-day
Namibia, Jaumann’s novel follows
Clemencia, a black police chief, in
her quest to discover the culprit
of a series of murders that follows
the brutal killing of a gardener in
Windhoek, which in turn thrusts
the reader back to events just
prior to the southern African
nation’s successful campaign
for independence in 1990.

The Hour of the Jackal,
by Bernhard Jaumann
Bernhard Jaumann
Clemencia’s journey takes her
across most of the region and
back to a forgotten murder
almost twenty years previously,
when white SWAPO (South West
Africa People’s Organization – the
Namibian liberation movement)
lawyer Anton Lubowski was gunned
down by a circle of apartheid
fanatics, which later disintegrated.
The novel paints a carefully
crafted and visceral description of
independent Namibia – a country
slowly shaking off the shackles
of the apartheid mentality, whose
population, though disenchanted
with the ideals of twenty years
earlier, muddle on with their
everyday lives in the face of
adversity. Jaumann captures this
ambivalent relationship beautifully,
creating multifaceted and humane
characters, with a sumptuously
described backdrop. In the words
of his translator, John Brownjohn,
Translator John Brownjohn
© Susanne Schleyer
© Sherborne Photographic
Jaumann’s prose is shot through
with an unusual ability to
‘conjure up the heat and aridity’
and he deploys this with panache
throughout The Hour of the Jackal.
This willingness to tackle broadbrush
themes is evinced in a
similar, but far more lyrical, novel
which tackles ‘crimes’ of a very
different nature: Thomas Lehr’s
Fata Morgana. Focusing on two
sets of father and daughter and
criss-crossing between New York
and Baghdad, Lehr’s novel gives
us a coalface perspective on two
events that have helped shape
modern history: New York in 2001
and Baghdad in 2004. On the one
hand we have Martin, a divorced
professor of German (of dual US-
German origin) and his daughter
Sabrina, who dies tragically in the
World Trade Center attacks. In Iraq,
meanwhile, we follow the life of
Tarik, a Paris-educated Iraqi, whose
daughter Muna dies in the war in
2004. Lehr acquaints us intimately
with their respective psyches,
showing us the profound effects
of the two macrocosmic events.
The novel’s structure and title
(a ‘Fata Morgana’ is a form of
superior mirage which distorts
objects in focus, in some instances
rendering them completely
unrecognisable) mirror the
experiences of the two fathers,
both of whom can but wish that
their experiences were optical
illusions. This intimate depiction
of the personal is matched by the
panoramic view the novel offers
of the prevalent cultural landscape
in the first half of the last decade.
But Lehr is not afraid to inject a
frisson of humour, the presence
of melodramatic TV reporters being
a case in point.
With barely punctuated sentences,
Lehr’s novel offers the reader a
series of stream-of-consciousness
passages which bring us to
the centre of the respective
protagonists’ psyches, in prose
often reminiscent of the poems of
e. e. cummings or Alfred Döblin’s
undervalued classic Berlin
Alexanderplatz. Its intertextuality
and bombardment of the reader
with cultural experiences is
reminiscent of Biberkopf’s
experience in Döblin’s novel.
But beneath this superficial lack
of form the novel has a strong
underlying structure: rigidly
swapping perspective between
the two men, in a style Lehr has
claimed he derived from Homer’s
Iliad. This is strengthened by the
joint cultural roots shared by
Tarik and Martin, and indeed the
pivotal experiences both men must
endure, and illustrates something
also evident in both Drvenkar and
Jaumann’s writing: a willingness
to be different, to approach
macrocosmic themes in an
idiosyncratic manner and, above
all, a startling originality. That’s
why British publishers are starting
to sit up and take note.
There are far more shining lights
of contemporary German crime
fiction than can fit into this article,
but two other writers worthy
of mention are Ferdinand von
Schirach (published by Chatto &
Windus) and the aforementioned
Jan Costin Wagner, whose three
previous novels (Silence, Ice
Moon and Winter of the Lions)
are published by Harvill Secker. The
last of these is the third outing of
Kimmo Jonetaa, Wagner’s elusive
and enigmatic protagonist, a man
haunted by flashbacks of his dead
wife and whose idiosyncratic
methods often prove the only way
of solving complex crimes.
Munich-based defence lawyer
von Schirach, meanwhile, has been
delighting readers worldwide with
Crime, a set of short stories based
around strange cases taken on by
his chambers. Each of the stories
boasts a noirish and dry narrative
voice, yet one laced with humanity
– and his legions of readers are
eagerly awaiting the publication
of his first novel this autumn,
Der Fall Collini.
Crime, by Ferdinand Von Schirach
September Fata Morgana,
by Thomas Lehr
In the last analysis, therefore,
there is no ‘roter Faden’ which
ties together this crop of fantastic
crime fiction, bar, that is, the
originality and scope of each of
the respective novels. What has
changed is British publishers’
stance towards these stories and
their willingness to embrace their
quirks – something we should
welcome with open arms.
n Sorry by Zoran Drvenkar,
translated by Shaun Whiteside,
will be published in the US in
September 2011 by Knopf and
in the UK on 1 March 2012 by
Blue Door. You will follow in
2013.
n The Hour of the Jackal by
Bernard Jaumann, translated by
John Brownjohn, was published
on 1 August 2011 by John
Beaufoy Publishing.
n Crime (March 2011) and Guilt
(January 2012) by Ferdinand von
Schirach, translated by Carol
Brown Janeway, are published
by Chatto & Windus.
n Ice Moon (tr. John Brownjohn),
Silence and The Winter of the
Lions (tr. Anthea Bell) by Jan
Costin Wagner are published
by Harvill Secker.
Sam Hancock
studied English
and German at
the University
of Warwick,
and is now a
digital editor
at HarperCollins, working across
the HarperFiction, Blue Door and
Voyager imprints.
ARTiClE 7

The truth is out there
Cay Rademacher
Der Trümmermörder
(The Rubble Murders)
DuMont Buchverlag, October 2011, 334 pp. ISBN: 978 3 8321 6154 5
A compelling read, and as much a historical novel as a
crime novel, The Rubble Murders recreates life in post-war
Hamburg under the British occupation. Rademacher engages
all of the reader’s senses with writing that is both visual and
persuasive. The characters are complex and distinct, while
rich concrete details bring the text to life.
The year is 9 7 and Hamburg is in ruins. The corpse of a
naked young woman is found in the rubble. Police Inspector
Stave is assigned to the case. Maschke from the vice squad
and Lt MacDonald from the British occupation force join his
team. No one reports the missing woman; nobody has seen
or heard anything. Then three more bodies are found: two
women, an older man and a girl, all of them naked, all of
them strangled. There are many twists and turns, plenty of
false leads and gripping subplots.
The reader sees Hamburg through Stave’s eyes and learns
about his personal life. Stave’s wife has burnt to death in
the Operation Gomorrah bombing of 9 . He wakes up
searching for her body next to him, until he remembers that
she’s dead. And Stave’s son is missing, having volunteered
for the Wehrmacht as an idealistic seventeen-year-old.
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© privat
CRiME AnD THRillER
Cay Rademacher
was born in 1965 and studied
Anglo-American history, ancient
history, and philosophy in Cologne
and Washington. He has been an
editor at Geo since 1999, where he
participated in establishing the history
magazine Geo-Epoche. He served as
the magazine’s managing editor until
2006. Rademacher’s most recent books
are Drei Tage im September and
Die letzte Fahrt der Athenia 1939
(2009). Cay Rademacher lives with his
wife and three children in Hamburg.
Previous works
Mord im Tal der Könige (‘Murder
in the Valley of the Kings’, 2001);
In Nomine Mortis (2007);
Drei Tage im September (‘Three
Days in September’, 2009)
The case seems impossible to solve. All appeals to
the population, plastering Hamburg with the victims’
photographs, yield no results. During a visit to a Jewish
orphanage Stave notices a little girl’s reaction to Maschke.
Anouk is one of the few survivors of the Oradour-sur-Glance
massacre that took place in Normandy on June 0, 9 .
Stave discovers that Maschke’s real name is Herthge. As
a member of the Waffen-SS, Herthge participated in the
atrocities that annihilated almost the entire village. At the
end of the war Herthge took on the identity of a neighbour
missing in the war to cover his tracks. Stave puts the pieces
of the puzzle together and identifies Maschke/Herthge as
the serial killer. The victims were a Jewish family waiting for
passage to Palestine. They had recognized Herthge from the
massacre, and Herthge had to kill them to keep his cover.
The story is gripping, the language forceful, the setting
absorbing. Based on a real case, but one which was never
solved, Rademacher tells a unique story from a unique
perspective – people who have lost the war, their homes,
their city and their feeling of self-worth. A spine-tingling
portrayal of how the defeated interact with their victors.
Translation rights available from:
DuMont Buchverlag GmbH & Co. KG
Amsterdamer Str. 192, 50735 Köln,
Germany
Tel: +49 221 224 1942
Email:
habermas@dumont-buchverlag.de
Contact: Judith Habermas
www.dumont-buchverlag.de
DuMont Buchverlag
was founded in 1956. Stressing the
link between literature and art, the
firm focuses both on these subjects
and also, more recently, on general
non-fiction. Its authors include John
von Düffel, Michel Houellebecq, Helmut
Krausser, Martin Kluger, Judith Kuckart,
Thomas Kling, Annette Mingels, Haruki
Murakami, Charlotte Roche, Edward
St. Aubyn, Tilman Rammstedt and Dirk
Wittenborn. The art list covers high
quality illustrated books dealing with
the periods from the Renaissance up
until today, monographs on single
artists, such as Botticelli, Velazquez,
Kokoschka, Max Ernst and Neo Rauch,
and overviews on (for instance)
contemporary Chinese art, as well as
design, photography and art theory.

Linus Reichlin
Er
(He)
Galiani Berlin, February 2011, 288 pp. ISBN: 978 3 86971 036 5
The camera never lies
Translation rights available from:
Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH
& Co. KG
Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de
Contact: Iris Brandt
www.kiwi-verlag.de
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Switzerland (see page 48)
© Julia Baier
‘ Elegantly and boldly narrated across
genre boundaries, Er is a captivating
story’ (XAVER Stadtmagazin)
‘A little jewel for crime-novelconnoisseurs’
(krimi-couch.de)
‘A brilliant exercise in betrayal,
honour, illusion, mistrust, lust and
shame’ (Stern)
‘This is a small but almost perfect
novel about one of the biggest
themes of world literature: jealousy
and betrayal.’ (Westdeutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung)
He satisfyingly combines crime and literary fiction. What drives
the action is not so much the desire to know as the need to cope
– or to stop attempting to cope.
The novel has two narrative strands, which remain separate until
its last chapters. The first begins with two middle-aged men,
Sean and Angus, receiving the dying wish of old Alasdair in the
Stornoway hospital on the Hebridean island of Lewis. His wish is
that they go to Germany and tell his daughter “not to do it. The
photo. Tell her not to do it, for the love of her father”. What this
photo is will not be revealed to the reader until the narrative
strands intertwine; nor will the source of Angus’ deadening sense
of guilt. All we know is that it is somehow connected to this photo,
which is somehow connected to the Lewis men’s annual cull of
guga birds on a nearby island. The other strand follows Hannes
Jensen, a former policeman who is the protagonist of Reichlin’s
two previous novels.
Although the narrative moves towards moments where truth is
revealed and explained, its motive force remains the characters’
attempts to deal with guilt, betrayal and jealousy.
Linus Reichlin lives in Berlin. His
first two Jensen novels Die Sehnsucht
der Atome (2008) and Der Assistent
der Sterne (2009) remained in the
KrimiWelt charts for months. Linus
Reichlin was awarded the German
Crime Prize in 2009. In 2010 the
magazine Bild der Wissenschaft
awarded Der Assistent der Sterne the
title Science Book of the Year.
www.linusreichlin.de
Previous works: Die Sehnsucht
der Atome (2008); Der Assistent der
Sterne (2009)
Translation rights sold to: Spain
(Ediciones Pardos Ibérica), Denmark
(Forlaget Roskilde) and The Netherlands
(Maarten Muntinga).
For more information on Galiani
Berlin and Kiepenheuer & Witsch,
see page 8.
Jan Costin Wagner
Das Licht in einem dunklen Haus
(Light in a Dark House)
Galiani Berlin, July 2011, 352 pp. ISBN: 978 3 86971 016 7
Payback time
The Winter of the Lions, the third in Wagner’s crime series set
in Finland and featuring Detective Kimmo Joentaa, was recently
praised by the Financial Times for its ‘spare, stark outlining of
motives and events’, and described as ‘snow-noir of the
highest order’.
In Light in a Dark House a woman is found in a coma at the roadside
on Joentaa’s patch, and dies later in hospital. Who was she, and
how exactly does her murder link up with several killings around
the small town of Karjasaari? Joentaa is working once again
with Westerberg of the Helsinki police and his keen new sidekick
Seppo. It all goes back to a gang rape witnessed in 9 by a halfcomprehending
twelve-year-old schoolboy, whose diary entries of
the time are interleaved in the novel with the police investigations
of 0 0. Now the men and youths who took part in the rape are
being picked off in turn by a ruthlessly determined killer. Meanwhile
the new woman in Kimmo Joentaa’s life, the mysterious prostitute
Larissa, has disappeared, keeping in touch only through occasional
laconic email messages.
A satisfying page-turner full of suspense.
Translation rights available from:
Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH
& Co. KG
Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de
Contact: Iris Brandt
www.kiwi-verlag.de
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Dennis Yenmez
‘Jan Costin Wagner’s new novel is
amongst the best of the crime genre.
You will not find a more sympathetic
murderer, or a more melancholy
policeman. The book is a brilliant
study on love, grief and death.’
(Spiegel Online)
‘Jan Costin Wagner writes the best
Scandinavian crime novels of the
moment.’ (Berliner Morgenpost)
‘Magical. Better than Mankell.’
(The Times)
Jan Costin Wagner was born in 1972
and now lives as a freelance writer
and musician near Frankfurt am Main
and in Finland. His novels have been
awarded numerous prizes, including
the German Crime Fiction Prize and
the Marlowe Prize, and have been
nominated for the Los Angeles Times
Book Prize. They have been translated
into fourteen languages. The novel Das
Schweigen was filmed for the cinema
in 2010. www.jan-costin-wagner.de
Previous works: Im Winter der
Löwen (The Winter of the Lions,
2009); Das Schweigen (Silence, 2007);
Schattentag (2005); Eismond (Ice
Moon, 2003); Nachtfahrt (2002)
A sample translation of this title is
available on the NBG website
CRiME AnD THRillER 9

A long good-bye
Simon Urban
Plan D
(Plan D)
A modern-day Raymond Chandler, Urban’s remarkable
genre-busting detective novel is set in Berlin in October
0 – but with a difference. In Plan D, the East German
republic still exists.
Schöffling & Co., July 2011, 552 pp. ISBN: 978 3 895 61195 7
Martin Wegener is a GDR detective investigating the death
of a man found hanging from a gas pipeline in the forest.
All the initial clues point to the Stasi, less powerful than
before the ‘Revitalisation’ in the early 990s. With important
economic consultations between East and West coming
up, a West German police officer is called in to assist after
the news is leaked to a magazine. The two men start their
investigations, more hindered than helped by the Stasi,
uncovering a terrorist organisation and a conspiracy to
introduce a ‘third way’ in the GDR – the Plan D of the title.
Meanwhile, Wegener yearns for his ex-girlfriend, now
embarking on a career in East Berlin, and has imaginary
conversations with his former boss, a stubborn non-conformist
who disappeared without trace a few years ago. The plot
twists and turns beautifully, with more deaths and plenty
of tension between the East and West German detectives.
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Fedja Kehl
0 CRiME AnD THRillER
Simon Urban
was born in Hagen, West Germany,
in 1975. After studying German
literature in Münster and training
at the renowned copywriter school
Texterschmiede Hamburg, he studied
creative writing at Germany’s top
address, the Deutsches Literaturinstitut
Leipzig. His short stories have earned
him numerous prizes. Simon Urban
lives in Hamburg and Techau (East
Holstein). He currently works as a
copywriter for the leading creative
agency Jung von Matt.
‘ A novel that sits comfortably alongside
Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum in
its political and literary intensity.’
(Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)
In one brilliantly written scene, Wegener stumbles around
the labyrinthine underground ‘Molotov’ bar, looking for
his workmates but growing increasingly confused and
emotional. The place is a den of iniquity that serves rhubarb
organic lemonade – the flavour that’s always sold out at
the shops – with a shot of vodka, and scallops and chestnut
puree and bacon and chutney and the best brand of East
German wine, and offers darkrooms and boudoirs and
bathtubs and willing waitresses, all in the name of a
corrupt socialism on its last legs.
The whole novel is beautifully and imaginatively written.
The protagonist Wegener is an impressively painted
character, an aging cynic on the surface who is actually
powered by love and idealism. But what makes the book
so very special is the exuberantly portrayed vision of East
Berlin under a collapsing socialist system – pockets of
luxury for visitors and functionaries, surrounded by grime
and decay and decorated with laughable political slogans.
Urban raises questions about German history and about the
integrity of our political systems, combining them with a
real page-turner of a plot.
Translation rights sold to:
Czech Republic (Odeon/Euromedia)
(pre-empt)
Translation rights available from:
Schöffling & Co.
Kaiserstraße 79, D-60329 Frankfurt
am Main, Germany
Tel: +49 69 92 07 87 16
Email: kathrin.scheel@schoeffling.de
Contact: Kathrin Scheel
www.schoeffling.de/content/rightsguide/
‘PLAN D develops an ironic panorama
of society in an outstanding spy thriller.’
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
‘Breathtaking and fast-paced,
nimble yet with a sardonic touch.’
(Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)
Schöffling & Co.
has a simple credo: the focus is on the
authors. It has gained the reputation
of being a ‘publishing house that plays
a significant role in the shaping of
Germany’s literary future’ (SPIEGEL
online). Founded in November 1993,
Schöffling & Co. has since emerged
as one of Germany’s most innovative
independent literary publishing houses
with a tightly-woven international
network. An atmosphere of mutual
confidence and esteem and an
unceasing commitment to its authors
and their works provide the basis
for a fruitful literary relationship.
New German voices are recognised
and published alongside established
and famous names, while authors in
translation include Sadie Jones, Olga
Tokarczuk, Jennifer Egan, Peter Behrens,
Nir Baram or Miljenko Jergovic.

Swimming with Sharks begins with a romance between two young Austrian students in Rome; but it
soon emerges that things are not quite what they seem in the surreal world of Steinfest. Ivo suffers
from selective disability: a blindness which occurs in the afternoon. He uses these periods of sensual
darkness in his pursuit of Lilli, and when the condition suddenly evaporates it almost ends the
relationship. Despite Lilli’s no-nonsense Austrian sensibilities, it’s clear that she’s not an average student
either. Her lap-of-the-gods approach to birth control soon sees the couple pregnant and heading for a
rural backwater in Germany’s Deep South, where Lilli has conveniently inherited a house from a longlost
aunt. A convoluted series of events leaves Ivo confronting a teenage suicide attempt, while Lilli
loses the baby in an accident. Lilli returns to her studies in Vienna and leaves Ivo to stay where fate
has landed him, eventually pursuing a vocation to become a tree surgeon.
Years later, Ivo’s affinity with all things arboreal leads him into a bizarre adventure in deepest Siberia,
searching for a mythical Larch with mysterious medicinal properties. A mad professor, a young guide
who dresses like an obscure Belgian cartoon character, a run-in with the local mob, and a chase through
the Siberian forests leave the reader in no doubt that any semblance of realism was left in Rome.
Further confirmation arrives in the corpulent form of Kallimachos, a mountain of flesh that hosts an
indestructible Greek detective – regarded as a living god by a local tribe.
Two thirds of the way through the novel the murder mystery that tenuously puts it in the crime fiction category finally emerges. Ivo is
led to Toad’s Bread, a secret underground city built by the Soviets in preparation for nuclear holocaust. The city has been taken over by
a motley collection of criminals; a kind of cult held together by the narcotic properties of their staple food – the toadstool. Lilli reappears,
now a fully-grown detective. She is there to investigate a spate of killings linked to the mysterious Larch trees. Our heroes soon locate not
only these trees – which turn out to be the source of a health-giving substance that has triggered the whole misadventure – but also the
killer. The ease with which Lilli and Ivo unravel the book’s somewhat shaky central mystery makes it clear that the author is shamelessly
hijacking the conventions of the formulaic crime novel for his own ulterior motives.
Steinfest revels in the overblown camp of his comic book influences; the real star of the show is Lilli, a souped-up Hepburn whose
superhero power is her pure Austrian unflappability, somehow reinforced by the gravity of her massively damaged nose. The outlandish
locations and scenarios are pure James Bond, and cold war spy thriller is repeatedly disrobed in its absurdity. Clever self-deprecation
and wry, tongue-in-cheek commentary from the characters are employed to keep the reader onside.
His books are often described as crime with a philosophical twist, and while they do pose existential questions they are more Terry
Pratchett than Jostein Gaarder. At times these extended detours into the author’s skewed reality can seem self-indulgent, but as you
get used to his rhythm, you realise that these amiable asides anchor his otherwise incredible tales in something more tangible.
The balance is delicate, and at times awkward, but Steinfest’s refusal to take his storytelling too seriously, his moments of startling insight
and the rich subtlety of his prose have earned him a dedicated, almost cult, following and a slew of literary prizes.
Die Feine Nase der
Lilli Steinbeck
(Lilli Steinbeck’s Remarkable Nose, 2009)
Heinrich Steinfest
Die Haischwimmerin
(Swimming with Sharks)
Piper Verlag, September 2011, 351 pp. ISBN: 978 3 492 05407 2
In the first of the two-book series, a kidnapping
draws Steinfest’s larger-than-life Austrian detective
into a bizarre game played by shadowy powerbrokers.
Outlandish scenarios, from attacks by Batman
lookalikes in Athens, through mortar fire in Yemen,
to a showdown with crack troops on a remote island, force the reader to
surrender themselves to the whims of this master storyteller.
Dan Toller introduces readers to the absurd and
wonderful world of Austrian crime writer Heinrich
Steinfest. His latest novel, Die Haischwimmerin
(‘Swimming with Sharks’), is out now.
‘ Heinrich Steinfest is a master of whimsical images and excursions into day-to-day philosophy.’ (Der Spiegel)
Mariaschwarz
(Mariaschwarz, 2010)
‘A little miracle’ (Le Monde )
Heinrich Steinfest
was born in 1961. Albury, Australia;
Vienna, Austria and Stuttgart, Germany
– these are the stations in the life of
this illustrious and celebrated cult
author, whose books have sold more
than 400,000 copies. He has received
the German Crime Fiction Award
several times and was awarded the
Heimito von Doderer Prize. His book
Ein dickes Fell (‘Thick-skinned’) was
longlisted for the German Book Award.
Translation rights available from:
Piper Verlag GmbH
Georgenstraße 4, 80799 München,
Germany
Tel: +49 89 381 801 26
Email: sven.diedrich@piper.de
Contact: Sven Diedrich
www.piper.de
The delicate symbiosis between a barman and his
regulars is a beautiful thing, and its disruption must
surely spell trouble. When the only guest at a hotel
in an Austrian backwater is rescued from drowning
by his barman, it destroys this careful equilibrium.
A madcap tale of kidnapping, sea monsters, and
an obscene set of novelty figures with unspecified
magical powers ensues. Dark forces with mysterious aims are never
quite unmasked, leaving the reader with the feeling that they’ve been
led on another of Steinfest’s darkly comic and convoluted, yet strangely
enlightening, wild goose chases.
CRiME AnD THRillER
© Bernhard Adam

Initiatives in Translation
The successful publication of German-language books in English translation depends in no small part upon
the diligence and expertise of their literary translators. And as New Books in German celebrates its thirtieth
issue, we review three exciting US- and UK-based initiatives that offer support of tremendous value not only
to established translators but also to those aspiring to the profession.
Helen and Kurt Wolff
Translator’s Prize
This annual prize, established
in Chicago in 1996, honours an
exceptional literary translation
of a German work published in
the United States in English. The
prize is funded by the German
government and the winner
receives $10,000.
The Wolffs were outstanding and
innovative publishers in Germany
in the 1920s. After emigrating to
New York in 1941 they founded
Pantheon Books, a publishing
house devoted mainly to German
and European literature in
translation. In 1961 the couple
joined Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
and became co-publishers with
their own imprint, Helen and Kurt
Wolff Books. Upon her husband’s
death in 1963, Helen Wolff
continued working with authors
on the Wolff list, expanding it
to include Karl Jaspers, Walter
Benjamin, Uwe Johnson, Günter
Grass, Max Frisch and many
others. Her work earned her an
Inter Nationes Award, the Goethe
Medal, and honorary doctorates
from three universities. In 1994 she
received the Friedrich Gundolf Prize
from the Deutsche Akademie
für Sprache und Dichtung (the
German Academy for Language
and Literature) for her promotion
of German culture in the USA,
and for making German literature
accessible to American readers.
By the end of January, publishers
submit six copies of a translation
published and distributed during
Translator Jean M. Snook
© private
nEwS AnD inFORMATiOn
the previous year. Entries may
include novels, novellas, short
stories, plays, poetry, biographies,
essays, and correspondence.
A five-member jury selects the
winning translation. The prize
winner receives the award at a
ceremony in Chicago hosted by the
German Consul General of Chicago
and the Goethe-Institut Chicago.
Former recipients include Peter
Constantine, Susan Bernofsky,
Michael Henry Heim, Breon
Mitchell, Anthea Bell, Krishna
Winston, Michael Hofmann, and
John E. Woods. This year, Jean M.
Snook received the prize for her
translation of Gert Jonke’s Der
ferne Klang (‘The Distant Sound’,
Dalkey Archive Press).
For further information,
contact Werner Ott:
ott@chicago.goethe.org
The Grace and Frederick
Gutekunst Prize for Young
Translators
In late 2010, the Goethe-Institut
New York received a generous gift
made in the memory of Frederick
Gutekunst, professor of German
for more than thirty years at
Hunter College in New York, and
his wife Grace. The Gutekunst
Prize for Young Translators has
now been established with the
aim of identifying outstanding
young translators and assisting
them in establishing contact with
the US translation and publishing
communities. The annual
Gutekunst competition is open
to all US-based college students
and translators who will be under
the age of thirty-five at the time
of the judges’ decision, and have
not published a book-length
translation. Translations of an
approximately fifteen-page excerpt
from a German-language literary
work chosen by the Goethe-Institut
New York are submitted to a jury of
three experts in German literature
and translation. The winner
receives an invitation to the Helen
and Kurt Wolff Symposium, held
Translator Kári Driscoll
annually in June at the Goethe-
Institut Chicago. The $2,500 prize
is awarded during the symposium
where the winning translation is
formally presented before being
published on the website of the
Goethe-Institut and, in agreement
with the German publisher of the
work, used by the German Book
Office in negotiations with US
publishers. The winner of the first
Gutekunst Prize, Kári Driscoll, is
now under contract to translate
Martin Mosebach’s Was davor
geschah (Hanser Verlag, 2010), a
successful start to their promotion
of the next generation of German
translators.
For further information,
contact Edna McCown:
mccown@newyork.goethe.org
New Books in German
Emerging Translators
Programme
Launched in 2011, the New Books
in German Emerging Translators
Programme runs twice a year.
NBG commissions a group of
up-and-coming translators to
produce sample translations from
the best new books in German. The
programme aims to promote the
careers of emerging translators,
providing experience, advice and
contacts, as well as to produce
top-class sample translations
that will increase the chances of
international rights sales. The focus
© private
is on interaction and exchange:
a translation competition is held
to select the six participants, and
the successful candidates attend a
translation workshop with leading
translator Shaun Whiteside. A
dedicated web forum allows
the participants to share their
queries and draft translations with
each other before and after the
workshop, pooling useful resources
for translation and offering advice
and tips on their draft translations.
Each translator works particularly
closely with one other, who
advises on the final translation.
Samples of around 2,500 words
are downloadable from the NBG
website and the full 4,000-word
samples can be requested directly
from NBG.
The Autumn 2011 Emerging
Translators Programme has
prepared translations of the
following novels, all downloadable
from the NBG website:
Kathrin Gerlof,
Lokale Erschütterung
(translated by Charlotte Smith)
Peter Henisch,
Großes Finale für Novak
(translated by Lara Elder)
Angelika Klüssendorf,
Das Mädchen
(translated by Deborah Langton)
Jo Lendle, Alles Land
(translated by Imogen Taylor)
Christoph Poschenrieder,
Der Spiegelkasten
(translated by Donna Ochs)
Cay Rademacher,
Der Trummermörder
(translated by Sheridan Marshall)
For further information,
contact Charlotte Ryland:
nbg@london.goethe.org
Compiled by Edna McCown
(Goethe Institut New York),
Christiane Tacke (Goethe Institut
Chicago), Brittany Hazelwood
(GBO-New York) and
Charlotte Ryland

Stefan Tobler, founder of innovative new
publisher And Other Stories, talks to NBG
The Back Story
And Other Stories was born of
frustration, really. Along with
several other translators and
publishing people, I felt that many
amazing books weren’t being
published in the UK because they
were perceived as too risky for
larger houses with significant
overheads. About three years ago
I started mooting the idea of a
publisher with grassroots support
to friends and colleagues.
In the intervening years it’s been
great to see that things are
changing. There’s an increasing
openness to international literature
in the Anglophone world, thanks
in no small part to translators.
So after a long gestation period
involving public meetings and
reading groups, spreadsheets and
business plans, our first books are
out. A really crucial step came in
the autumn of 2010, when we
heard that Arts Council England
was awarding us National Lottery
funding to start up. The Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation’s funding
of a Portuguese reading group
has also allowed us to put up
web pages with generous sample
translations and information on a
number of books, opening up our
reading group discussions to those
who wish to read the extracts
in English.
Such funding, though, is not
enough even to cover basic costs.
From the start we have appealed
for subscribers to support us and
help us bring out these books. It’s
been heart-warming to see that
before our first books had been
seen or read, well over 100 people
had already subscribed. As a little
sign of our gratitude, we give all
our subscribers specially numbered
copies and a mention in the next
books that we print.
The Programme
Initially, the aim was to run
the publisher as a collective. In
order for the publisher to have a
recognisable profile, the workable
practice seems to be that a few
core people run the project, with
a lot of support from others who
contribute in all sorts of different
ways. And Other Stories is a notfor-profit,
which means that any
profits (when – if! – they come)
will go back into the company, in
particular so that we can continue
to pay translators properly. That
aim is helped a great deal by
support from translation grants,
and the Goethe-Institut generously
supported the translation of our
German title, Clemens Meyer’s
All the Lights.
The Books
All the Lights and Juan Pablo
Villalobos’ novel Down the
Rabbit Hole were our first books
to appear, launched with the
authors reading at the Edinburgh
Book Festival in August. A novel
by our ‘home’ author Deborah
Levy, Swimming Home, comes
out in October.
And Other Stories prefers
to find its books through
recommendations from readers
and translators than from agents.
There are a lot of people who
know so much about literature
from different parts of the world.
So we’re open to suggestions
that fit in with the contemporary
literary fiction that we publish. We
also run reading groups, where a
bunch of readers can read one of
a few select, as yet untranslated
titles. Our recent Spanish, Russian,
Portuguese, French and German
reading groups have all brought
incredible books to light.
After our first Spanish reading
group, Down the Rabbit
Hole was suggested by the
translator Rosalind Harvey,
while an Argentine student in
the London group said that the
publisher Entropia and their novel
Open Door by Iosi Havilio (our
November title) were attracting a
lot of attention in Argentina. A
number of people suggested the
German author Clemens Meyer,
and I was so glad that they did.
He has done that rare thing: taken
tough, raw experience and turned
it into breathtaking, world-class
literature.
The Translators
As Sophie Lewis, our editor, and I
are both literary translators, we’re
in the lucky position of knowing
many great translators. We look
for the translator who is best
able to translate the book and is
passionate about it. In Clemens
Meyer’s case that was clearly Katy
Derbyshire.
The Future
The Swiss writer Christoph Simon’s
novel of an eccentric old man who
cannot shut up or stop walking
around his city, meeting all kinds
All the Lights
By Clemens Meyer
Translated by Katy Derbyshire
A man bets all he has on a horserace to
pay for an expensive operation for his
dog. A young refugee wants to box her
way straight off the boat to the top of
the sport. Old friends talk all night after
meeting up by chance. She imagines a
future together.
Stories about people who have lost
out in life and in love, and about
their hopes for one really big win, the
chance to make something of their
lives. In silent apartments, desolate
warehouses, prisons and by the river,
Meyer strikes the tone of our harsh
times, and finds the grace notes, the
bright lights shining in the dark.
‘When I was reading Clemens’s first
book, Als wir träumten, I was so
impressed that it made me miss my
stop on the tram. And since then I’ve
been dying to translate him, because
he writes really well about things that
matter.’ – Katy Derbyshire, translator
of All the Lights
© private
Stefan Tobler
of people, is a pure delight, and is
very moving about marriage and
family relationships. It will come
out next year, currently under the
working title ‘The Art of Walking’.
There are plenty of interesting
younger writers that we aim to
look at, as well as some giants of
recent German literature that are
due a revival in the UK: Wolfgang
Hilbig and Hubert Fichte, for
example, or Peter Handke.
Christoph Simon’s novel,
Spaziergänger Zbinden (Bilger),
was reviewed in the Spring 2011
issue of New Books in German,
and was also part of NBG’s first
Emerging Translators Programme
(see page 22).
Katy Derbyshire
ARTiClES AnD inTERviEwS
© private

Recently Published and
Forthcoming Titles in English
The Winter of the Lions
Jan Costin Wagner
Translated by Anthea Bell
Harvill Secker
‘Melancholy detective Kimmo Joentaa
is on the hunt for a deranged killer
following the murder of two guests
on Finland’s most famous talk show.
Written with Wagner’s trademark
psychological insight, The Winter
of the Lions is a masterful work
of Scandinavian crime fiction.’
– Briony Everroad, Harvill Secker
‘Snow-noir of the highest order’
– The Financial Times
Guilt
Ferdinand von Schirach
Translated by Carol Brown Janeway
Chatto & Windus
A new, haunting collection of stories
based on real cases, and told from a
defence lawyer’s perspective.
In ‘Funfair’, a young defence attorney,
still wet behind the ears and breaking in
a new suit and attaché case, wins his first
big case only to lose his innocence in the
process. The popular crowd at an all-boys’ boarding school wages a vicious attack
against an outsider schoolmate, but end up accidentally killing the boy’s beloved
teacher in ‘The Illuminati’. Attempting to hurdle through a midlife crisis, a housewife
staves off depression with the rush she derives from the act of stealing in ‘Desire’.
And in ‘Snow’, an old man whose home is used as a way station for a heroin ring
agrees to protect the identity of the lead drug runner, who nonetheless receives his
come-uppance. Fourteen stories calling into question the nature of guilt and the
toll it takes − or fails to take − on ordinary people, and infused with Ferdinand von
Schirach’s hallmark cool solemnity and sympathy, Guilt is a stunning follow-up to
his heralded debut.
The Accidental Captives
Carolyn Gossage
Translated by Britta Grell
and Stephan Lahrem
I.B. Tauris
‘This is the fascinating and moving true
story of seven Canadian women who
found themselves stranded in Hitler’s
Berlin in 1941. Their ship had been
sunk by a Nazi raider in the Atlantic.
As ‘enemy aliens’ the women were not
immediately repatriated, as their US
comrades had been, and instead began
a lengthy journey across Germany, via
Leibenau internment camp. However,
due to a bureaucratic mix up, this small
group of women found themselves alone
in Berlin, stranded in the heart of Hitler’s Germany. These ‘accidental captives’ had
no way home: abandoned, destitute and without permanent lodgings, the story of
these seven strangers and their survival is one of the most remarkable stories of
life behind enemy lines during World War II. Drawing on first-hand accounts and
interviews, Carolyn Gossage pieces together the extraordinary story of the year
they spent together in wartime Germany.’ – Joanna Godfrey, I.B.Tauris
nEwS AnD inFORMATiOn
The Appointment
Herta Müller
Translated by Philip Boehm
Portobello Books
‘I’ve been summoned, Thursday, ten
sharp.’ So begins one day in the life of
a young clothing-factory worker during
Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime. She has
been questioned before, but this time
she knows it will be worse. Her crime?
Sewing notes into the linings of men’s
suits bound for Italy. ‘Marry me’, the
notes say, with her name and address.
Anything to get out of the country. As
she rides the tram to her interrogation,
her thoughts stray to her friend Lilli, shot
while trying to flee to Hungary; to her
grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them; to Major Albu,
her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet kiss on her fingers; and to
Paul, her lover and the one person she can trust. In her distraction, she misses
her stop and finds herself on an unfamiliar street. And what she discovers there
suddenly puts her fear of the appointment into chilling perspective.
Bone-spare and intense, The Appointment is a pitiless rendering of the terrors
of a crushing regime.
‘A brooding, fog-shrouded allegory of life under the long oppression of the
regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.’ − New York Times
Three Lives
Oliver Matuschek
Translated by Allan Blunden
Pushkin Press
‘Drawing on a wealth of new sources,
this definitive biography sheds light on
the troubled life of the world-famous
Austrian author. Including the sort of
personal detail conspicuously absent
from Zweig’s memoir, Three Lives gives
us a glimpse into the private world
of a master of psychological insight.’
– Melissa Ulfane, Pushkin Press
Maybe This Time
Alois Hotschnig
Translated by Tess Lewis
Peirene Press
‘I love Kafka and here we have a
Kafkaesque sense of alienation – not to
mention narrative experiments galore!
Outwardly normal events slip into drama
before they tip into horror. These oblique
tales exert a fascinating hold over the
reader.’ – Meike Ziervogel, Peirene Press

Mesmerized
Alissa Walser
Translated by Jamie Bulloch
MacLehose Press
Reviewed by NBG on its publication
in Germany, Mesmerized is a story
of power and passion in late 18th
century Vienna.
On a cold January day, flamboyant
practitioner Mesmer is summoned to
the house of the Court Secretary and
entreated to restore the eyesight of his daughter, a piano genius. In his colourful,
chaotic private hospital, amongst other patients with varying hysterical disorders,
he gradually wins her trust and submits her to a series of controversial treatments
based on animal magnetism, the “laying on of hands”. Soon he is able to restore
her sense of darkness and light, and his methods appear to be successful. Besieged
by new patients, he is certain that fame and imperial recognition lie ahead, but as
Maria’s eyesight returns, her musical talent appears to diminish and Mesmer
is branded a charlatan.
‘Mesmerized is a lyrical novel full of atmosphere and sensuality in which Walser
has brought Mesmer, a controversial figure who trod the narrow path between
science and magic, vividly to life.’ – Katharina Bielenberg, MacLehose Press.
‘Alissa Walser has a fine sense of the subtle tensions and gulfs between the sexes’
– Berliner Zeitung
We Are Doing Fine
Arno Geiger
Translated by Maria Poglitsch Bauer
Ariadne Press
‘We read to explore the unknown, but
also to recognize ourselves in others.
Arno Geiger’s We Are Doing Fine
offers both pleasures. This fourth novel
(which won the very first German
Book Prize in 2005) from the Austrian
author tracks events in the lives of three
generations of a Viennese family as
viewed through the eyes of Philipp, who
has just inherited his late grandmother’s
villa. While cleaning – no, gutting – the
house and ridding it of most reminders
of its former occupants, the grandson is
forced to think about his family more than is to his liking…
In a brilliantly sparse and precise language, Geiger mixes crucial incidents
of Austrian history with both everyday and tragic occurrences in the family’s
private lives.’– Jorun Johns, Ariadne Press
Lyric Novella
Annemarie Schwarzenbach
Translated by Lucy Renner Jones
Seagull Books
‘Annemarie Schwarzenbach – journalist,
novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, and
traveler – has become a European cult
figure for bohemian free spirits since
the rediscovery of her works in the late
1980s. Lyric Novella is her story of a
young man’s obsession with a Berlin
variété actress. Despite having his
future career mapped out for him in the
diplomatic service, the young man begins
to question all his family values under
Sibylle’s spell.
Schwarzenbach’s clear, psychologically
acute prose makes this novella an evocative narrative, with many intriguing
parallels to her own life. In fact, she admitted after publication that her hero was in
fact a young woman, not a man, leaving little doubt that Lyric Novella is a literary
tale of lesbian love during socially and politically turbulent times.’
– Naveen Kishore, Seagull Books
© R. Neff
The Method
Juli Zeh
Translated by Sally-Ann Spencer
Harvill Secker
‘The Method is set in a dystopian state
where individual health is considered the
jurisdiction of the government. When Mia
Holl’s brother commits suicide after being
falsely accused of a terrible crime, her
faith in ‘The Method’, the dictatorship’s
means of watching over its citizens, is
shaken. She soon finds herself classed as
a dangerous subject and must argue her
own case as well as her brother’s. The
Method is a beautifully crafted novel,
written with Juli Zeh’s trademark wit and
intelligence.
Besides being a compelling read, The Method poses some crucial questions in
our changing world: to what extent can the state curtail the rights of the individual?
To what extent does the individual have a right to resist? This is a very important
novel.’ – Geoff Mulligan, Harvill Secker
My Mother’s Lover
Urs Widmer
Translated by Donal McLaughlin
Seagull Books
‘It’s Switzerland in the 1920s when
the two lovers first meet. She is young,
beautiful, and rich. In contrast, he can
barely support himself and is interested
only in music. By the end of their lives,
he is a famous conductor and the richest
man in the country, but she is penniless.
And most important of all, no one knows
of her love for him; it is a secret he took
to his grave. Here begins Urs Widmer’s
novel My Mother’s Lover.
Based on a real-life affair, My Mother’s
Lover is the story of a lifelong and
unspoken love for a man – recorded by the woman’s son, who begins this novel
on the day his mother’s lover dies. Set against the backdrop of the Depression
and World War II, it is a story of sacrifice and betrayal, passionate devotion, and
inevitable suffering. Yet in Widmer’s hands, it is always entertaining and surprisingly
comic – a unique kind of fairy tale.’ – Naveen Kishore, Seagull Books
The Tongue Set Free
Elias Canetti
Translated by Joachim Neugroschel
Granta Books
‘I’m absolutely delighted to be publishing
these stunning new editions of Elias
Canetti’s three-part autobiography.
Canetti was one of the intellectual giants
of the 20th century, and a larger-thanlife
figure on the literary scene. He was
a Nobel Prize winner, a contemporary
of Karl Kraus and Isaac Babel, and the
lover of Iris Murdoch. We hope that these
new editions will bring his astonishing
life and extraordinary writing to a whole
new generation of readers.’
– Bella Lacey, Granta Books
‘A tremendous story of determination and triumph ... Canetti led his life without
compromise, fear, or guilt, and if one now encounters his early years for the first
time the experience is nearly like discovering, without warning, a complex and
satisfying work of art.’ – New Yorker
The second and third volumes of Canetti’s autobiography, The Torch in My Ear
and The Play of the Eyes, are also published by Granta.
nEwS AnD inFORMATiOn

NBG celebrates three novels published this year in German that have already found a home in English:
Daniela Krien’s debut novel is forthcoming with MacLehose Press, Inka Parei’s new book will
be published by Seagull Books, and Eugen Ruge’s debut will be published in the US by Graywolf Press.
Daniela Krien
Irgendwann werden
wir uns alles erzählen
(Someday we will tell each
other everything)
Graf Verlag/ Ullstein Buchverlage, September 2011
240 pp. ISBN: 978 3 862 20019 1
Summer loving
Krien’s beguiling love story is racy yet
controlled. An authentic voice, she describes
perfectly the shame, confusion and growing
maturity of sixteen-year-old Maria.
Moving in with her boyfriend’s family, Maria
helps out and becomes accepted but has no
clear sense of direction. When forty-year-old
Thorsten Henner appears – hard-drinking and
rugged, from an old family scarred by history
– she initially sees him as a menace. But she
soon finds herself making excuses to spend
more and more time with him. Henner’s love
is manifested by both animal violence and
unexpected sensitivity, and the two create a
plausible domesticity. Distinctive style,
universal theme.
© Christian Klinger
Daniela Krien grew up in a small village in Saxony.
She studied culture and media and then founded
a documentary film production company with
her husband. Irgendwann werden wir uns alles
erzählen is her first novel.
Translation rights sold to:
UK (World English/Maclehose Press), Italy (Rizzoli),
France (Flammarion), Spain (Salamandra), Brasil
(Record), Netherlands (Ambo Anthos), Israel (Achuzat
Bayit), Poland (Sonia Draga)
Translation rights available from:
Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH
pia.goetz@ullstein-buchverlage.de
nEwS AnD inFORMATiOn
Inka Parei
Die Kältezentrale
(The Cold Room)
Schöffling & Co., August 2011,
216 pp. ISBN: 978 3 895 61107 0
Nuclear fallout
East Berlin provides the bleak landscape for this
intriguing novel. The anonymous narrator’s exwife
is in hospital with cancer, and the doctors
can only treat her if the cause can be identified.
Was it radiation? The narrator can help but
only by going back to what happened over the
course of a few days at his former workplace
– traumatic events which have had a defining
influence on his life and are likely to be the
reason why he feels so isolated.
Themes of confusion and identity, change and
conformity jostle with one another to reflect
with skill the narrator’s inner turmoil.
© Henry Mex
Inka Parei was born in Frankfurt am Main in
1967, and now lives in Berlin. Her first novel Die
Schattenboxerin has been translated into thirteen
languages. Parei has been awarded several prizes,
including the Hans Erich Nossack Prize and the
Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.
Previous works: Was Dunkelheit war (‘What
Darkness was’, 2005); Die Schattenboxerin (The
Shadowboxing Woman, 1999)
Translation rights available from:
Schöffling & Co.
Email: kathrin.scheel@schoeffling.de
Eugen Ruge
In Zeiten des
abnehmenden Lichts
(In Times of Fading Light)
Rowohlt Verlag , September 2011
432 pp. ISBN: 978 3 498 05786 2
A life lived for the working class
Ruge’s assured debut novel covers four
generations of an East German family and centres
around the ninetieth birthday party of a life-long
Party hardliner and functionary – on 1 October
1989. Everyone knows what is going on, but no
one is allowed to mention ‘certain events’.
The twists and turns of the plot are skilfully
interwoven, the dialogue crisp, and the constant
switching between generations and characters is
handled with a sure touch. The Fading Light is a
moving family saga with deft touches of humour,
of special interest for its panorama of East
German life and ideas through the late
twentieth century.
© Tobias Bohm
Eugen Ruge was born in the Urals and studied
mathematics in Berlin. Before leaving the GDR for
the West in 1988 he was a writer, contributing to
documentaries made at the state-owned DEFA Studios.
Since 1989 he has been writing and translating for
theatres and broadcasters, and periodically teaches
at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Translation rights sold to:
World English (Graywolf Press), Spain (Anagrama),
Italy (Mondadori), France (Éditions), First (F),
The Netherlands (De Geus), Greece (FI)
Translation rights available from:
Rowohlt Verlag GmbH
Email: carolin.mungard@rowohlt.de

Lies and Ambiguities:
Alois Hotschnig’s Fiction
Identity is slippery at the best of
times. We think we know who
we are, but are often swayed
unawares by internal and external
forces. And even when aware, we
easily convince ourselves that we
chose to be influenced, that we
are in control. The Austrian writer
Alois Hotschnig has explored
the treacherous ground between
deception and self-deception
in several novels and one play.
His haunting collection of short
stories, Maybe This Time, just
published in English translation
by Peirene Press, probes even more
deeply the intricacies of delusion.
He anatomizes the distortions
and contortions of the psyche
struggling to assert itself for good
or ill. And when he turns his surgical
gaze on the outer world, he reveals
the mystery inherent in mundane
situations, evident to those willing
to look closely enough.
The intense psychological dramas
in his stories are all the more
chilling for the narrators’ seeming
normality and the calm, matter-offact
tone in which they relate odd
or disturbing situations. The placid
surfaces of Hotschnig’s stories
are ruffled only by an occasional
ripple and the currents that seethe
beneath his crystalline prose are
no less turbulent for only gradually
becoming apparent.
What Hotschnig’s characters see
is less disturbing than the way
they perceive and internalise what
they observe. In one story a man
watches his neighbours as they
lie on deckchairs outside their
lake house all day long, day after
day. His puzzled interest, spurred
by their refusal to acknowledge
him, turns to morbid fascination.
Soon, just watching his neighbours
is not enough. He takes notes
on their unvarying routine and
photographs them during the day
so he can study them at night.
He surrenders every waking hour,
and even his sense of self, to the
motionless couple. He is horrified
by his obsession, but his attempt
to pull back is comically thwarted.
In another story, a man on his way
to visit an old friend is waylaid by
the friend’s neighbour. This strange
woman not only seems to know
him well, but has a collection of
dolls which depict him at various
ages. She says little and leaves
him alone with these tokens of his
earlier selves. He becomes addicted
to these encounters since they open
to him levels of self-awareness
that were previously inaccessible.
A sense of threat or hidden
dread suffuses even the more
outwardly normal stories. In
‘Two Ways of Leaving’ a former
lover is summoned with some
agitation by the woman he left
years earlier for reasons he could
explain neither to her nor to
himself. When he arrives at her
flat, it is prepared for an intimate
dinner, but she is gone. As he
wanders through her flat, his sense
of estrangement from his former
as well as his present self grows.
In The New York Review of
Books and the TLS, the novelist,
critic and translator Tim Parks
has noted the rise in Europe of a
featureless international fiction
at the expense of distinctive
national variants. It is becoming
harder to find ‘the kind of work
that revels in the subtle nuances
of its own language and literary
culture, the sort of writing that
can savage or celebrate the way
this or that linguistic group really
lives.’ Instead, according to Parks,
a growing number of European
writers, in their desire for a
larger audience, are consciously
or unconsciously tailoring their
narrative modes and styles to
be easily translated into English.
National traditions and cultural
complexities, as well as particular
linguistic qualities, are smoothed
over in the pursuit of some bland
global appeal. Hotschnig is one
writer who stands well outside
any such trend. From his first
works he has been and remains
a distinctively Austrian writer,
intimately and actively engaged
in his country’s cultural and
political complexities and
luxuriating in its language.
In his play, Absolution, a son may
or may not have committed suicide
in protest against his father’s
abuse of schoolchildren when he
was a teacher. The community
looked the other way then and
now the father is running for public
office. There can be no absolution
without recognition, but of course,
this being a Hotschnig play, the
absolution will be double-edged at
best. In his second novel, Ludwig’s
Room, a village in Carinthia is
bound by an unspoken agreement
not to expose the guilt of several
members in the community who
had been involved in running a
nearby forced labour camp. This
knowledge and the complicity it
provokes poison the community for
generations, and their refusal to
call their neighbours and relatives
to account makes them share in
the collective responsibility. In this
novel, guilt is neither inherited nor
collective, but responsibility is.
The stories in Maybe This Time
can be read as a psychological
counterpart to the denial or
suppression of the past. Individual
identities constructed within
a community that has built its
collective identity on an illusion
– that of being Hitler’s first victim,
say – are bound to be more
than usually fragile or prone to
psychosis. Many of Hotschnig’s
characters suffer such deformation:
the man living through his almost
comatose neighbours, or the one
who can only access his own past
through the bizarre intervention
of a witch-like figure, or the
family that feeds on a myth of
a benevolent but always absent
uncle, or the chameleon-like
protagonist in the collection’s final
story whose identity is entirely
dependent on how his neighbours
see him.
Yet these stories can also be read
independently of any specific
cultural or historical context. They
are fascinating allegories of the
self negotiating its way through
the confusions of contemporary
life. And, no less importantly,
they are darkly, grimly amusing.
Maybe This Time is the second of
Alois Hotschnig’s works to appear
in English. It will offer readers
familiar with his novel Leonardo’s
Hands (University of Nebraska
Press, 1999) a greater sense of
his range and versatility, and will
introduce new readers to a unique,
captivating voice in Germanlanguage
literature.
Tess Lewis is a
translator from
German and
French and an
Advisory Editor
of The Hudson
Review. In
2009, she was awarded an NEA
Translation Fellowship and a PEN
Translation Fund Grant for her
translation of Alois Hotschnig’s
story collection, Maybe This Time
(Peirene Press). Her most recent
translation is Splithead by Julya
Rabinowich for Portobello Books.
Tess Lewis also writes essays on
European literature for numerous
literary journals including The
New Criterion, The Hudson
Review, World Literature Today,
The American Scholar, and
Bookforum.
Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht
by Alois Hotschnig
AUTHOR FOCUS 7
© Thomas Böhm

Rethink. Renew. Frankfurt Book Fair 2011
Graphic Novels
– a success story
Graphic Novels from Germany can
be found on all German collective
stands at international book
fairs. The term graphic novel was
coined by Will Eisner, who used
it to describe his groundbreaking
comic book A Contract with God
in the 1980s. His previous work
included writing and illustrating
the superhero series ‘The Spirit’.
This new graphic novel was neither
a heroic story nor the beginning
of a series. For Eisner, the new
concept was not about denigrating
his earlier work, but an attempt to
define a new artistic form.
A graphic novel is first and foremost
a self-contained work, using a
format frequently closer to that of
a book than to comics or serials.
In contrast to comics, graphic
novels also tend to be taken
seriously in the literary press. The
media’s attention was initially
drawn to works such as Maus by
Art Spiegelman, or Persepolis by
Marjane Satrapi. Original German
titles then began to appear,
igniting booksellers’ interest.
Far-reaching campaigns by
publishers have also contributed
a great deal to the success of
the graphic novel. One example
is www.graphic-novel.info,
targeted at both readers and
sellers. News, events and press
reviews are posted, as well as
discussion pieces on the theme
of the graphic novel. The same
publishers jointly produce the
flyer ‘What is a Graphic Novel?’,
which first appeared in 2008. It
Reinhard Kleist’s graphic novel Castro
ARTiClE
contains an informative comic
strip, and introduces a selection of
graphic novels from participating
publishers. The flyer is distributed
free, and the reception was so
positive that four subsequent
updates and reprints followed.
In this way, graphic novels found
their place in the book trade,
and were not just confined to
specialised comic book shops.
And graphic novels, in turn,
attracted new, younger customers
to book shops.
This development has broadened
perspectives for emerging German
author-illustrators, so that in
addition to graphic novels from
France and the USA under licence
in Germany, there have long been
successful home-grown examples.
Recent German graphic novels have
in turn been licensed successfully
on the international market.
There is a broad spectrum of
content. Popular genres and
themes include autobiographical
stories such as Heute ist der
letzte Tag vom Rest deines
Lebens (‘Today is the Last Day of
the Rest of Your Life’) by Ulli Lust,
history as in Castro by Reinhard
Kleist, coming-of-age stories
such as Alien by Aisha Franz,
and cultural history, as in Baby’s
in Black – The Story of Astrid
Kirchherr and Stuart Sutcliffe by
Arne Bellstorf.
These are stand-out graphic novels,
distinguished by their stylistic
range. The emerging German scene
is refreshingly experimental, but
never at the expense of readability.
The expanding readership for these
books extends beyond Germanspeaking
countries, and graphic
novels from Germany are also
well received internationally. They
are capable of winning over new
readers, whose heads might not be
turned by classic comic books.
By Jutta Harms
www.graphic-novel.info
Publishers of graphic novels:
www.avant-verlag.de
www.carlsen.de
www.editionmoderne.ch
www.edition52.de
www.reprodukt.com
Frankfurt Academy:
Network with the best
at top-quality events
The Frankfurt Academy, the new
international conference brand
of the Frankfurt Book Fair, is
‘The Mind Network’. This year,
for the first time, the Fair’s best
congresses and special events
– such as the International Rights
Directors Meeting RDM, or the
Frankfurt Book Fair’s Professional
Programme ‘Best Practice / New
Ideas’ – are coming together under
the umbrella of the Academy. It is
targeted at rights professionals,
editors and publishers, amongst
others. ‘We have launched the
Frankfurt Academy because
trade visitors to the Book Fair are
changing the way they work,’
explains Holger Volland, Vice
President Conferences & Creative
Industries. ‘Now, not only will they
have access to a wide range of
top-quality, targeted events, but
they will also be able to network
with top-level professionals from
150 countries and to expand their
knowledge base.’
Brazil, Apps and Tablet
Publishing
For the past twenty-five years,
rights managers from all over
the world have been coming
together at the International
Rights Directors Meeting RDM,
to discuss relevant changes and
developments in their business.
This year the long-standing
specialist meeting will have two
themes: Brazil and the issue of
digital apps provide the joint focus
for 2011. ‘Brazil will be the Guest
of Honour at Frankfurt in 2013. The
country represents a fascinating
future market, in which publishers
in very different areas are currently
experiencing enormous growth,’
says Bärbel Becker, the organiser
of the RDM at the Frankfurt
Book Fair. She added, ‘Over the
course of the event we will shed
some light on how the Brazilian
market is developing, and what its
distinctive features are.’
But the RDM will not only impart
important basic knowledge. ‘We
are addressing new topics here as
well, which may not play a large
role in the day-to-day work of
rights managers at the moment,
but will do so in the future,’ Becker
remarks. Such as apps, for example.
‘I fully support a discussion on
mobile apps,’ says David Bowers of
Oxford University Press, New York,
who will chair the RDM this year.
‘It is a very popular topic these
days with big implications for the
global publishing business.’ The
RDM will take place on Tuesday,
11th October, from 14:00-17:00
in Room Europa (Hall 4.0). A
networking reception will follow
the discussion.
New media
The Professional Programme ‘Best
Practice / New Ideas,’ which the
Book Fair runs in conjunction
with mediacampus frankfurt, is
dedicated to current issues and
innovative developments. ‘Tablet
publishing’ is currently being hyped
by publishers worldwide – but is
this euphoria really justified? What
have the experiences of this been
so far, and what will the next wave
of technology bring? Attendees
can find out at the seminar ‘Tablet
of Contents: Take a look inside
tablet publishing,’ taking place
on Wednesday 12th October at
15:30 in the Entente Room (Hall
4.C). An overview of all the events
in the professional programme
can be found at: www.book-fair.
com/professional_programme
Contact Frankfurt Academy
Holger Volland
Vice President Creative Industries
Phone: +49 (0) 69 210 2 - 166
Email: volland@book-fair.com
www.book-fair.com/academy
© Peter Hirth

Contact Rights Directors
Meeting
Bärbel Becker
Phone: +49 (0) 69 2102-258
Email: rightsmeeting@book-fair.com
www.book-fair.com/rights-meeting
Contact Professional Programme
‘Best Practice / New Ideas’
Iris Klose
Phone: +49 (0) 69 2102-236
Email: programme@book-fair.com
www.book-fair.com/professional_
programme
Buzz and Business at
the Frankfurt Book Fair
A second round for
Frankfurt SPARKS
‘We are the fair for content,’
declared Juergen Boos recently,
describing the Frankfurt Book Fair’s
new image. With the market for
digital content growing rapidly,
the remit of the industry’s largest
international trade fair is also
expanding: ‘Content serves as
the raw material, not only for
the book industry, but also for
other creative industries like film
and games. Without content,
these new technologies have
no use.’ Frankfurt SPARKS, the
Frankfurt Book Fair’s digital
initiative, established its innovative
exhibition and conference formats
in 2010, with the goal of bringing
in players from the technology
industry, but also decision-makers
from film and games, to network
with the publishing industry and
work on future business models
together. Frankfurt StoryDrive and
Frankfurt Hot Spots, the two big
SPARKS projects, will have new
topical focuses and more services
added this year.
Frankfurt StoryDrive is the first
organised meeting point for
professionals from the publishing,
film and games industries. ‘The
motto for Frankfurt StoryDrive
2011 is Storytelling & Storyselling,’
says project leader Britta Friedrich.
‘The two-day conference and the
adjacent trading centre will focus
on cross-media and transmedia
forms of storytelling, along with
rights and co-production models
that extend beyond industry
boundaries.’ Other hot topics are
cloud computing, gamification and
enhanced e-books. StoryDrive’s
programme delivers practical
knowledge: new for this year are
four master-classes led by
Frankfurt StoryDrive
top-level speakers. These intensive
workshops are a valuable addition
to the conference programme
and, together with the services in
the StoryDrive Business Centre,
will provide the necessary tools
to do business successfully across
industry boundaries.
The Frankfurt Hot Spots are six
thematically-focused presentation
platforms, reflecting current issues
in the media and publishing
businesses – including social
media, mobile content and
e-learning. ‘The Hot Spots are
our showcase for innovation,’
says project manager Michael
Kirchner. ‘Providers of digital
content and marketing platforms
will be presenting here, along
with pioneers in the area of new
technologies.’ Each Hot Spot has a
stage and lounge area, in addition
to exhibition spaces.
StoryDrive will take place on
12 and 13 October 2011,
9am-6.45pm,
in the Open Space Area
www.storydrivefrankfurt.com
Contact: Britta Friedrich
+49 (0) 69 2102 145
friedrich@book-fair.com
Frankfurt Hot Spots 0
Hot Spot Kids & Comics (Hall 3.0),
Hot Spot Publishing Services
(Hall 4.0),
Hot Spot Education (Hall 4.2),
Hot Spot Professional & Scientific
Information (Hall 4.2), Hot Spot
Digital Relations (Hall 6.1) and Hot
Spot Mobile & Devices (Hall 8).
More information available at:
www.frankfurtsparks.com
Contact: Michael Kirchner
+49 (0) 69 2102-131
kirchner@book-fair.com
© Frankfurter Buchmesse / Bernd Hartung
Editors in a brave new
digital world
The brave new digital world
– it’s been a long time since
this was purely a utopian vision.
New digitalisation processes are
fostering new ways of thinking;
new technologies are creating new
markets – but only when there
is good content to work with in
the first place. ‘New technologies
alone are worthless: they require
content. Content serves as the raw
material, not only for the book
industry, but also for other creative
industries such as film and games.
And the book industry is sitting on
a wealth of content,’ says Juergen
Boos, Director of the Frankfurt
Book Fair.
For 2011, the Book Fair is therefore
bringing content sales even more
firmly to the foreground, and
dedicates to it all of Hall 6.0. This
will contain an enlarged Literary
Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg)
and a new business centre for
representatives from the film, game
and book industries, the StoryDrive
Business Centre. Together with
the Rights Directors Meeting, the
world’s largest meeting for rights
managers, these are the places the
Book Fair offers where questions
will become answers – and new
content will be born.
Discussions in the LitAg
Editors: important guides in
the decision-making process
However, it isn’t just the marketing,
but the evaluation of content that
plays an increasingly large role in
this context. Does this novel really
have what it takes to become a
film? Or should it be made into
a game instead? Is an app really
the most suitable format for this
text? Editors are important guides
in this decision-making process,
working like diamond experts.
They choose the content, evaluate
and amend it, classify it, and give
their recommendations as to which
media and which format is best
suited to which content.
© Alexander Heimann
What changes has this digital
age brought to the editor’s job
description? What new challenges
must today’s editors rise to?
The editors’ meeting: ‘Editors in
a brave new world – The role
of editors, and how they need
to adapt in these fast-changing
digital times,’ will provide
answers to these questions. ‘The
production of media-neutral data
is undergoing a sea change in
most publishing houses,’ explains
Dorothee Seeliger, Editorial
Director at Gräfe & Unzer, and one
of the three seminar speakers. ‘For
an editor, this increasingly means
working in other PC programmes
and playing a significant part in
the preparation of media-neutral
data. Editors have to ‘tag’ data,
which means giving it a key code,
so it can easily be found in the big
wide digital world.’
The seminar takes place on Friday
14th October, in rooms Symmetry
2 + 3 in Hall 8.1 of the Frankfurt
Book Fair. Alan Samson, Publishing
Director at Orion Books, and David
Palmer, Publisher at Wiley, will,
in addition to Dorothee Seeliger,
talk about their experiences and
discuss these with participants. A
networking reception will follow
the discussion.
‘Editors in a brave new world
– The role of editors, and how
they need to adapt in these fastchanging
digital times’
Seminar, Discussion and
Networking Reception (language:
English)
Friday 14th October, 11.00 -12.00
Location: Symmetry 2 + 3, Hall 8.1
Chair: Ed Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief
Publishing Perspectives / USA
Registration: Dorothea Grimberg,
grimberg@book-fair.com
Translated by Ruth Martin
ARTiClE 9

Against all the odds
Jo Lendle
Alles Land
(The All Land)
The All Land is a beautifully written, meticulously
researched, and gripping fictionalised account of the life of
polar explorer, Alfred Wegener, who died on expedition to
Greenland in 9 0 while attempting to prove that one can
survive a winter in ‘the loneliest place on earth’.
In 0, Alfred is born to a minister and his wife in Berlin,
where they run an orphanage. He grows up to be smart,
if a bit hot-headed and driven. After completing his
meteorological studies, he seeks the meteorologist Köppen’s
advice in Hamburg and takes off on his first solo expedition
to Greenland. He barely survives the grim conditions. He
returns to go to Marburg to study, and three years later, he
also returns to see Köppen – and his daughter Else. They
get engaged shortly after, but the wedding is postponed, as
Alfred insists on going on another expedition to Greenland.
Alfred returns eventually, and in 9 , he marries Else.
He is drafted when Else is nine months’ pregnant, and
when he returns, his wife and baby are strangers to him,
and the war has taken its toll. Alfred turns more and more
to his studies. He presents his theory of the formation
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
0 FiCTiOn
© Frank Schinski
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, September 2011, 384 pp. ISBN: 978 3 421 04525 6
Jo Lendle
was born in 1968. His first studies were
in cultural pedagogy and animation
culturelle, followed by time at the
German Literature Institute in Leipzig.
Lendle edited the literary magazine
Edit and has been a visiting professor
and lecturer at several universities. He
was awarded the Leipzig Promotion
Prize for Literature in 1997. Today he
heads the DuMont publishing house.
Previous works:
Mein letzter Versuch, die Welt zu
retten (2009); Die Kosmonautin
(2008); Unter Mardern (1999)
‘Lendle lends his language an airy
lightness and a hidden melancholy.’
(Tagesspiegel)
and drift of the continents, his idea of an ‘Ur-Continent’
that he calls ‘All Land’ – but he is laughed at by the whole
scientific community (it will take thirty years after his death
in 9 0 until his theory is acknowledged). Eventually, as he
approaches his fiftieth birthday, he decides to go on another
expedition to Greenland, promising Else it will be his last.
Looking back on and summing up his life, he ultimately
presents himself as the ambiguous character that he is.
Trying so hard to be a family man, but ultimately failing, he
not only devoted his life to science, but was also repeatedly
drawn to the digressive paths and phenomena related to his
fields of research. An eternal sceptic, he is doomed never to
be truly happy with his life and accomplishments.
Lendle is a gifted writer, whose prose is rich in imagery,
whose descriptions are tender and precise. From the
beginning of this poetic novel, he slips into the boy Alfred’s
mind and describes the world through his eyes, a world in
which mundane things are fascinating, and in which one can
lose oneself.
Translation rights available from:
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt
Neumarkter Straße 28, 81673
München, Germany
Tel: + 49 89 4136 3313
Email: Gesche.Wendebourg@
randomhouse.de
Contact: Gesche Wendebourg
www. randomhouse.de
‘Jo Lendle has written a delicate,
romantic debut. We readers,
occasionally looking up at the stars,
applaud the author as he achieves that
distant aim of writing this novel, which,
in spite of its remote, spectacular and
radically romantic destination, manages
to travel lightly. Truly breathtaking.’
(Die Welt on Cosmonautin)
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt was
founded in 1831 and has published
works by many leading writers, scholars
and architects, as well as politicians
and journalists from Germany and
Europe, either in book form or within
the pages of one of its journals. The
DVA books’ section alone feature
works by twelve Nobel prizewinners,
four German Federal Presidents and
thirteen German Chancellors. Today
DVA’s reputation for publishing quality
literature is based on its editions of
work by poets such as Paul Celan,
Sarah Kirsch, Doris Runge, Ulla Hahn
and C.W. Aigner; by novelists such
as Joyce Carol Oates, Carlos Fuentes,
Sibylle Lewitscharoff and Thomas
Rosenboom; and of André Gide’s diaries
and Marcel Reich-Ranicki’s essays.

A book of Daniel
Kathrin Gerlof
Lokale Erschütterung
(Localised Tremor)
Aufbau Verlag, September 2011, 384 pp. ISBN: 978 3 351 03357 6
Gerlof’s novel of love, infidelity and motherhood throbs
with emotional tension and suspense. Localised Tremor
keeps readers guessing until the final chapter and demands
to be discussed.
Veronika and Hanns are an unhappily married couple in
their mid-forties, living in Berlin. Their sex life is unfulfilling
and they have forgotten how to talk to one another. Hanns
is an unemployed journalist and the onus has fallen on
Veronika to generate enough income to support them both.
We see her under pressure pitching to clients, while Hanns
flounders in their apartment or wanders around the city. He
periodically meets with a much younger friend called Daniel
towards whom he feels a conflicting array of emotions and
whose mannerisms remind him of someone else he knows.
The reasons for Veronika’s profound unhappiness and Hanns’s
relentless anger are revealed in their experiences of stillbirth,
miscarriage and infertility. References to their stillborn
son, also called Daniel, become as barbed weapons in their
destructive conversational exchanges. There are also oblique
references to another son of Veronika’s, born before her
relationship with Hanns, whose existence remains a closely
guarded secret. The reader is continually tantalised by the
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Rico Prauss
Kathrin Gerlof
was born in 1962 and now lives in
Berlin. She studied journalism before
working as an editor for a variety of
newspapers. She is now a freelance
journalist, film-maker and author. Her
debut novel Teuermanns Schweigen
was published in 2008 and was
acclaimed by buchkultur.de for its
addictive ideas.
Previous Works:
Alle Zeit (‘All the Time’, 2009; see
NBG 26); Treumanns Schweigen
(‘Treumann’s Silence‘, 2008)
half-revelations contained in Veronika’s interior monologue
and the possibility that this son is now trying to forge
contact with his mother through some rather threatening
letters. Veronika eventually seeks a hysterectomy and a
conversation with her gynaecologist leads her finally to
admit to the existence of her first son, all knowledge of
whom she has concealed for nearly thirty years. Hanns
accepts a job offer in a town some distance away, and when
the couple begin to live separately both are ‘unfaithful’:
Hanns begins to associate with the local hardline rightwing
group and Veronika has an affair. Reunited, Veronika
tells Hanns about her living child. Their suspicions focus on
Hanns’s friend Daniel and the climax of the novel consists of
the confrontation between Hanns and his putative step-son.
In a shocking dénouement, Daniel dies when a night out
with Hanns ends in assault by one of the town’s skinheads.
We never learn whether Daniel is in fact Veronika’s son.
Through dialogue, interior monologue and third
person narration, as well as the convincingly complex
characterisation throughout the novel, Gerlof has pulled
off a compelling portrayal of some of the contemporary
challenges of marriage. A gripping read.
Translation rights available from:
Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
Prinzenstraße 85, 10969 Berlin,
Germany
Tel: +49 30 28394 123
Email: ihmels@aufbau-verlag.de
Contact: Inka Ihmels
www.aufbau-verlag.de
Praise for Gerlof’s previous novels:
‘A very fine debut, full of allusions and
thrumming with mystery.’(Die Welt)
‘What a bewildering and moving book,
both lovely and sad.’ (taz)
Aufbau Verlag
was founded in 1945 and became the
leading cultural and literary publishing
house in East Germany. Besides
focusing on German and international
classics, exile, resistance and East
German writing (Hans Fallada, Lion
Feuchtwanger, Anna Seghers, Arnold
Zweig, Victor Klemperer), Aufbau has
a strong list of contemporary world
literature. Recent major successes
include Werner Bräunig’s Rummelplatz,
and novels by Fred Vargas, Donna
Cross, Eliot Pattison, Deon Meyer,
Hong Ying, Guillaume Musso, Robert
Schneider, Giles Foden and Polina
Daschkowa. The lovingly produced
children’s list includes works by Heinz
Janisch, Aljoscha Blau, Martin Karau,
Isabel Pin, Michael Sowa and Rotraut
Susanne Berner. Aufbau is an imprint
of Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG.
FiCTiOn

Children of darkness
Angelika Klüssendorf
Das Mädchen
(The Girl)
Klüssendorf’s portrayal of the hardship endured by a
sister and her younger brother during their brutalised
and brutalising childhood and adolescence is unflinching.
The strength of ‘The Girl’ is found precisely there – in her
capacity to endure her ordeal, to find escape hatches for
herself that are absolutely necessary to her literal survival.
Human waste rains down from an apartment window
onto the street below. An unnamed twelve-year-old and
her five-year-old brother, Alex, have been locked in by their
mother with only a bucket as a toilet, and the girl is dealing
with it as best she can. Then she puts on her mother’s
underwear and dances on the table for the construction
workers opposite; she tries to force her brother to join her,
slapping him when he protests.
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, August 2011, 192 pp. ISBN: 978 3 462 04284 9
This grim beginning is followed by an equally grim portrait
of family life. The mother is alcoholic and unstable and takes
pleasure in sadistically terrorizing her children and abusing
them physically. Alex is increasingly plagued by neuroses
that clearly derive from the punishment meted out to him
by his mother, and sometimes his sister, and while the girl
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
FiCTiOn
© Alex Reuter
Angelika Klüssendorf
was born in 1958 in Ahrensburg, and
now lives in Berlin. She was awarded
the Roswitha Prize of Bad Gandersheim
in 2004.
Previous works:
Alle leben so (2003); Aus allen
Himmeln (2004); Amateure (2009)
Longlisted for the German Book
Prize 2011
is too young to appreciate fully the psychological stress
her young brother is under, she does see that something is
wrong with him. Something is wrong with her, too, as the
reader soon discovers in her choice of ‘games’ and ‘play’.
Her favourite game is to stand at the side of a busy main
road, then dash in front of cars to test their ability to brake
in time. At some point she involves Alex in this game, with
the result that he is hit by a car and breaks his collarbone.
The girl’s self-destructive behaviour finally lands her in
a home. Accustomed to being shunned at school, she is
surprised to find that her outrageous behaviour and volatile
temper gain her a mixture of respect and fear. The last
scene depicts her lying in a field, watching a flight of geese
overhead, flying with them in her mind.
The Girl contains a number of disturbing scenes that
are written in such a way that the reader, too, becomes
anxious and fearful, particularly when the mother is
involved, but the author also opens the door to glimpses
of the woman the girl might one day become, if able to
rise above her upbringing.
Translation rights available from:
Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH
& Co. KG
Bahnhofsvorplatz 1, 50667 Köln,
Germany
Tel: +49 221 376 85 22
Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de
Contact: Iris Brandt
www.kiwi-verlag.de
‘Angelika Klüssendorf, the cool
champion amongst the masters of
society prose, analyses more precisely
than John Updike and more pointedly
than Ingeborg Bachmann. Terrible,
but terrific.’ (Die Zeit on Aus allen
Himmeln)
Kiepenheuer & Witsch
was founded in 1949 in Cologne by
Gustav Kiepenheuer and Joseph Caspar
Witsch. The press’s early authors
included Joseph Roth, Heinrich Böll
and Erich Maria Remarque. Today
Kiepenheuer & Witsch continues to
publish leading contemporary German,
Austrian and Swiss writers, as well as
international authors in translation. Its
list includes among many others the
book prize winner Kathrin Schmidt,
Frank Schätzing, Uwe Timm, David
Foster Wallace and J.D. Salinger. Its
non-fiction subjects cover sociology,
psychology, history and biography.
Kiepenheuer & Witsch is part of the
Holtzbrinck Group.

Seeing in a glass darkly
Christoph Poschenrieder
Der Spiegelkasten
(The Mirror Box)
Diogenes, September 2011, 224 pp. ISBN: 978 3 257 06788 0
In this gripping and well-told novel, Poschenrieder takes
a fresh approach to the Great War which will have wide
appeal. Concise and moving, The Mirror Box moves
seamlessly between the horrors of trench warfare and
modern-day Munich, as the young narrator becomes
increasingly immersed in photos, letters and reports about
the war left behind by his great-uncle, Ismar Manneberg,
a German-Jewish officer.
The great-nephew is a likeable but odd character. He is
employed by a mysterious organisation – a shield for the
CIA, he believes – to write English-language dossiers on
media coverage ‘of interest to the US government’. He is
aware of the ludicrous nature of his role: the information
he is employed to report on is already provided by the
newspapers. Then his employer decides to go digital, and
his days of gleefully poring over the newspapers with inkstained
fingers are a thing of the past. Increasingly dejected,
he ponders the negative effects of digital technology and
remembers the box of old papers and photos from his
great-uncle. Looking through them, he finds a mysterious
photograph of the ‘mirror box’.
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Daniela Agostini/Diogenes Verlag
Christoph Poschenrieder
was born near Boston in 1964 and
currently lives in Munich. He studied
philosophy in Munich and wrote
his thesis on Schopenhauer. He also
attended the Journalism School of
Columbia University, New York. He has
been working as a freelance journalist
and documentary filmmaker since
1993. Die Welt ist im Kopf was his
first novel.
Previous works
Die Welt ist im Kopf (‘The World in
the Head’, 2010; see NBG 27)
He discovers online forums for similar Great War enthusiasts
and ends up entering into a dialogue with WarGirl , who
seems to know a few things about the mysterious mirror
box and the doctor who created it, Karamchand. At first, the
narrator is unsure whether to trust her but he opens up and
agrees to meet her after she tells him she has some letters
sent by his great-uncle.
Interspersed with his attempts to find out more about the
mirror box are the passages about Ismar in the trenches.
He pretends to have a fiancée, and writes a letter to
this imaginary woman. A reply comes back. Shocked
but touched, he enters into a correspondence with the
mysterious recipient. Around the same time he begins to
visit Karamchand, who nursed him back to health after
being wounded in the field, and becomes increasingly
intrigued by the ‘mirror box’ treatment the doctor is
working on. All this enables him to keep a grip on his
senses amidst the chaos of trench warfare.
As this original and touching novel progresses, the tales of
the present-day narrator and Ismar run increasingly parallel
until they reach an intriguing, even chilling, conclusion.
Translation rights available from:
Diogenes Verlag AG Zürich
Sprecherstrasse 8 CH-8032 Zurich,
Switzerland
Tel: +41 44 2548554
Email: bau@diogenes.ch
Contact: Susanne Bauknecht
www.diogenes.ch
Praise for Die Welt ist im Kopf:
‘ A fantastical, stormy novel, clever and
witty.’ (Buchkultur)
‘ One of the most remarkable debuts
this spring’ (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
‘ An atmospheric book full of subtle wit’
(Die Welt)
Diogenes Verlag
was founded in Zurich in 1952 by
Daniel Keel and Rudolf C. Bettschart.
One of the leading international
publishing houses, it numbers among
its authors Alfred Andersch, Friedrich
Dürrenmatt, Patricia Highsmith, Donna
Leon, Bernhard Schlink and Patrick
Süskind. Children’s authors include
Tatjana Hauptmann, Ute Krause, Karl
Friedrich Waechter and Tomi Ungerer.
FiCTiOn

Child’s play
Monika Helfer
Oskar und Lilli
(Oskar and Lilli)
Deuticke Verlag, July 2011, 256 pp. ISBN: 978 3 552 06168 2
Oskar and Lilli is a book about children, told with the
simplicity of a children’s book; but it is not a book for
children. Told from the point of view of Oskar (seven) and
Lilli (nine), Helfer’s novel poignantly addresses the uglier
aspects of the adult world to which brother and sister are
exposed without either explanation or protection.
The day the children wake up to find their mother asleep
on the kitchen table with a strange man (they have never
known their father), Lilli persuades Oskar to leave home
with her. Social services arrange foster homes. Lilli is sent
to the dull but nice Rut; Oskar ends up in a vegetarian,
anti-television, energy-saving household consisting of two
teachers, a baby and a grandmother, Erika. Bored by the
teachers and their baby, Oskar spends more and more time
with Erika; he helps her as she grows steadily more ill (she
has Parkinson’s), and when she dies, she leaves him all her
money. When a second baby is on the way, Oskar is sent to
a new foster home, a guesthouse called the Dove, where he
is looked after by the landlady, the waitress, Puppa, and the
lorry driver, Bruno. Lilli, meanwhile, finds it hard to settle
down in school, and takes refuge in a kind of friendship
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Austria (see page 48)
FiCTiOn
© Stefan Kresser
Monika Helfer
was born in 1947 in Vorarlberg, Austria,
where she still works and lives with
her family. She has written novels,
short stories and children’s books. Her
many awards include the Robert Musil
Grant (1996) and the Austrian Prize for
Literature (1997).
Previous works:
Wenn der Bräutigam kommt (‘When
the bridegroom comes’, 1998), Bestien
im Frühling (‘Beasts in Spring’, 1999),
Mein Mörder (‘My Murderer’, 1999);
Bevor ich schlafen kann (‘Before I can
sleep’, 2010)
with Betti, the fattest girl in her class, and Betti’s heroinaddict
sister. Towards the end, Oskar and Lilli go together
to visit their mother, who is now in psychiatric care. Later
Rut confides in Oskar’s ex-foster-mother that she is getting
married and can no longer cope with Lilli. Brother and sister
leave the party and set off into the night with Bruno in his
lorry. The novel had begun with the children’s faces lit up
by a policeman’s torch; it ends with their faces lit up by
the moon.
Throughout Oskar and Lilli, fairytale-like elements coexist
with the unattractive and often grotesque details of
everyday life. Helfer pictures events through the children’s
innocent eyes; the discrepancy between what they see
and what the reader knows makes for a certain humour,
but also serves to heighten the sordid details. This is a
subtle, understated book written in simple, short sentences
– cleverly crafted and well-written. The references to
fairy-tale motifs scattered throughout the novel show that
Helfer knows exactly what she is doing, and the near
timelessness of the subject matter makes it suitable for
readers anywhere.
Translation rights available from:
Deuticke Verlag
Prinz-Eugen-Straße 30, A-1040 Wien,
Austria
Tel: +43 1 505 766112
Email: annette.lechner@zsolnay.at
Contact: Annette Lechner
www.zsolnay.at
Praise for Bevor ich schlafen kann:
‘ A fantastic mother-daughter dialogue,
and a must-read’ (Brigitte)
‘ Who can narrate the oddness of
relationships in our society like
Monika Helfer can – so laconic and so
precise?’ (Literatur und Kritik)
‘ A novel that is at once moving and
unsettling.’ (Die Furche)
Deuticke Verlag,
along with Paul Zsolnay Verlag, has
been part of Carl Hanser Verlag in
Munich since 2004. Deuticke was
founded in 1878 in Vienna. Initially the
firm focused on non-fiction (including
Sigmund Freud’s book on dreams in
1900 and much later, in 2001, the
international bestseller Blackbook on
Brand Companies). In recent years
Deuticke has established itself as a
publisher of fiction by internationally
renowned and contemporary authors,
among them Iris Murdoch and Lily
Brett, and Austrian writers such as
Paulus Hochgatterer, Daniel Glattauer
and Michael Köhlmeier.

As the curtain falls
Peter Henisch
Grosses Finale für Novak
(Novak’s Grand Finale)
Residenz Verlag, August 2011, 304 pp. ISBN: 978 3 701 71547 3
A man in late middle age who has been browbeaten over
the years by his wife has an epiphany and kills her so he can
listen to La Traviata in peace. With Henisch’s deft handling,
the plot itself is like an opera, gradually increasing in
intensity before culminating in the kind of tragedy that
is more common on the stage than in real life.
While in hospital, Novak is given opera music to listen
to by an Indonesian nurse, Manuela. He has never listened
to opera before, but gradually becomes smitten with both
the music and the nurse. On leaving hospital, Novak loses
his job and struggles with the sudden loss of structure in
his life. His wife, Herta, notices a change in her husband
and is enraged by his new love. She travels to the hospital
where Manuela works and complains that she ‘befriended’
her husband.
Novak and Herta finally separate. He attends a live opera
and believes he sees Manuela in the audience. At the end
of the performance, he approaches the woman he believes
is Manuela, but she does not recognise him. Bitterly
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Austria (see page 48)
© Ingo Pertramer
Peter Henisch
was born in Vienna in 1943. At
university he studied German,
philosophy, history and psychology and
later co-founded the left-wing literary
magazine Wespennest. Since 1971 he
has been living and writing in Vienna.
He has received numerous prizes for his
works, and his 2005 and 2007 novels
Die schwangere Madonna and Eine
sehr kleine Frau were longlisted for
the German Book Prize.
Previous works:
Eine sehr kleine Frau (‘A very little
woman’, 2007); Die schwangere
Madonna (‘The pregnant Madonna’,
2005); Schwarzer Peter (‘Black Peter’,
2000)
disappointed, Novak goes into a kind of catatonic state.
Herta takes him back home with her, and he resigns himself
to his lot. But when he learns how his wife caused Manuela
to lose her job, Novak is incensed and refuses to accompany
her on a trip abroad. On the day she leaves, Novak settles
down to listen to La Traviata through speakers rather than
headphones for the first time ever. However, Herta’s flight
does not leave, and she returns home to find him. She pulls
the stereo plug out of the wall just as he is listening to a
duet he loves, and he shoots her with a gun he keeps in
case of burglars. The book ends with Novak climbing up
to a watchtower in the forest with the gun and his CDs.
Henisch depicts scenes of modern-day small town life in
the West with sympathy and humour. His characters and
themes will appeal to a wide readership – downtrodden
husband who suppresses his emotions, if he is aware of
them at all, for decades; overbearing, malicious wife;
small-town racism and unquestioning acceptance of
changes brought about by modernity; love and the
meaning of life. Witty, ironic, sad, pertinent.
Translation rights available from:
Residenz Verlag.
Gutenbergstr. 12, 3100 St. Pölten,
Austria
Tel: +43 2742 802 1411
Email: r.anderle@residenzverlag.at
Contact: Renate Anderle
www.residenzverlag.at
‘ Henisch is a literary godsend. His
novels open the doors between politics
and fantasy, between earnestness and
eccentricity.’ (Die Zeit)
Residenz Verlag was founded in
1956 in Salzburg, initially concentrating
on fine art and non-fiction titles. During
the 1960s a fiction list was added, and
leading Austrian authors including H.C.
Artmann, Thomas Bernhard, Barbara
Frischmuth and Peter Handke published
their first work here. German and Swiss
writers were gradually included and
followed, in the 1980s, by international
authors in translation. The non-fiction
list includes books on contemporary
history as well as monographs of
nineteenth and twentieth century
artists and books on music, theatre and
architecture. Since 2001, in its Nilpferd
imprint, it has also been publishing
literary and artistic picture books and
fiction for young readers.
FiCTiOn

‘ What transformations I’d been through
over the years…’: Memoirs of an
Arabian Princess turns 25, by Kate Roy
‘Nine years ago I formed the
notion of recording some episodes
from my life for my children, who
had previously known nothing
of my background other than
that I was an Arab and hailed
from Zanzibar…’ – so opens
Emily Ruete’s Memoiren einer
arabischen Prinzessin (‘Memoirs
of an Arabian Princess’), generally
acknowledged as the earliest
surviving, published autobiography
of an Arab woman. First appearing
in 1886 with Berlin publishers H.
Rosenberg, and later with Friedrich
Luckhardt, it ran to four editions
that same year. 2011 marks the
book’s 125th anniversary. Though
not a new German book, it is
one that has been increasingly
re-evoked, reprinted and ‘retold’,
and seems destined for a long and
colourful afterlife.
Emily Ruete was born in Zanzibar
in 1844 as Sayyida (which she
translated as ‘Princess’) Salme bint
Saïd ibn Sultan, daughter of the
Sultan of Oman and Zanzibar. After
an eventful childhood and young
adulthood in various residences
around the island, detailed in
her memoirs, she moved in her
early twenties to a house in the
town, next door to German trader
Heinrich Ruete. The pair fell in love;
the princess became pregnant
and fled to Aden, where she was
joined some months later by
Heinrich, who had stayed on in
Zanzibar – unchallenged – to wind
up his business affairs. She was
baptised and married on the same
day, immediately setting sail for
Europe. Landing in Marseille, they
eventually continued by train to
Heinrich’s home town of Hamburg,
Stylised cover image of Ruete, 1907
English-language version
ARTiClE
Emily Ruete
a journey on which their first-born
child died. After Heinrich’s own
death in a tram accident in 1870,
Emily Ruete, mother to three young
children, made the difficult decision
to stay on in Germany. In financial
straits and desperate to claim what
she perceived was her rightful
inheritance, the coming years
saw her embroiled in Bismarck’s
aspirations for East Africa.
‘The story of her life is as
instructive as history and as
fascinating as fiction,’ wrote Oscar
Wilde in his 1888 review of the
memoirs in Woman’s World.
Wilde’s words were prophetic
– Emily Ruete’s story has inspired
both these treatments in the
intervening years. The ‘elopement’
seemed the stuff of fairy tales
(witness the countless versions in
late-nineteenth-century illustrated
magazines with their requisite
set of familiar characters) and
romance novels (the latest
from 2010), all quick to evoke
shades of The Abduction from
the Seraglio and the Arabian
Nights. And Ruete herself
was characteristically – and
significantly – prosaic here: ‘Our
friendship, which gradually evolved
into a deep love, was soon known
about the city and my brother
Majid also learned of it – I never
experienced hostility from him
on this account, let alone the
imprisonment that has been the
subject of some tall tales.’ But
some early reviewers and the
second English translator were
quick to acknowledge the
practical, social, and historical
value of the memoirs. The
latter is probably the foremost
interpretation today, where its
© Leiden University Library
usefulness for highlighting ‘what
is/was going on in Africa’ has given
way to its perceived illumination
of an obsession of our times, the
‘inner life’ of Muslim women. We
move, to take just a few examples,
from Wilde’s primary observation
that Ruete’s book ‘protests against
the idea that Oriental women are
degraded or oppressed’, through
French historian and literary critic
Arvède Barine’s 1889 indignation
that the pages ‘are written with
the conviction that they will
shake up our ideas’, to Fedwa
Malti-Douglas’ 1996 verdict that
the narrative is by no means tied
to its time, but has ‘the ability
to insert itself into many of the
contemporary debates on the
Muslim world both in the East
and the West.’
Frank and open about her
attitudes, Ruete’s narrative
contains much more than the
title of its new German version,
‘Life in the Sultan’s Palace’, would
suggest, not all of it palatable for
the modern reader: a passionate
denunciation of the perfidy
of the English government; a
sense of confusion at being used
and abused by great powers in
the scramble for Africa; more
controversially, advice for German
would-be colonists; and most
controversially of all, a defence
of slavery. The slavery angle
has rightly taken its place in
postcolonial and other recent
revisitings of her work: directly in
a 2009 ‘intervention’ by the artist
Jokinen, setting the opposing
figure of a former slave against an
exhibition on Ruete’s life; and by
juxtaposition and interweaving
with the life story of slave-trader
Tippu Tip in Hans Christoph Buch’s
novel Sansibar Blues (Eichborn,
2008) and Christiane Bird’s
historical exploration The Sultan’s
Shadow (Random House, 2010).
Two English-language versions
of Ruete’s memoirs are readily
accessible, an 1888 anonymous
translation, published by Ward and
Downey (London) and D. Appleton
(New York), and a 1907 version
translated by Lionel Strachey, and
originally published by Doubleday,
Page & Co. (New York). Both have
sparked a flurry of reprintings in
© private
Memoiren einer arabischen
Prinzessin, 4th edition, 1886
the last few years (in many cases
by publishers with little knowledge
of the original, but prizing the
perceived ‘documentary value’
of the text), so that to date we
have to negotiate their foibles
– the older clunky and sometimes
inaccurate, and the younger with
some substantial cuts and a
rather more sensational framing
of the contents. Arguably neither
captures the energy and seemingly
stylised simplicity of the original.
An ‘academic’ version also exists
in E. van Donzel’s somewhat
heftily-priced An Arabian Princess
Between Two Worlds (Brill,
1993), perhaps best read in the
numerous libraries it has made its
home. His is, to date, the only work
to include a translation of Ruete’s
later texts, in particular her ‘Letters
Home’ which chart her less than
positive experiences in an often
prejudiced German society.
As the memoirs move into an age
of print-on-demand and Kindle
(a ‘Victorian erotica’ version is
currently on the market), they
continue to be retold in new
formats and media. 2007 saw a
documentary film, and there is talk
of an opera.
‘So let my book make its way out
into the world,’ wrote Ruete in the
conclusion to her preface, ‘and win
just as many friends for itself as
I have been fortunate enough to
find wherever I have gone.’ Did she
imagine quite how far – and how
long – it would roam?
Kate Roy is
a Leverhulme
Visiting Research
Fellow at the
University of
Liverpool and
a John Dryden
Translation Prize
recipient for 2011. She is currently
working on the various incarnations of
Emily Ruete’s life story, old and new.

The girl who played with fire
Agnes Hammer
Nacht, komm!
(Night, Come!)
This gritty thriller successfully combines the genres of teen
and crime fiction, set against the backdrop of a football
World Cup. Reminiscent of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander,
the protagonist Lissy is unusual, not to say dysfunctional,
and much of the interest of the story lies in her development
as a character.
Sentenced to community service in an old people’s home for
shoplifting and assault, Lissy makes friends with Nele, and
through her gets to know Daniel, Nele’s on-off boyfriend.
Lissy is strongly attracted to Daniel, and he apparently to
her, and they become sexually involved. After an argument
over Daniel, Lissy shoves Nele against a locker, scratching
her arm on Nele’s bracelet. The next evening, Nele is found
dead by the rubbish bins outside the home.
The police’s suspicions quickly fall on Lissy: she has been in
and out of trouble throughout her childhood and traces of
her DNA are found on the bracelet. And she can’t provide
an alibi: on the night of the murder, Lissy’s homeless father
collapsed in the street, and instead of going straight to the
hospital to be with him, Lissy went off looking for Daniel.
Unable to find him at their agreed meeting place, Lissy spent
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© privat
script5, an imprint of Loewe Verlag GmbH, September 2011, 288 pp. ISBN: 978 3 839 00125 7
Agnes Hammer
grew up with five siblings in
Westerwald in Germany, before
moving to Cologne to study German
literature and philosophy. Today
she works at an institute teaching
young adults from difficult social
backgrounds. Since 2005 she has also
worked as an anti-aggression trainer.
Hammer was awarded the prestigious
‘Kranichsteiner’ scholarship for the
exceptional Herz, klopf!, published
by script5. She also received the
‘Kurd-Laßwitz’ scholarship this year.
Previous works:
Dorfbeben (‘Village Rumours’, 2010;
see NBG 28), Herz, klopf! (2009),
Bewegliche Ziele (2008)
the night wandering around the city on her own.
One policeman in particular seems convinced of Lissy’s
guilt; he also happens to be a close friend of Daniel’s father,
and fails to investigate other possible suspects properly,
including Daniel himself. He even lets slip to Daniel that
there is a potential witness to the crime in the form of a
one-eyed homeless woman. Before they can question her
again, however, she is found unconscious, poisoned by antifreeze
that has been mixed into a bottle of lemonade. Lissy
decides to investigate Nele’s death for herself and discovers
uncomfortable truths about Nele and Daniel, before solving
the mystery of Nele’s death in a tense and unexpected
conclusion to the story.
This is an extremely readable novel, and its dialogue is
particularly well-crafted. It is also very thought-provoking:
from its depiction of the prejudices at work in police
investigations to Lissy’s interaction with her father. He is
one of a group of alcoholic homeless people who passersby
would usually go out of their way to avoid, but who also
– as this tale shows – have families, pasts, and their own
stories to tell.
Translation rights available from:
Loewe Verlag GmbH
Buehlstrasse 4, 95463 Bindlach,
Germany
Tel: +49 9208 51 283
Email: e.kneissl@loewe-verlag.de
Contact: Eva Kneissl
www.loewe-verlag.de/rights
Praise for Dorfbeben:
‘Hammer’s characters sparkle with
life, convincing even in their craziest
performances!’ (Titel-Magazin)
‘Agnes Hammer narrates with
oppressive intensity.’ (Börsenblatt)
‘Dorfbeben is a tense thriller and
at the same time a love story. It’s a
journey into the past and a piece
about betrayal and civil courage.’
(Die Rheinpfalz)
Loewe Verlag
was founded in 1863 by Friedrich
Loewe in Leipzig. It is one of the oldest
and most important children’s books
publishers in Germany. In the early
twentieth century, Loewe published
fairy tales, children’s classics and
picture books. Heinrich Hoffmann’s
Struwwelpeter (1903) and other great
classics were first published by the
firm. Today Loewe publishes a broad
range of titles, from picture books to
high quality children’s fiction, and
non-fiction for both children and young
adults. Authors include Cornelia Funke
and Kai Meyer.
CHilDREn AnD YOUnG ADUlTS’ 7

Translation rights available from:
Ravensburger Buchverlag Otto Maier
GmbH
Email: Florence.christ@ravensburger.de
Contact: Florence Christ
www.foreignrights-ravensburger.com
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
Frank Schmeißer was born in 1968
in Hilden in North Rhine-Westphalia.
After successfully completing his
training as a bookseller, he worked
for a year in a bookshop in Rome. He
currently lives in Cologne and writes
scripts for a variety of television
programmes. Schurken überall! is his
first children’s book.
Ravensburger Buchverlag
was founded in 1883 by Otto Maier.
He was impressed by the new
educational ideas of his time and
tried to implement them in his books
and games. His aim to produce only
the best is still the dictum of the firm,
which survived the two World Wars
and has grown into an international
company. It is considered one of
Germany’s leading publishing houses
and this year celebrates its 125th
anniversary.
CHilDREn AnD YOUnG ADUlTS’
© Thekla Ehling
‘ The book’s message is clear: Don’t
take everything seriously, enjoy life!’
(Lizzynet)
‘Wonderfully humorous vacation
reading for boys and girls’
(Die Presse)
Frank Schmeißer
Schurken überall!
(Villains Everywhere!)
Ravensburger, August 2011, 224 pp. ISBN: 978 3 473 36835 9
‘The Amazing Three and a Half’
Eleven-year-old Sebastian keeps a secret diary which details his
adventures as The Brain, leader of a group of superheroes. His
gang includes Barbara (Action-Bärbel), who is hyperactive and
refuses to take her medication, Martin (The Chameleon) who is so
unnoticeable as to be completely invisible, and Martin’s invisible
friend Dieter, who is only allowed half a vote at meetings due to
his imaginary status and his cowardice.
In the tradition of Roald Dahl, Sebastian records the heroic
activities of ‘The Amazing Three and a Half’, as they defend their
beloved class teacher, Ms Daffodil, from the plots of Mr Knarz,
the Physics teacher, and the children in his class who are without
exception both stupid and mean. Every page brings on new hilarity
and crackpot schemes as The Three and a Half set in motion a
series of daring plans, each more outrageous and ill-considered
than the previous, including the spray-painting of the class hamster
and a brave attempt to climb the ropes of the gymnasium dressed
in a giraffe costume.
This fast-paced and utterly original novel will delight younger
readers with its highly visual portrayal of fantastical villains and
a gang of heroic outcasts.
Kirsten Reinhardt
Fennymores Reise oder: Wie man
Dackel im Salzmantel macht
(Fennymore’s Travels or How To Make
Dachshund in Salt Crust)
Carlsen Verlag, October 2011, 144 pp. ISBN: 978 3 551 55582 3
Dealing with death
Translation rights available from:
Carlsen Verlag GmbH
Tel: +49 40 39804 269
Email: steiner.daniela@carlsen.de
Contact: Daniela Steiner
www.carlsen.de/rights
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
A sample translation of this title
is available on the NBG website
In this very impressive debut novel – tipped as a nominee for
the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, the most renowned German
prize for children’s literature – eleven-year-old Fennymore has
been living alone, with only his bicycle for company, ever since
his parents disappeared three years ago. The bicycle thinks it is
a horse, and Fennymore helps his aunt hunt dachshunds, to make
her favourite dish: dachshund in salt crust.
When his aunt dies of dachshund poisoning, Fennymore rescues a
box of prized possessions from her flat and his bicycle takes him to
meet a strange gentleman called Hubertus, aka Death. A few years
before, Hubertus became tired of his work and struck a Faustian
bargain with the local mayor, Doctor Clockgood. In exchange for
being allowed to work only in the local retirement home, he had to
take two souls whose time hadn’t yet come: Fennymore’s parents.
Young readers will be absolutely engrossed by this charming and
witty piece of classic storytelling, as Fennymore tries to outwit
Clockgood and find out why he wanted his parents, who were
inventors, dead in the first place.
Kirsten Reinhardt was born in 1977
in a picturesque little village near
Lueneburg. Now she lives and works in
Berlin. Her manuscript of Fennymore’s
Travels or: How To Make Dog in Salt
Crust was awarded the Oldenburger
Kinder- und Jugendbuchpreis in 2009.
Kirsten Reinhardt loves reading comics,
and has never eaten a dog in her life.
Carlsen Verlag was founded in 1953.
After the success of the PETZI series in
German daily papers Forlaget Carlsen/
Denmark was prompted to establish
a German subsidiary, trading under
the name of CARLSEN Verlag. The Pixi
booklets, launched in 1954, proved to
be a hugely successful venture. Since
then CARLSEN has published more
than 1,300 titles with a total print-run
of more than 250 million copies.

Kathrin Schrocke
Freak City
(Freak City)
Bibliographisches Institut / Sauerländer, January 2010
208 pp. ISBN: 978 3 7947 7081 4
Giving love a chance
Translation rights available from:
Bibliographisches Institut GmbH
Tel: +49 621 3901199
Email: antje.moelle@bi-media.de
Contact: Antje Moelle
www.sauerlaender.de
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Ingo Dumreicher
‘Kathrin Schrocke tells a deeply
touching love story. Most
importantly, she has opened up
a new world to young people.’
(General-Anzeiger)
‘An extraordinary love story,
told with empathy and wit.’
(Westdeutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung)
Told in the first person by fifteen-year-old Mika with lively
spontaneity and disarming humour, Freak City is a sensitive
and convincing portrait of teenage life – from the torments
experienced by adolescent boys in their obsession with sex
to the difficulties of relating to their parents.
Inconsolable after being dumped by his girlfriend, Mika retreats
for hours to the solitude of his bedroom. His best mates lure him
into town to distract him, where they see an attractive young
girl step out into the road without looking, causing a huge lorry
to screech to a halt and miss her by a whisker. Soon after, Mika
follows his ex to a house called ‘Freak City’, where he overhears
her in the bar sniggering about him to her friends. Retreating to
another room, he sees the girl who had nearly got run over, playing
billiards. Without a word she hands him a cue. An older woman
joins them, and starts making hand gestures to the girl, who
responds in the same way. Mika realises she is deaf.
Alongside the agonies of teenage emotions in the course of their
developing friendship, this captivating book is also a perceptive
insight into the isolation experienced by the deaf.
Kathrin Schrocke was born in 1975
in Augsburg. She studied German
and psychology in Bamberg. Schrocke
has received numerous prizes and
nominations for her work including the
Nettetaler Youth Book Prize (2010),
the nomination for the German Youth
Literature Prize (2011) and for the
Hansjörg-Martin Prize for the best
German Youth Thriller (2010). She lives
in Berlin and is the author of numerous
stories and plays, as well as novels for
children and young adults.
www.kathrin-schrocke.de/
Previous works: Dorfprinzessinnen
(‘Village Princesses’, 2009)
For more information on Sauerländer
Verlag please contact NBG
Andrea Weibel
Freya und das Geheimnis
der Großmutter
(The Secret of the Silbernagels)
Verlag Jungbrunnen, July 2011, 198 pp. ISBN: 978 3 7026 5834 2
‘The other side of the stream’
This is a terrific debut novel from an author with not only an expert
eye for intriguing historical detail but also a rare gift for strong plot
and vivid characters.
Freya Silbernagel, an orphan, lives high up in the Alps until she is
sent down to the valley for school. The schoolmaster is ignorant
and tyrannical, as are the relatives she lodges with; her uncle is a
religious bigot and her aunt sneers at the other villagers, especially
the tenant farmers on the wrong side of the stream. Freya befriends
the son of one of these families and learns that some of them
preserve old pagan beliefs. A midnight revel in the forest introduces
her to some of their mysteries. Freya, however, has a family mystery
of her own to investigate. There are no supernatural foes, but the
enemies Freya contends with are the more convincing: a cow’s
infected udder becomes a major plot point, sickness and childbirth
in the pre-modern age are described as terrifying and dangerous,
and human folly and evil are shown for what they are.
While raising questions about superstition, science, religion and
ethics, this is a low-key but deeply involving story that promises
to be a stand-out success.
Translation rights available from:
Verlag Jungbrunnen
Tel: +43 1 512 12 99 74
Email: Moosleitner@jungbrunnen.co.at
Contact: Martina Moosleitner
www.jungbrunnen.co.at
Application for assistance with
translation costs:
Austria (see page 48)
© Verlag Jungbrunnen
Andrea Weibel was born in
Switzerland in 1966. She grew up
in the canton Zug and trained as a
teacher. Thereafter she studied history
in Zurich and started to write articles
for a newspaper. After her final degree
she worked first as a journalist, then for
the Swiss Historical Encyclopedia. She
lives with her partner in Bern.
Jungbrunnen was established in
1923 with the aim of providing good
literature to children and young people
who had little access to books. The
publisher’s emphasis still rests on
quality, both of text and image, and on
taking their young audience seriously.
Many Jungbrunnen books have become
classics and are already delighting
a third generation of children, not
least Mira Lobe’s Die Omama im
Apfelbaum, which has been translated
into twenty-one languages.
CHilDREn AnD YOUnG ADUlTS’ 9

Preview
This autumn brings three very different
novels by established authors to our
bookshelves, bound to feed the review pages
and blogs for months: an epic novel by a
renowned Iranian-German writer, a first
novel by a bestselling author of short stories,
and a new taboo-breaking book by one of
Germany’s most controversial young authors.
Dein Name
Navid Kermani
Hanser Verlag
Renowned writer Navid Kermani is the
author of an extraordinary novel out this
autumn. Five years in gestation, Dein
Name (‘Your Name’) is nothing short of
an epic: 1232 pages of reflection on life
itself – and on death. Kermani absorbs
his family’s present and past, with his
grandfather’s emigration from the Middle
East to Germany at the novel’s core, and
thereby weaves the European present
and the Iranian past into an intricate
tapestry of tales and voices.
Born in Germany to Iranian parents,
Kermani is one of Germany’s foremost
thinkers in the field of religious and cultural affairs, and a writer of immense
agility and range. He writes regularly for the main German broadsheets, as well
as publishing essays, non-fiction books and books for children.
Kermani’s book The Terror of God is published this year in the UK by Polity Press.
The Bachmann Prize 2011
This year saw the 35th Festival of German-Language Literature,
which takes place annually in Klagenfurt, Austria and involves several
days of readings and intense discussion. All of the competing extracts
can be read in English translation
at bachmannpreis.eu/en.
This year, Austrian author Maja
Haderlap was awarded the
Bachmann Prize for an extract from
her novel Engel des Vergessens
(Wallstein, 2011). The shortlist
included Michel Božiković, Antonia
Baum and Linus Reichlin, all
reviewed in this issue (pp. 2, 5 and
19). Maja Haderlap, winner of the
Bachmann Prize 2011
Michel Božiković Antonia Baum
0 nEwS AnD inFORMATiOn
© ORF/Bachmannpreis
© ORF/Bachmannpreis
© ORF/Bachmannpreis
Der Fall Collini
Ferdinand von Schirach
Piper Verlag
Ferdinand von Schirach has already
made waves in the book world with his
collections of short stories that arise from
his experiences as a Criminal Defence
Lawyer (Crime and Guilt, published
in the UK by Chatto & Windus). These
stories are perfectly formed pieces that
combine suspense with reflection – on,
as the titles suggest, judgement, guilt
and responsibility – and hit humorous
notes, too. So Schirach’s first foray into
the longer form, with his novel Der
Fall Collini (‘The Collini Case’), is much
anticipated. Here, a young lawyer is
obliged to defend a man who does not
wish to be defended, who admits murder but refuses to give a motive,
and begs the question: ‘What makes someone who has lived a guilt-free life
suddenly turn to murder?’
Schoßgebete
Charlotte Roche
Piper Verlag
Charlotte Roche’s debut novel was
a huge international bestseller – the
controversial novel Feuchtgebiete
(Wetlands) that shocked and delighted
millions of readers with its open and
graphic tale of female sexuality. In her
new novel, Roche turns to the ‘taboo’
of marital sex, peeling back the layers
of convention and repression to examine
gender roles, a more ‘mature’ sexuality,
and what happens when a chance event
turns your world upside down.
The German Book Prize 2011
Launched in 2005, the German
Book Prize is the equivalent of
the Man Booker Prize, seeking the
best novel written in German in
each publishing year. It is awarded
at the Frankfurt Book Fair in
October. Three of the six winning
titles have already been translated
into English: Arno Geiger’s We Are
Doing Fine (Ariadne Press 2010),
Katharina Hacker’s The Have-Nots
(Europa Editions 2008) and Julia
Franck’s The Blind Side of the
Heart (Harvill 2009).
This year’s longlist was announced
in mid-August and includes:
Blumenberg by Sibylle
Lewitscharoff (see review page
9), Angelika Klüssendorf’s Das
Mädchen (see review page 32),
Navid Kermani, Dein Name
(see above), Vorabend by Peter
Kurzeck (reviewed in
issue 29) and the lead title from
our spring issue, Adams Erbe by
Astrid Rosenfeld.
Angelika Klüssendorf
© Alex Reuter

Edinburgh International Book Festival
This year, Edinburgh
International Book Festival
again earned its reputation as one
of Britain’s leading international
literature festivals. Alongside
authors from Mexico, Poland,
Israel, Sweden and Pakistan,
a total of seven authors from
Austria, Germany and Switzerland
gave readings and took part in
discussions during the two-week
long festival.
Jenny Erpenbeck
After Erpenbeck’s great
performance at Jewish Book Week
in London earlier this year, she
returned to the UK to talk about
her latest novel Visitation. She
was interviewed on stage by
British author Michel Faber, who
considers Erpenbeck to be ‘one of
the finest, most exciting authors
alive’ (The Guardian).
Clemens Meyer
Meyer took to the stage with his
translator Katy Derbyshire and
British author Stuart Evers, who
also wrote the introduction to
Meyer’s stories – just out in English
(see page 23). In a fascinating
and often hilarious discussion,
brilliantly chaired by Stuart Kelly,
the rain thundered down onto the
marquee roof as the conversation
took in the question of influence
and the status of the short story
– and two new terms were coined:
‘Dirty Surrealism’ and ‘appointed’
[the opposite of disappointed].
Nicol Ljubić
Reviewed in NBG Spring 2010,
German-Croation author Ljubić’s
Stillness of the Sea was published
in English this year. He appeared
in front of a full house to discuss
writing after and about war with
Penny Simpson, a British author
whose novel is set in Croatia
after the Balkan conflicts. Ljubić’s
discussion of his novel and of
the questions that it raises were
as thoughtful, reflective and
compelling as the novel itself.
Judith Schalansky
Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote
Islands takes readers on a magical
tour through the world’s most farflung
islands and archipelagos. She
discussed this extraordinary book
with Alastair Bruce, whose debut
novel traces a man’s journey back
from exile on an isolated island.
Schalansky’s new novel, Der Hals
der Giraffe (‘The Giraffe’s Neck’),
is just out with Suhrkamp.
Julya Rabinowich
Rabinowich came to Edinburgh
to talk about her debut novel
Splithead, an enchanting story of
emigration and exile from Russia
to Austria. The same journey that
the author herself took as a child,
Rabinowich has injected parts of
her own life story with energy,
reflection and a fairy-tale aura.
Urs Widmer
Prize-winning Swiss author Widmer
was in Edinburgh to talk about
his novel My Mother’s Lover,
just out in English. Widmer and
his translator Donal McLaughlin
were joined on stage by British
author Helen Walsh.
Judith Hermann
Renowned Berlin author Judith
Hermann came to Edinburgh
to talk about her new novel-inshort-stories,
Alice – out this
autumn in English. If you missed
her in August, Hermann will also
be at Cheltenham Festival in
October (see below).
Cheltenham Literature Festival
Jan Costin Wagner
Crime writer Costin Wagner sets his chilling tales in Finland. His third book
in English translation, The Winter of the Lions, came out this year, and
his new novel is just out in German (see page 19). He is joined on stage by
Scottish crime writer Val McDermid.
Friday October
9pm
Imperial Square
© Dennis Yenmez
Clemens Meyer signs copies of
All the Lights
Nicol Ljubić
Judith Hermann
Acclaimed short story writer Judith Hermann now has three collections
out in English, starting with the seminal Summerhouse, Later, and
most recently with Alice. She appears at Cheltenham with British
author Polly Sampson.
Sunday October
noon
Imperial Square
nEwS AnD inFORMATiOn

‘Honesty will stand above all’
Werner Heisenberg, Elisabeth Heisenberg, Edited by Anna Maria Hirsch-Heisenberg
“ Meine liebe Li!”
Der Briefwechsel 1937-1946
(“My dear Li!” Correspondence 1937-1946)
Residenz Verlag, September 2011, 352 pp. ISBN: 978 3 701 73247 0
Published partly as a result of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen,
a play which re-opened the discussion about Werner
Heisenberg’s role in World War II, and partly in an attempt
to bring closure to the controversy surrounding his wartime
activities, My Dear Li! is an extremely important document
for historians, biographers, and physicists alike. The book
comprises the correspondence between the Nobel Prizewinning
German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his wife
Elisabeth during the years 9 7 to 9 , introduced by their
eldest daughter, Anna Maria Hirsch. The letters are largely
left to speak for themselves, apart from those from 9 ,
where the corresponding chapter includes Werner’s diary
entries for the last fourteen days before his arrest at the
end of the War.
Three important strands run through the letters. First, they
are a testimony to the period in terms both of what is
said and of what could not be said for fear of the censor.
They portray the stark realities of everyday life with all
its difficulties throughout the wartime period. Second, the
letters help to clarify a number of the questions that have
arisen in connection with Werner Heisenberg. Why did he not
leave to go to America when he had the opportunity? The
The Heisenbergs in 1937
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Austria (see page 48)
nOn-FiCTiOn
© Privatarchiv Familie Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)
was one of the most prominent figures
in Theoretical Physics and Quantum
Mechanics. In 1932 he received
the Nobel Prize in Physics for the
formulation of his Uncertainty Principle.
He stayed in Germany between 1933
and 1945, which led to much animosity
against him. From 1939 onwards he
worked on the development of nuclear
power plants, was detained in England
in 1945 and released a year later to
help to develop an institute for Physics
in Göttingen. From 1958-1970 he was
head of the Max Planck Institute for
Physics in Munich.
Anna Maria Heisenberg, the eldest
daughter of Werner and Elisabeth
Heisenberg, was born in 1938. She
studied Music and Psychology and
worked as a teacher in Bonn. She lives
letters make it clear that he felt duty-bound to continue to
support the development of science in his country beyond
the end of the war, which he was convinced Germany
would lose, and to work thereafter in the interests of the
New Europe. At the same time, he was not happy with his
work on the uranium project, which he saw as meaningless;
however, the project allowed him to prevent himself and
his colleagues from being sent to the Front. He perhaps
underestimated the dangers of this route and always
focused on the peaceful exploitation of atomic energy
after the war, rather than the realities of creating the atom
bomb for Germany. Always on his guard to appear loyal, his
letters reveal his growing exhaustion and his longing to be
at one with nature. Elisabeth’s responses are thus always
of great comfort to him. This leads to the third strand
running through the letters, namely the strengthening of
the relationship of the couple and how they manage to help
each other through the stormy period.
Meticulously edited, the letters provide precious, rich
and vivid images of the lives of Werner and Elisabeth
Heisenberg.
near Munich. In 2003 she published
letters sent to her parents up to 1945,
entitled “Liebe Eltern! Briefe aus
kritischer Zeit 1918-1945”.
Translation rights available from:
Residenz Verlag
Gutenbergstr. 12, 3100 St.Pölten,
Austria
Tel: +43 2742 802 1411
Email: r.anderle@residenzverlag.at
Contact: Renate Anderle
www.residenzverlag.at
Residenz Verlag
was founded in 1956 in Salzburg,
initially concentrating on fine art and
non-fiction titles. During the 1960s
a fiction list was added, and leading
Austrian authors including H.C.
Artmann, Thomas Bernhard, Barbara
Frischmuth and Peter Handke published
their first work here. German and Swiss
writers were gradually included and
followed, in the 1980s, by international
authors in translation. The non-fiction
list includes books on contemporary
history as well as monographs of
nineteenth and twentieth century
artists and books on music, theatre and
architecture. Since 2001, in its Nilpferd
imprint, it has also been publishing
literary and artistic picture books and
fiction for young readers.

Found in a desert land
The Bible Hunter offers a fascinating account of the
history of the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest surviving
bound books in the world and the oldest copy of the
New Testament in existence. Gottschlich describes the
manuscript’s long and complex history, from its origins in
the fourth century CE, to its present home in the British
Library where the complete text has been digitalised.
In , palaeographer and academic Constantin von
Tischendorf, driven by an obsession with the origins of the
Bible, discovered the Codex Sinaiticus in the Greek Orthodox
Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai Desert. Of the
9 sheets of parchment which he correctly identified as
belonging to a Greek Bible manuscript which pre-dated the
Vatican’s, he managed to remove forty-three and published
a transcription and commentary two years later. Unable to
convince the monks to release any further sheets from the
manuscript, Tischendorf eventually arranged to visit the
monastery in 9 under the patronage of Tsar Alexander
II of Russia. In order to retain the Tsar’s protection of the
monastery, the monks permitted the manuscript to be
loaned and it was taken to St Petersburg. It remained there
until 9 when it was bought by the British Library for
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
© Christoph Links Verlag GmbH, Berlin
Jürgen Gottschlich
Der Bibeljäger. Die abenteuerliche Suche
nach der Urfassung des Neuen Testaments
(The Bible Hunter)
Ch. Links Verlag, September 2010, 220 pp. ISBN: 978 3 861 53 594 2
Jürgen Gottschlich
was born in 1954. He studied
philosophy and journalism in Berlin. In
1979 he co-founded the taz newspaper,
where he worked as a journalist until
1993. He continued as deputy editorin-chief
before moving on to become
the editor-in-chief of the Wochenpost
weekly in 1994. Since 1998 he has
worked as a correspondent for a variety
of newspapers in Istanbul.
Previous works:
Türkei: Ein Land jenseits der
Klischees (‘Turkey: A Land beyond
Clichés’, 2008)
£ 00,000, which was raised by public subscription.
It is alleged that Tischendorf may well have deceived the
monks in his pursuit of the truth and preservation of the
manuscript, and Gottschlich makes a convincing case for
this interpretation of events.
The ten chapters of the book – part-travelogue, parthistorical
study and critique – interweave several narrative
strands: the author’s own visit to the Sinai; Tischendorf’s
life and career; the history of the Bible and the Church;
the history and life of the monks in the Monastery of
St Catherine; the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus and
attempts to procure it; and the story of the manuscript
to the present day. Gottschlich’s open-minded approach to
the monks and their life and liturgy contrasts sharply with
the colonialist and patronising tone used by Tischendorf.
This compelling study is the first of its kind to focus on the
history of the Codex Sinaiticus, and is impressive in the
breadth of its focus. It raises important questions about the
nature of scholarship, and about the complex issue of how
– and in particular where – the treasures of Antiquity are
best preserved and displayed.
Translation rights available from:
Ch. Links Verlag
Schönhauser Allee 36, Kulturbrauerei
Haus S, 10435 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 30 44 02 32 23
Email:
redaktion@christoph-links-verlag.de
Contact: Johanna Links
www.christoph-links-verlag.de
‘An adventurous journey through 2,000
years of cultural history.’ (Stern)
‘The “adventurous search for the
original version of the new testament”
itself becomes an extremely worthwhile
and instructive reading adventure.’
(Deutsche Welle)
Ch. Links Verlag
was one of the first independent
publishing houses to be launched
after the abolition of censorship in the
German Democratic Republic in the
autumn of 1989. The list concentrated
on the history of Stalinism and
communism in the GDR, before
expanding to cover such nonfiction
areas as the Federal Republic of
Germany, the history of German
colonialism and the legacy of National
Socialism. It now includes international
history and politics.
‘With great care, Jürgen Gottschlich
explains a story for believers and
non-believers alike, which takes us
deep into the culture shock of the
19th century.’ (InfoRadio)
nOn-FiCTiOn

How the mighty are fallen
Each of the fifteen contributions in this landmark collection
of essays contains illuminating insights into a particular
culture and society, focusing on the historical and political
significance of the symbolic and physical deaths of dictators
around the globe.
Stretching from Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (but with
an emphasis on the twentieth century), each essay reads
as an individual case study in the mechanisms of power
that both sustain and lead to the downfall of dictatorial
regimes and the men who lead them. Accumulatively,
these fascinating descriptions of authoritarian (or even
totalitarian) rule highlight the fragile nature of power, even
in those regimes where the dictator appears to have an iron
grip on society and politics. Several of the essays highlight
the many ‘deaths’ of the dictator: the symbolic death
resulting from their removal from power as well as their
physical death, often long after dictatorial rule has ended.
From the usurping of Lenin’s political authority during his
protracted period of ill health, to the embalming of Ho Chi
Minh against his express wishes, the essays in this collection
suggest that political power relies to a large extent on the
construction of symbolic power.
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
nOn-FiCTiOn
© REUTERS / Bogdan Cristel
Thomas Großbölting and Rüdiger Schmidt
Der Tod des Diktators. Ereignis und
Erinnerung im 20. Jahrhundert
(The Death of the Dictator: History and Memory in the Twentieth Century)
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, March 2011, 20 pp. ISBN: 978 3 525 30009 1
Thomas Großbölting
is a professor of Modern History at the
University of Münster.
Rüdiger Schmidt
is a research assistant in the History
Department of the University of
Münster.
© REUTERS / Bogdan Cristel
The contributors analyse not only the historical and
biographical details surrounding the rule of these
authoritarian leaders, their assent to power and their
political and bodily demise, but also the myths and cults
of personality that developed around them. The authors
demonstrate that these myths were, in many ways, as
important for the maintenance of dictatorial power as were
the violent treatment of opponents and the fear engendered
in the rest of the population. The essays consider the ways
in which these myths are sustained after the physical death
of the dictator and how they continue to serve the political
interests of the successor regime. Particular highlights of the
book are those moments when the authors give an insight
into the man behind the dictatorial mask.
Bringing together a wide range of different contexts which
point towards many parallels in the deaths and afterlives
of dictators, The Death of the Dictator will appeal to a wide
readership. Many of the contributions are likely to be of
particular interest to British and American readers wanting
to find out more about their own nation’s involvement in
the maintenance or toppling of dictatorial rule.
Previous works:
Thomas Großbölting, Roger Engelmann
and Hermann Wentker, Kommunismus
in der Krise. Die Entstalinisierung
1956 und die Folgen
(‘Communism in Crisis’, 2008)
Translation rights available from:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH &
Co. KG
Theaterstr. 13, 37073 Göttingen,
Germany
Tel: +49 551 50 84 275
Email: m.wolf@v-r.de
Contact: Margarita Wolf
http://www.v-r.de/
One of the oldest independent
publishers still in existence, the
Göttingen firm Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht has been publishing
academic literature since 1735, and
now issues over 250 new titles a
year. The classical core of the list
consists of academic works in the
fields of theology and religion,
history, medieval studies, philosophy
and philology. Equally important
is the firm’s developing range of
practical, do-it-yourself titles – on
personal development, psychological
counselling, spiritual community work
and much else – which are both useful
and highly readable.

The making of a legend
Conjuring up the peculiar atmosphere of contemporary
Serbia in this multi-faceted and intriguing book, Martens
invites the reader to become a kind of detective at the
scene of a crime.
Josef Schulz was part of the German forces which occupied
Yugoslavia in 9 and one of the first casualties of partisan
action that year. A day or so after his death, a number of
young men were executed as a reprisal by German troops
in the Serbian town of Smederevska Palanka. This shooting
gave rise to the legend that one of the firing squad refused
to take part, was immediately faced with the choice to kill
or be killed, and chose the latter path. This noble action was
attributed to Schulz, who became a cult figure in Yugoslavia
more or less straight after the end of the war and equally, in
the 9 0s and 970s, attracted the attention of the German
press. The cult in Yugoslavia went so far as to spawn a film,
various memorials (or at least the inclusion of Schulz’s name
on partisan memorials) and, as late as 009, a plan to
name a major thoroughfare in the aforementioned town
after the man.
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Austria (see page 48)
© Heribert Corn
Michael Martens
Heldensuche. Die Geschichte des
Soldaten, der nicht töten wollte
(The Hunt for a Hero. The story of the soldier who would not kill)
Paul Zsolnay Verlag, July 2011, 400 pp. ISBN: 978 3 552 05531 5
Michael Martens
was born in Hamburg in 1973.
From 2002 to 2009 he worked as a
correspondent for the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung in Belgrade.
Since then he has reported for the
paper from Istanbul.
‘The search for what took happened
on 20 July 1941 in Smederevska
Palanka and what Josef Schulz had to
do with it is a captivating story; the
uncoventional protagonist and richly
detailed writing style does not let you
go until the mystery has been solved.’
(Deutsche Welle)
Why should such a legend develop and survive for so long?
On the German side, the post-war desire to find and put
on a pedestal someone who had refused to go along with
Nazi barbarism is easy to understand; in Yugoslavia, the
identification of an enemy soldier with the national cause
gave the state legitimacy. At the same time, Nazi war crimes
investigators have been especially concerned to discover
the truth, as the legend of Schulz seemed to support a
fallacious argument invariably put forward by defendants in
war crimes trials: that the alternative to obeying orders was
death. Interestingly, a real event did perhaps help to give
birth to the story: the execution of the partisan Ivan Muker,
a German-speaking communist who had moved to Serbia
in 9 0, and who was therefore almost as much an outsider
as Schulz.
The Hunt for a Hero has much of importance to say about
the worlds of politics and the media, not to mention human
gullibility. The case itself may relate to ‘a far-off country
of which we know little’, but the themes, in particular
the question of how legends and ‘folk tales’ arise, are of
universal interest.
Translation rights available from:
Paul Zsolnay Verlag
Prinz-Eugen-Straße 30, A-1040 Wien,
Austria
Tel: +43 1 505 766112
E-mail: annette.lechner@zsolnay.at
Contact: Annette Lechner
www.zsolnay.at
Deuticke Verlag,
along with Paul Zsolnay Verlag, has
been part of Carl Hanser Verlag in
Munich since 2004. Deuticke was
founded in 1878 in Vienna. Initially the
firm focused on non-fiction (including
Sigmund Freud’s book on dreams in
1900 and much later, in 2001, the
international bestseller Blackbook on
Brand Companies). In recent years
Deuticke has established itself as a
publisher of fiction by internationally
renowned and contemporary authors,
among them Iris Murdoch and Lily
Brett, and Austrian writers such as
Paulus Hochgatterer, Daniel Glattauer
and Michael Köhlmeier.
nOn-FiCTiOn

Like her heroines, Brigitte Reimann
(1933-1973) was impetuous and vocal,
addressing issues and feelings otherwise
repressed in the GDR. She believed
passionately in socialism, yet never joined
the party, remained with her second
husband, writer Siegfried Pitschmann,
yet pursued a series of affairs. Sometimes
clashing with the system, ultimately it
needed her talent and unlike Pitschmann
she was consistently published. Like
Elisabeth, she followed the state’s call
for artists to leave their ivory towers and
engage with the workers, moved to the
new town of Hoyerswerda to work parttime
at a nearby industrial plant and run
writing classes there. As a result she wrote
Ankunft im Alltag, a socialist coming-ofage
novel which spawned a whole genre.
In 1960 her brother left for the West and
she began writing Die Geschwister. Her
final masterwork Franziska Linkerhand
explores many of the same themes but
the prose is more mature, expansive and
Proustian, interspersed with flashbacks,
the tone more hard-hitting. It was the last
novel she wrote before dying of cancer
and is now available uncensored. Brigitte
Reimann was a free spirit, a role model for
independent women and an inspiration to
all, selling widely in both Germanys. Like
her novels, her diaries, published in two
volumes, make exciting reading, by turns
racy, passionate, bold, bitter – but above
all life-affirming.
Translation rights sold to:
Spain (Bartleby Editores S.L.. Madrid)
Application for assistance
with translation costs:
Germany (see page 48)
Translation rights available from:
Publisher: Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
Address: Prinzenstraße 85, 10969 Berlin,
Germany
Tel: +49 30 28394 123
Email: ihmels@aufbau-verlag.de
Contact: Inka Ihmels
www.aufbau-verlag.de
For information about Aufbau Verlag,
see page 31
© Aufbau-Verlag, Photoarchiv
A FORGOTTEn GEM
A Forgotten Gem
Brigitte Reimann
Die Geschwister
(My Brother and I)
Aufbau Verlag, 1963; new edition 1995
192 pp. ISBN: 978 3 746 61530 1
A heartfelt view of life in East Germany by one of the socialist state’s most
talented writers: Steph Morris introduces Brigitte Reimann’s Die Geschwister.
‘I will never forgive you for this,’ Uli says to his sister Elisabeth. What she has done to him is only revealed
later; first the narrative circles back. Elisabeth is the one who has been hurt: her beloved brother has
announced he is leaving for the West in two days. Die Geschwister (literally ‘the siblings’) is the story of
a beautiful relationship and the forces which threaten it, when human emotion and ideology collide.
It is 1960 and the border between East and West Germany has already been closed, with West Berlin the only
loophole. For Elisabeth the GDR still represents the chance to build a more just society – despite frustrations
with the system. And it is home. For Uli there seems no room for manoeuvre. Uli is an engineer; Elisabeth
an artist. As part of a scheme for bringing art to the people and the people to art, she works part-time at a
Kombinat, a collective industrial plant, where she has a studio and runs painting classes for the workers.
She still has run-ins with the system, clashing with an older painter she sees as unfairly favoured by the party,
commissioning his hideous daubs at the workers’ expense. When he then denounces her to the Stasi she is
forced to defend herself, a challenge the outspoken Elisabeth rises to.
Brother and sister have returned home for the Easter weekend, to the house where they grew up, played
together, Hansel and Gretel, made their first forays into dating, vetting each others’ choices. Now they go
drinking, walk round town, lounge around in their pyjamas using their childhood nicknames. They have an
older brother but he has fled to the West already. Elisabeth and her mother meet him in West Berlin. Elisabeth
accuses him of taking his East German training to cash in on West German pay; he accuses her of peddling
the party line. The argument is highly authentic and reflects thousands of discussions which took place in
those years. When their mother cannot stand it any longer, she tells Elisabeth to wait at the checkpoint for
her. The sense of otherness and disorientation Elisabeth feels walking through the West Berlin streets is acute.
Elisabeth, the painter, has an eye for light and colour, capturing images; Brigitte Reimann, the writer, a feel for
every possible sense and sensation, for smells, weather, mood, and above all emotions.
Elisabeth is engaged to Joachim, a loyal party member and believer in the system. They are opposites who
attract, Joachim a dependable type that the impulsive Elisabeth can rely on. And the party can depend on
him too. Or can it? All three are caught in an intractable dilemma when Elisabeth, getting nowhere in her
attempts to convince Uli to stay, fetches Joachim to help. And this is what Uli will never forgive his sister;
normally if Joachim heard someone was planning to leave the country it would be his duty to inform the
authorities. Instead Joachim agrees to try persuasion. When, exhausted, Elisabeth tells Uli just to leave
– and not to bother keeping in touch - Uli replies that he can’t; tomorrow he will be on the list of suspected
defectors, he’ll be stopped at the border. She assures him that he won’t, thereby compromising Joachim. But
by now the two men have bonded. Uli is reading a book on cybernetics and Joachim suggests they meet to
discuss the topic some time over a drink. Some time? Uli has seen the light; he will stay.
This has been viewed as a contrived ending, bent to conform to state ideology and ensure the book was
published. Yet – aside from the fact that few writers anywhere evade ideological bias and many make
compromises to get into print – for dramatic purposes this outcome is perfect. Instead of leaving, Uli remains,
but the damage has been done; the rift between the siblings is now emotional, not geographical. He will
never forgive her for betraying him; she will never forgive him for wanting to leave her. And the narrative
shoe-horning exemplifies the book’s subject, the clash between human needs and political expediency. The
tension is palpable, and hardly stops the book from being a good read. If the text sometimes appears torn
between conflicting feelings and beliefs, then so was its author, and so was society.
With Die Geschwister Brigitte Reimann captured the mood of a generation and became a cult figure in
an increasingly turgid culture thanks to the honesty and energy of her prose and her lifestyle. When the
book was published, in 1963, the prominent GDR architect Hermann Henselmann wrote to her to say ‘your
descriptions reflect our life together so closely, you have now become a member of our family and we are
waiting eagerly to see what you write next.’ For us, now, her writing remains one of the few frank literary
evocations of what it really felt like to live in that era.
Steph Morris is a writer and translator living in Berlin and London. www.steph-morris.com

Both authors of well-regarded fiction, Ulrike Almut
Sandig and Judith Zander are also accomplished
poets. Here, NBG prints exclusive new translations.
‘Ulrike Almut Sandig and Judith Zander, both under 35, grew up in rural East Germany.
While they never slip into misguided nostalgia, many of their poems contain echos of a time
and place in the past. Sandig frequently draws the reader into a specific scene or moment,
providing a clearly contoured portrait, occasionally closing with a twist. Zander has a fondness
for strict forms and an ear for metre, stringing together abstract images to assemble a coherent
snapshot. Their work rewards multiple readings by revealing new layers of surprising power.’
– Bradley Schmidt, translator
Three poems by Ulrike Almut Sandig
AN APPLE, TWO CUPS
everything is done, everything
is in its place.
all the boxes unpacked
CDs and books
ordered. Everything is here.
we sit opposite each other
an apple, two cups
water that tastes like
wine to us. beams of light
stand around us
dust twists slowly
we don’t see it.
two open windows, wind
waves between us.
Three Poems by Judith Zander
VANISHING POINT
from the burning
scissor-steps racing
peels out tetrapod fly
to the edges of breath
and facing
concrete
the curbs sway against
our eyes a
red repoussé
between your lighter-fingers
something grows warm like fox fur
fast as you can baby
under my thin
tongue rattles the other
half of the slogan
casually your neck dries
up the rain-light
OR DAWN
IT DOESN’T COME WHEN YOU CALL
we imagined the weather
would hold up the rain
lets itself daily
with its sedan carried
the earth to earth
in its gracious entirety
but then there were
cords that like
ALONG THE MIDDLE OF EACH
OF OUR OWN BODIES
we kiss each other often on our wet faces.
we lock up tightly the tear that travels horizontally
along the middle of each of our own bodies.
we sew ourselves to each other. we sew ourselves
together. we make ourselves, you, a silent creature.
IN SUMMER THE ELDERLY SIT
their feet drawn close and hold their suitcases tight.
they contain: savings in plastic wrap, mother’s
gold jewellery, three photos, two letters, the passport.
only the elderly sit in the dark on tables when wind
winds up, and count the seconds between thunder
and lightning
and the elderly sit and don’t say a word
my hand is a dead fish in the morning
it drifts on your chest
sideways the night made
a heron take wing
my eyes two swinging canoes in
the short waves of daylight a dead
fish lies on your chest like an alp
like a fish out of water you gasp twitch
back from the brothers the one
is called sleep they
paddle with strokes in unison they
tie sparkling strings for everyone
drop for drop into the river
my hand is a dead fish
in the morning silver the scales in the rushes
uncaught it swashes on your chest
on the bank the rushes bide their time
the jaw’s harp touched the core they
proclaimed something and what
played at night in the window
crack we added
to our dreams
heavenly children
it cools us when we sweat
Ulrike Almut Sandig was born
in 1979 in East Germany and now
lives in Leipzig, having studied at the
renowned Leipzig Institute for German
Literature. She has published several
volumes of poetry and one prose work,
Flamingos (reviewed in NBG Spring
2010). Sandig has received many
awards for her poetry, including the
prestigious Leonce and Lena Prize.
Bradley Schmidt was born in South
Dakota and grew up in rural Kansas.
He studied literature, philosophy and
theology as well as translation in the
US and Germany. He now works as a
freelance translator and as a lecturer
at the University of Leipzig.
Judith Zander was shortlisted for the
2010 German Book Prize for her debut
novel Dinge, die wir heute sagten
(‘Things we said today’). She was born
in East Germany in 1980 and now
lives in Berlin, where she writes and
translates. She has received numerous
prizes for her poetry.
All translations by Bradley Schmidt.
Ulrike Almut Sandig’s poems taken from: Ulrike Almut Sandig:
Dickicht. Gedichte © Schöffling & Co. Verlagsbuchhandlung
GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2011 and Streumen. Gedichte
© Connewitzer Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig, 2007
Judith Zander’s poems taken from: Judith Zander: oder tau.
Gedichte © 2011 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag,
Munich/Germany
© Nils Kinder
© private
© dtv / Heike Bogenberger
pOETRY 7

Information for Editors
n The selection process for books that we review in NBG is
entirely independent.
n For each issue, we start with approximately 0 titles. At our
first editorial meeting we select around seventy of these to send
to our experienced team of reviewers.
n Our reviewers are translators, academics, editors and agents
– all extremely well-read and with a good feel for the market.
n At our second editorial meeting, our committee discusses
the reviews and selects approximately 30 titles for the issue.
n Our Editorial Committee comprises some regular members
– translators Anthea Bell and Shaun Whiteside, agent Tanja Howarth,
bookseller Jonathan Ruppin of Foyles – as well as representatives
from the Austrian, German and Swiss cultural institutes in London.
Translation Grants – How to Apply
Austria
Applications should be made to the Austrian Federal Ministry for
Education, the Arts and Culture in good time before the book
goes to print.
Applications should include:
n copies of the contracts between the publishing houses and
with the translator
n information about the translator (CV and list of translated works)
n the translation or partial translation (where possible)
The application form can be downloaded from: www.bmukk.gv.at/
medienpool/15055/form_foerderungsersuchen.pdf
This form is in German but help is on hand from the contact persons:
Dr. Robert Stocker: Gerhard Auinger:
Tel: +43-1-53120-6850 Tel: +43-1-53120-6852
robert.stocker@bmukk.gv.at gerhard.auinger@bmukk.gv.at
Switzerland
Applications should be made to Pro Helvetia, the Swiss arts council,
at least 8 weeks before the book goes to print.
Applications should include:
n a copy of the original book
n a substantial amount of the translation
Application forms can be downloaded from the website, where there
is also a useful guide for applicants in English:
www.prohelvetia.ch/downloads (Contributions to publications)
Contact Person:
Angelika Salvisberg, Head of Literature
Tel: +41 44 267 7171
asalvisberg@prohelvetia.ch
nEwS AnD inFORMATiOn
n Different guest members are invited to join the committee each time,
and include publishers, literary agents, booksellers and translators.
n With this, our 30th issue, we have founded a new U.S.-based jury.
The American jury consists of a literary scout, a literary critic and an
editor, as well as the GBO New York and the Goethe-Instituts of
New York and Chicago.
n Our only guiding principle when selecting the books is quality: we
are looking for outstanding works and voices, works which should
have a chance even in the tricky British and American market and
internationally.
n Books featured in New Books in German and bought by an
English-language publisher are guaranteed a grant. See full
information below.
Once a publisher has acquired the translation rights to a work of literature by a German writer, and a contract
has been signed between the publisher and a translator, the publisher can apply for a translation grant.
Books featured in New Books in German and bought by an English-language publisher are guaranteed a grant.
Germany
Applications should be made to the Goethe-Institut in your country.
The local Goethe-Institut will then check whether your application is
complete and pass it on to the Goethe-Institut’s head office in Munich
with their comments.
If you are interested in publishing a title not featured in New Books in
German, please contact your local Goethe-Institut directly.
The form to be filled out for these applications is available at the
following webpage, which has much useful information in English:
www.goethe.de/uun/ang/ueb/uea/bew/enindex.htm
Contact person in London:
Elisabeth Pyroth, Goethe-Insitut London
Tel: +44 20 7596 4020
elisabeth.pyroth@london.goethe.org
Contact person in North America:
Werner Ott, Goethe-Institut Chicago
Tel: +1 312-263-0472
ott@chicago.goethe.org
Contact person in the Goethe-Institut Head Office:
Andreas Schmohl, Goethe-Institut Munich
Tel: +49 89 15921-852
schmohl@goethe.de

ISSUE 30 – THE EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Editorial Committee in the USA:
Brigitte Doellgast, Goethe-Institut New York; Brittany Hazelwood,
German Book Office; Edna McCown, Goethe-Institut New York; Michael
Orthofer, The Complete Review; Sal Robinson, Harcourt; Bettina Schrewe,
Bettina Schrewe Literary Scouting Agency; Riky Stock, German Book
Office; Christiane Tacke, Goethe-Insitut Chicago
CONTACTS
Published by: The British Centre for Literary Translation,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ
Editor: Charlotte Ryland
New Books in German
c/o Goethe-Institut
50 Princes Gate
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2PH
Tel: +44 20 7596 4023
Email: nbg@london.goethe.org
www.new-books-in-german.com
Editorial Consultant: Ben Harris
For information on the background to New Books in German,
or if you have questions on distribution or would like to be
added to the mailing list, please contact the editor.
Editorial Committee for this issue:
Claudia Amthor-Croft, Goethe-Institut; Anthea Bell, Translator; Ben
Harris, NBG Editorial Consultant; Franziska Heimgartner, Embassy of
Switzerland; Tanja Howarth, Tanja Howarth Literary Agency; Richard
Lea, The Guardian; Andreas Langenbacher, Pro Helvetia; Steph Morris,
Translator; Susanne Ott-Bissels, London Library; Elisabeth Pyroth,
Goethe-Institut; Vanessa Norhausen, NBG Editorial Assistant; Jonathan
Ruppin, Foyles Bookshop; Charlotte Ryland, NBG Editor; Barbara
Schwepcke, Haus Publishing; Waltraud Strommer, Austrian Cultural
Forum; Shaun Whiteside, British Centre for Literary Translation
Associate in the USA:
Riky Stock
Director
German Book Office New York Tel: +1 (212) 794-2851
72 Spring Street, 11th Floor Fax: +1 (212) 794-2870
New York, NY 10012 E-mail: stock@newyork.gbo.org
This issue was produced in co-operation with the German Book Office
New York, the Goethe-Institut New York and the Goethe-Institut Chicago
Financial and moral support for New Books in German is provided
by the Foreign Ministries of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, Pro
Helvetia (Arts Council of Switzerland), the Austrian Cultural Forum, the
Goethe-Institut in Munich and London, the Frankfurt Book Fair and the
Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels.
Steering Committee for New Books in German:
Claudia Amthor-Croft (Goethe-Institut); Barbara Becker (Frankfurt Book
Fair); Ben Harris (NBG Editorial Consultant); Franziska Heimgartner
(Embassy of Switzerland); Tanja Howarth (Tanja Howarth Literary
Agency); Florian Seitz (German Embassy); Peter Mikl (Austrian Cultural
Forum); Charlotte Ryland (NBG Editor); Elisabeth Pyroth (Goethe-
Institut); Waltraud Strommer (Austrian Cultural Forum); Shaun Whiteside
(British Centre for Literary Translation)
Design: Suzanne Mobbs
Printed by: SGC Printing, Stephens & George Ltd
© The British Centre for Literary Translation and contributors
respectively, 2011

IN GERMAN
ERMAN NEW
N NEW BOO
EW BOOKS I
Antonia Baum n Larissa Boehning n Michel Božiković n Sherko Fatah
Katrin Gerlof n Jürgen Gottschlich n Thomas Großbölting & Rüdiger Schmidt
Agnes Hammer n Christoph Hein n Werner & Elisabeth Heisenberg n Monika Helfer
Peter Henisch n Angelika Klüssendorf n Daniela Krien n Michael Kumpfmüller
Jo Lendle n Sibylle Lewitscharoff n Michael Martens n Albert Ostermaier
Inka Parei n Christoph Poschenrieder n Cay Rademacher n Linus Reichlin
Kirsten Reinhardt n Ursula Timea Rossel n Eugen Ruge n Max Scharnigg
Frank Schmeißer n Kathrin Schrocke n Peter Stamm n Heinrich Steinfest
Ilija Trojanow n Simon Urban n Jan Costin Wagner n Andrea Weibel
New Books in German
c/o Goethe-Institut
50 Princes Gate
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2PH
Tel: +44 20 7596 4023
Email: nbg@london.goethe.org