NBG 29 Spring 2011 by Charlotte Ryland

Spring 2011 ISSUE 29 n

N NEW BOOK W BOOKS IN OKS IN GERM IN GERMAN N A SELECTION FROM AUSTRIA, GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND Novels Crime Fiction Thrillers Debuts Short Stories Poetry Children’s and Young Adults’ History Religion Music Prize-Winners Book News n

WWW.NEW-BOOKS-IN-GERMAN.COM

DEBUTS 2 3 4 5

Astrid Rosenfeld: Adams Erbe Andri Perl: Die fünfte, letzte und wichtigste Reiseregel Albrecht Selge: Wach Pedro Lenz: Der Goalie bin ig

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS‘ 9 10

Sylvia Heinlein: Mittwochtage Jutta Wilke: Holundermond Mirjam Pressler: Ein Buch für Hanna

GRAPHIC NOVEL 11

SHORT STORIES 31

Clemens Setz: Die Liebe zur Zeit des Mahlstädter Kinds Hinrich von Haaren: Die Überlebten

NON-FICTION 35 Heike Otto: Beim Leben meiner Enkel: Wie eine DDR-Flucht zum Familiendrama wurde Antje Vollmer: Doppelleben. Heinrich und Gottliebe von Lehndorff im Widerstand gegen Hitler und von Ribbentrop 36 David Berger: Der heilige Schein 37 Christian Lehmann: Der genetische Notenschlüssel. Warum Musik zum Menschsein gehört

Reinhard Kleist: Castro

A FORGOTTEN GEM FICTION 14 15 16

Zsuzsa Bánk: Die hellen Tage Sabine Gruber: Stillbach Alain Claude Sulzer: Zur falschen Zeit

LITERARY AUTOBIOGRAPHY 17 18

Gregor Hens: Nikotin Angelika Overath: Alle Farben des Schnees

CRIME FICTION AND THRILLERS 22 23 24 25

Ulrich Bielefeld & Petra Hartlieb: Auf der Strecke Oliver G. Wachlin: Tortenschlacht Elisabeth Herrmann: Zeugin der Toten Sven Böttcher: Prophezeihung

FICTION 28 29 30

Christoph Simon: Spaziergänger Zbinden Urs Faes: Paarbildung Rocko Schamoni: Tag der geschlossenen Tür

Marlen Haushofer: Die Wand

POETRY 39

Clemens Setz, translated by Peter Constantine

REVIEW ARTICLES 12-13 Prize-winners: Melinda Nadj Abonji, Iris Hanika and Christian Nürnberger. By Sheridan Marshall 32-33 Established Voices: Peter Handke, Uwe Timm and Martin Walser. By Sorcha McDonagh

ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS 6-7 Fairy Tale, Fantasy and Folklore: Children’s Books 8 An interview with Michael Rosen 19 Lyn Marven, Translator Barbara Schwepcke, Publisher 26-27 Commemmorating Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, by Carly McLaughlin 34 Author on Author: Andreas Maier celebrates the work of Peter Kurzeck

NEWS AND INFORMATION 20-21 NBG Choices – New and Forthcoming Publications in English Translation 40 Information for Editors: Applying for Translation Grants

Dear Reader, I sit down to write buoyant from the announcement of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist, which boasts three wonderful German novels in English translation. The shortlist will be announced at the London Book Fair, just after the launch of this issue at the fair’s Literary Translation Centre. And as we gear up to hear whether Jenny Erpenbeck, Daniel Kehlmann or Juli Zeh will make it to the final stage, I can’t help but wonder which of the titles selected for this issue will find their way onto that illustrious list in years to come. As ever, we launch NBG with a clutch of debuts from exciting new voices in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. From family secrets and the coincidence of public and personal histories in Astrid Rosenfeld’s Adams Erbe, to the power and illusion of storytelling in Pedro Lenz’s quirky Goalie, these novels reflect the energy and diversity in the literary scenes of these countries, particularly amongst younger authors. Younger readers take centre-stage in this issue, too, with a special feature on children’s books in translation: we celebrate the excellent reputation that German-language children’s authors have gained worldwide, and offer a taste of the future prospects for this exchange. That word ‘exchange’ is at the core of our interview with author Michael Rosen, who discusses with NBG the extraordinary importance that German literature holds in his own literary development. Just as John le Carré observed the ‘made in Germany’ stamp on his own writings in our autumn 2010 issue, so Rosen furnishes us with another compelling example of the long and fruitful interchange between the German and British literary worlds. The latest and best children’s books are also represented amongst our reviews, with newcomer Jutta Wilke rubbing shoulders with established voice Mirjam Pressler. It is a children’s author, too, who rounds off our new feature on prize-winners: Christian Nürnberger has been awarded the German Youth Literature Prize for his book about courageous individuals under the Nazis. He is joined in this article by the German author Iris Hanika, recipient of the new European Union Prize for Literature, and by literary sensation Melinda Nadj Abonji. A Serbian author, resident in Switzerland and published by an independent Austrian house, her book Tauben fliegen auf won both the German and Swiss Book Prizes last year. Sheridan Marshall’s enthusiasm for these books is infectious, and we hope that they soon find a home befitting their quality in the English-speaking world.

In addition to a focus on emerging writers and trends, NBG continues to celebrate the more established voices of the German-language literary scene. We include a special feature on the three literary greats Peter Handke, Uwe Timm and Martin Walser and their latest novels, and Carly McLaughlin celebrates the anniversaries of two giants of Swiss literature, Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch. As McLaughlin notes, anniversaries are busy times for the publishing world, and the eightieth anniversary of the birth of the great Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard is one such milestone, to be marked by a raft of publications in English translation from Faber later this year. Films can also generate new interest in older titles, and this issue’s Forgotten Gem is one such book: a classic from the 1960s now being re-imagined for the screen starring Martine Gedeck (The Lives of Others). The film version of Elisabeth Herrmann’s crime novel Das Kindermädchen (‘The Sitter’) is currently on location, and we review her latest thriller ‘The Cleaner’. What’s more, our special on children’s books anticipates the publication of children’s classic Krabat by Otfried Preussler and the accompanying film starring Daniel Brühl (Goodbye Lenin). We continue our custom of closing NBG with brand new English versions of German poems, this time by the young Austrian author Clemens Setz, winner of this year’s Leipzig Book Fair Prize. We also review his short story collection, as his star continues to rise both in the German-speaking world and internationally. German authors are not just present on foreign fiction prize lists, though. Johanna Adorján, Jenny Erpenbeck and Mirjam Pressler recently thrilled audiences at London’s Jewish Book Week, and we can look forward to a fine array of Austrian, German and Swiss authors at this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival and Cheltenham Literature Festival. Keep an eye on our website, our Facebook page and our Twitter feeds for announcements of these events and more. Finally, special thanks are due to Helen Gregg at the German Book Office in New York for her work on this issue, and for the invaluable support of NBG’s Editorial Assistant, Sorcha McDonagh. We hope that you enjoy NBG as much as we have enjoyed putting it together!

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 These three novels, all translated from German and featured in previous issues of NBG, have been longlisted for the prestigious Independent Foreign Fiction prize.

‘ Younger German writers can often negotiate the grandest themes with a light and delicate touch.’ (Boyd Tonkin, The Independent)

Jenny Erpenbeck, Visitation, tr. Susan Bernofsky (Portobello)

Daniel Kehlmann, Fame, tr. Carol Brown Janeway (Quercus)

Juli Zeh, Dark Matter, tr. Christine Lo (Harvill Secker)

Astrid Rosenfeld

Adams Erbe (Adam’s Legacy)

Diogenes Verlag, March 2011, 400 pp, ISBN: 978 3 257 0677 9

Trading places This wonderfully energetic and funny debut is a powerful and compelling story, establishing Rosenfeld as an exciting and original new talent. With comic brio, Adam’s Legacy dashes to the heart of the story of eight-year-old Eddy. Little is known about his father; his mother, the ‘antichrist of feminism’, just wanted to get pregnant. However, Eddy is told by his grandparents, Lara and Moses, about his uncanny resemblance to his great-uncle, Adam Cohen. This narrative door is left on the latch during a wonderful detour in the company of Jack Moss. Eddy stumbles across this ‘Elvis’ in Berlin Zoo, quickly falls under his charm, and coughs his way through his first cigarettes near the elephant enclosure. Despite spirited opposition from Lara, his mother also soon falls into Elvis’s arms. They begin an itinerant life around Jack’s business interests, mainly selling fake fossils to frustrated housewives, during which Eddy often skips school for alternative history lessons with his new father.

Years later, after Moses’ death, Eddy discovers a manuscript that takes the reader back to great-uncle Adam’s life, first in 1930s Berlin and then occupied Poland in the 1940s. As a young man, Adam falls in love with Anna – who promptly

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

DEBUTS

Astrid Rosenfeld was born in Cologne in 1977. After finishing secondary school, Rosenfeld spent two years in California, then moved to Berlin to train as an actress. Since then she has worked in various positions in the film industry, including as a casting director. She currently lives in Berlin. Translation rights sold to: Italy (Mondadori)

disappears after the Jewish pogrom of November 1938. His grandmother enlists the help of a senior officer under the new regime, and they enable Adam to assume a new identity and search for Anna in Poland. With the help of the Polish resistance, he changes places with Anna in the Warsaw ghetto, and she is smuggled out to safety. In the brief third section, Eddy finds 90-year-old Anna alive in New York. He restores the pieces of the story to her as best he can. Moses died thinking that his brother Adam was a thief, whereas in fact their grandmother had sewn most of the family diamonds into the jacket that Adam took with him. He found them at the crucial moment in the ghetto, and bought three weeks to write his story before being put on a train east. Eddy can read Anna his great-uncle’s writing because it was saved with the help of a young girl. Rosenfeld has a sharp eye for the comic touch. She slices into the family mishaps of Eddy and his mother with particular bravura, and supporting characters leap off the page. With its whistle-stop tour of Nazi German history and fresh engagement with Europe’s recent wartime past, Adam’s Legacy is an ambitious and thrilling novel. Translation rights available from: Diogenes Verlag AG Sprecherstrasse 8, 8032 Zurich Tel: +41 44 252 84 07 Email: bau@diogenes.ch Contact: Susanne Bauknecht www.diogenes.ch ‘ Rosenfeld achieves what ought to be impossible – to tell the stories of those who have died with both emotion and humour... She narrates the genocide of the Jews and its effects on the survivors and on later generations in a tragicomic mode that is full of black humour.’ (Deutschlandradio Kultur) ‘ Rosenfeld’s story is moving and full of unflinching humour; the story of fates and great emotions and how the past penetrates the present.’ (sf-magazin)

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. Diogenes is home to the two international bestselling authors Patrick Süskind (Perfume) and Bernhard Schlink (The Reader). Schlink’s latest publications in English are The Weekend and The Gordian Knot, both published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Andri Perl

Die fünfte, letzte und wichtigste Reiseregel (The Travel Rules)

Salis Verlag, February 2010, 215 pp, ISBN: 978 390 58013 16

He who seeks finds The magical quality of The Travel Rules is the effortlessly elegant style in which the author, a completely natural storyteller, presents the different strands of the story, and how he manages to make the most uneventful scenes fascinating to read. One of Perl’s main achievements is the melding of completely realistic descriptions of the everyday (down to the impatient thrumming of a passenger’s fingers on an armrest) with an acute sense of the bigger, existential themes in life – questions of love, mortality and deeper meaning – as well as fine observational humour.

He comes up with five self-imposed travel rules: to travel early in the morning; to leave his mobile phone and thereby all connection to home behind; to save on accommodation but not on food; to talk to a pretty woman every day; and, most importantly, to keep following the route of the poems. He goes on to break almost all of these rules but nonetheless they provide some structure for an otherwise gloriously random exploration of post-university freedom. As he pieces together the reasons why Lorenz left his hometown, Christoph tentatively starts to examine his own life and place within his family, including his relationship with his own brother.

Flashbacks are interwoven with the present to create a rich canvas of events and memories of events that all relate, more or less directly, to the journey Christoph is on. Searching to find his place in the world, the twentysomething Christoph is not lost – he is merely at that point before knowing what comes next. In that moment before his own story continues back home, he has decided to concentrate on another’s story – a relative, yes, and yet a complete stranger with a mysterious past. The result is an exceptionally astute and elegantly written first work, and a thoroughly accomplished reinterpretation of the picaresque.

This dazzling debut novel traces a journey across Switzerland and Italy as Christoph Roth follows a series of mysterious poems left to him by his late grandmother. Recently graduated and disappointed in love, he decides just to take the next train and visit the places mentioned in the poems. Christoph’s grandmother had mentioned her ‘lost brother’, Christoph’s great-uncle Lorenz, in connection with the poems, but what exactly happened remained a taboo topic. Christoph hopes that his journey in pursuit of the poems might uncover that mystery.

Andri Perl was born in 1984 in Chur, and studied German philology, art history, and film studies at the University of Zurich. As a member of the rap crews Breitbild and Bauer he is regularly to be found in the Swiss music charts. In 2007, Perl received Chur’s literary prize for the opening chapter of his debut novel, Die fünfte, letzte und wichtigste Reiseregel.

www.andriperl.ch

Translation rights available from: Salis Verlag Motorenstrasse 14, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland Tel: +41 44 381 51 01 Email: ag@salisverlag.com Contact: André Gstettenhofer www.salisverlag.com

Salis Verlag is an independent publisher of highquality literary fiction, crime novels, and non-fiction, with a focus on young (and young-at-heart) authors. Salis Verlag has been publishing since 2007, and brings out eight titles a year, with an emphasis on high-quality content and design. ‘ Swiss rapper Andri Perl has produced an extraordinary debut, whose charming and old-fashioned style has little to do with rap, aside from the joy of playing with language. Elegant, agile and witty.’ (WDR)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 40)

DEBUTS

Albrecht Selge

Wach (Awake)

Rowohlt, July 2011, 256 pp, ISBN: 978 3 87134 694

Hello to Berlin Awake is a triumph of a debut novel – skilfully crafted,

poetic and acutely observed, with delightful comic touches – that stands out amongst the ‘Berlin novels’ of recent years. August Kreutzer has a day-job at an organisation that builds and manages huge shopping malls. He is unfulfilled in his work and prone to philosophising. He finds it increasingly difficult to fall asleep and starts wandering the streets at night. When his tiredness becomes apparent at work, his boss orders him to take some time off. August uses these extra hours to go on more and more extensive walks.

His sensibility is such that he absorbs all kinds of details and facets of life in the city. August becomes a projection screen for the city, and loses any sense of responsibility towards his sleepless self and his private life (there is an absent girlfriend, Susanne, whose phone calls he never answers when he does spend some hours in his flat). The world August experiences is very different from the sanitised ‘Artificial Paradises’ of the mall: it is multi-faceted and strange. And he actively looks out for places that are permeated by multiple layers of time and meaning – through a rotting newspaper clipping, or an old shop sign. Piece by piece these indicators of the past become

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

DEBUTS

Born in 1975 in Heidelberg, Albrecht Selge grew up in West Berlin and studied German and philosophy in Berlin and Vienna. He was a finalist in Berlin’s Open Mike literature competition in 2004, and took part in the literature workshop in Klagenfurt and the Berlin Literary Colloquium. Among other awards, he has received a grant from the Berlin Senate to pursue his literary work. Now working as a freelance author, he lives in Berlin with his wife and two children. Awake is his first novel.

a psycho-geographical mapping of Berlin, where the traces of time and change are especially plentiful. Yet the novel’s scope transcends that of a mere ‘Berlin novel’. At a street corner August imagines the people who have walked here in the past. This parallel world, which takes centre-stage in August’s mind, makes the present world seem unreal, and real people walking by seem to be ‘no more than future shadows’. Walking through a sad, semi-abandoned remnant of a village beyond the city limits, August sees a perfect village appearing in the distance, brimming with life, full of shops, nice houses, and pubs. As he approaches, he realises that his perception has played a trick on him and that he has fallen prey to the very thing he created many times as an executive of ‘Artificial Paradises’ – an artificial world, an almost picture-perfect copy of a village that turns out to be a huge, open-air shopping mall. In Awake, Selge touches on all the big questions – history, time, perception, the meaning of life – without being heavyhanded, and reflects on what makes a story ‘meaningful’. Translation rights available from: Rowohlt.Berlin Verlag GmbH Hamburger Str.17, 21465 Reinbek Tel: +49 40 7272 257 Email: carolin.mungard@rowohlt.de Contact: Ms. Carolin Mungard www.rowohlt.de/foreign

Rowohlt Verlag, founded in 1908, comprises the divisions Rowohlt, Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Wunderlich, Kindler, Polaris and Rowohlt.Berlin Verlag, and is part of the Holtzbrinck group. Rowohlt publishes literary and commercial fiction, academic and popular non-fiction and children’s books. Authors include Kurt Tucholsky, Robert Musil, Klaus and Erika Mann, Imre Kertész, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Schneider, Joachim Fest, Martin Walser, Daniel Kehlmann, David Safier, Ildikó von Kürthy, and many others.

Pedro Lenz

Der Goalie bin ig (The Goalie’s Me)

Der Gesunde Menschenversand, April 2010, 183 pp, ISBN: 978 3 905 82517 6

‘Stories keep growing back’ With echoes of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Lenz’s powerful new novel builds on the author’s considerable success in performance and oral storytelling, and exploits the charms, warmth, humour, rhythms and musicality of spoken language. The first-person narrator, the ‘goalie’ of the title, is a lovable rogue who earned his nickname in his youth when, after a football match, he stepped in to protect the actual goalkeeper when the other players turned on him. ‘The goalie’s me!’ he insisted, taking the blame – not for the last time – for someone else. We meet our goalie much later, when he has just been released from prison after serving time for drugs. Here, too, he was the scapegoat. When the police found drugs at his local, he named no names – and, in court, spent more time justifying his stories than defending himself. On his release, and typically broke, the goalie returns to his home town, the fictional provincial town of Schummertal (Fog Valley). He falls in love with Regi, who serves behind the bar at his local, and who already has a boyfriend.

The goalie, crucially, is a sucker for a good story. He lives and breathes them; is forever telling stories to himself and Pedro Lenz was born in 1965 in Langenthal. He studied Spanish literature at the University of Bern and has worked as a freelance writer for various newspapers and magazines since 2001. Lenz is very active on the Spoken Word scene, and has won numerous awards and poetry slams. He was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize in 2010 for his first novel, Der Goalie bin ig, which is also to be made into a film. www.pedrolenz.ch

others. While this means that, for the reader, the novel is a charming and often hilarious tour through anecdotes about the regulars at his local, or the goalie’s trip to Spain with Regi (he has Spanish roots, but also dubious friends with a house in Spain), this obsession with narrative does have its downsides. Storytelling can be his way of avoiding problems and conflict. It also irritates Regi, who concludes that it isn’t a woman the goalie needs, but an audience for his stories. Tragically, he also falls for the stories of so-called friends – stories that lead to his downfall. But his trip to Spain enables him gradually to realise that his friends lied to him, when they offer conflicting explanations for the house there. The novel closes with the goalie leaving Schummertal to try life, alone, in the city. Clearly influenced by the oral traditions of storytelling, The Goalie’s Me grew out of a six-month residency in Scotland and invites comparison with the works of Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh. Lenz is an immensely spirited author whose public appearances always cause a stir, and his new novel has the undoubted ability to reach new and younger audiences.

Translation rights available from: Der Gesunde Menschenversand Neustadtstrasse 7, 6003 Luzern, Switzerland Tel: +41 41 360 65 05 Contact: Matthias Burki Email: info@menschenversand.ch www.menschenversand.ch/d/

Der gesunde Menschenversand was founded in 1998 by Matthias Burki and Yves Thomi, initially selling CDs, books, and magazines, as well as organising readings and poetry slams. Burki soon began to publish books and CDs, with a continued focus on Spoken Word and poetry. ‘ Lenz is a master in creating forms of speech which take in much that remains unspoken.’ (Tages-Anzeiger) ‘ Pedro Lenz has unearthed and cultivated a new and varied literary landscape.’ (Der kleine Bund)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 40)

DEBUTS

English-language Children’s Publishers Abrams Andersen Press Annick Press Boxer Books Chicken House Egmont Gecko Press Puffin Scholastic Templar Walker Books Children’s authors translated into English Kirsten Boie Cornelia Funke Kerstin Gier Krystyna Kuhn Kai Meyer Christine Nöstlinger Mirjam Pressler Otfried Preussler German Children’s Classics Emil und die Detektive / Emil and the Detectives

(Erich Kästner) Die Karawane / The Caravan (Wilhelm Hauff) Max und Moritz / Max und Moritz (Wilhelm Busch) Grimms‘ Märchen/Grimms‘ Tales Struwwelpeter (Heinrich Hoffmann) Children’s Book Prizes For German-language books The German Youth Literature Prize (Jugendliteraturpreis, see pp 12-13) Kranichsteiner Scholarship Astrid Lindgren Prize For books in English translation The Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation (UK) The Mildred L. Batchelder Award (US)

Article

Fairy Tale, Fantasy and Folklore Children growing up in the English-speaking world continue to be charmed by Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Heidi; all stories that were first published in German, but that have long inhabited a world of childhood beyond national boundaries. And today, Young Adult fiction by German-language authors – most notably, Cornelia Funke – is garnering legions of fans across the world. NBG spoke to figures from three key aspects of the industry – a translator, a publisher and a bookseller – to explore how the market for international children’s fiction works today.

Harvill), to find that she had loved Preussler’s books as a child, and her own figure of the Mittagsfrau (‘the Noonday Witch’) is from the same Sorbian body of folklore in the Lausitz area of eastern Germany as Krabat. The first of Kai Meyer’s Arkadien trilogy (Carlsen) was featured in New Books in German in 2009. It’s very much a Young Adult series, unlike his earlier trilogy The Flowing Queen and its sequels, and can best be summed up as ’the Mafia meets Ovid’s Metamorphoses’. Volume 1, in English as Arcadia Awakens, is coming soon from HarperCollins US and Templar in the UK. Original ideas in fantasy are few and far between; Cornelia Funke had one in her Inkworld trilogy, where characters slip in and out of stories, and Kai, with his fertile imagination, has come up with another in updating the animal metamorphosis theme.

Translator Anthea Bell reveals the central role that folklore and myth have played in the children’s books that she has translated; Barry Cunningham, publisher at Chicken House, discusses his publication of German books in English translation; and independent children’s bookseller Jenny Morris (The Lion & Unicorn, Richmond) comments on which genres do particularly well in translated fiction.

There was a possible project for some extensive selections from Grimms’ tales in simultaneously published English and German editions. I had half a dozen of my favourites in reserve, including ‘The Juniper Tree’ and ‘The Robber Bridegroom’. I love the universality of such tales, the former with its roots in the Greek myth of the house of Atreus, the latter harking back to an old English tale, Mr Fox, which itself has a Shakespearean echo in Much Ado. Mr Fox is the ‘old tale’ from which Benedick quotes in his line, ‘Like the old tale, my lord: “it is not so, nor `t was not so; but, indeed, God forbid it should be so.”’

Anthea Bell, Translator The first book I ever translated was a children’s book: Otfried Preussler’s Der kleine Wassermann, published by Abelard-Schuman as The Little Water-Sprite. We went on to The Little Witch, The Little Ghost, and the three Robber Hotzenplotz titles. Hotzenplotz went down surprisingly well in the English-speaking world, considering that they are based not on our native Punch and Judy puppet play but on the German equivalent: the puppet ‘Kasperl’. And then there was Preussler’s young adult novel Krabat, a dark tale of a miller’s bargain with the Devil; it won the German Youth Literature Prize, and has been filmed with Daniel Brühl (of Goodbye Lenin) in the role of the hero’s best friend. It was fascinating, when I was translating Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau (The Blind Side of the Heart,

Publishers of children’s books in Austria, Germany and Switzerland Arena Atlantis Beltz & Gelberg Carlsen cbj Coppenrath Jungbrunnen Loewe Oetinger Thienemann Tulipan Ueberreuter

Barry Cunningham, Publisher ...on German books Children’s literature is perhaps more international than adult fiction, as children share the same kind of imaginative reality. We’ve always felt in particular that children in Germany and Britain have a lot in common. Cornelia Funke would put it down to the great tradition of folk tales, which is very much alive in Germany. I would add that in Germany children’s books are not just a branch of adult fiction. They still believe very firmly in a role for children’s books, so it’s a very vibrant market. ...on working with Germanlanguage publishers We meet all the main publishers at the book fairs, and they regularly send material to us. Increasingly, publishers are providing samples in English to give us a quicker flavour, and also give us the details of their marketing campaign – all of this is very helpful. These publishers are always a pleasure to work with, keeping us up to date with what the author is doing next, with details of sales and other useful information. ...on working with translators When I first started buying books to be translated I was amazed by how different samples by different translators could sound, and that trying to find the right voice for the translation is crucial. We take the process of translation very seriously, making sure we work with the best translators but also remaining open to changing the text. Because of the breadth of English compared to German, which has a smaller vocabulary, we can bring a wider variety of language to the English version. So it’s a really interesting exchange. Once we’ve got the translation, we treat it almost like it’s an entirely new book. This is an opportunity to make the book work in another language, and so we might go back to the author

and look again at certain points. We’re very active on this front, and all the German authors we’ve worked with have been very pleased with this approach. A good example is Kirsten Boie and The Princess Plot – we directed it in a slightly different way and it’s been hugely successful in America.

...on publishing series German children’s authors do tend to write in series, and we are more cautious when we are considering these. I am very concerned that each book works as a self-standing novel. Each book should absolutely be a hit in its own right. A good example is the new novel by Kerstin Gier, Girl about Time – a brilliant book that completely stands in its own right but is also the first in a series. It’s fantastically romantic and a highly engaging thriller, and it feels very authentically teenage.

Jenny Morris, Bookseller The UK children’s book industry has been criticised in the past for its head-in-the-sand approach to children’s literature from other countries. This was the case when the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in translation was founded in 1996, not only to promote interest in the best internationally recognised writers and artists but also to acknowledge the translators, the ‘invisible storytellers’. Since then more books in translation have been made available to the British market and at the Lion & Unicorn we have been able to showcase children’s books from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden – though it has to be said with varying degrees of success. Where picture books are concerned, sales of books such as ‘The Chicken Thief’ (a wordless picture book from France) or ‘Duck, Death and the Tulip’ (exploring loss

and first published in Germany) have encouraged us to be more experimental, thanks to the ‘curiously good books from around the world’ published by Gecko Press in conjunction with its UK distributor. As for fiction, Cornelia Funke, the most high-profile example, has found a permanent place on our shelves with her ‘Inkheart’ fantasy sequence and more recently one of our favourite recommendations for readers of around 9+ is Andreas Steinhöfel’s hilarious The Pasta Detectives (Chicken House), shortlisted for this year’s Marsh Award. Key to success in the British market probably lies not only with good translation but with genre. There is a strong market in the core 9-13 age range for fantasy and magic realism, while mystery, adventure and humour are important ingredients in a book’s staying power. The Pasta Detectives is a good example, a whodunit with a difference and an element of the cartoon, a quirky main character and a huge helping of humour. A parallel example would be the bestselling ‘Wimpy Kid’ series by American author Jeff Kinney (Puffin Books). Bringing these books to market successfully depends on effective publisher/bookseller liaison, but principally on reading and handselling them enthusiastically! Fitting the right book to the right child is what we’re all about, and this can apply to exciting fiction in translation as much as to anything home-grown.

Forthcoming Books The Game Krystyna Kuhn Translated by Helena Ragg-Kirkby ‘We’re incredibly pleased to be publishing Krystyna Kuhn’s wonderful new series. The Game is everything our brilliant reader’s report said it would be – tense, exciting and completely un-putdownable. I think our English readers are soon going to learn why Germany is such a fan of Krystyna Kuhn!’ – Samantha Smith, Little, Brown Book Group

Krabat Otfried Preussler Translated by Anthea Bell HarperCollins Krabat by Otfried Preussler, and

translated by Anthea Bell, is published this spring by The Friday Project (HarperCollins). A film of the book is released in the UK in June. Scott Pack, publisher at The Friday Project says: ‘Krabat was my favourite book as a child. Back then it was known as The Satanic Mill and I am delighted not only to be able to republish this remarkable novel but also to make it available with its original title for the first time in the UK. I hope we can delight a whole new audience.’

Jenny Morris is the owner of The Lion & Unicorn Bookshop, an independent children’s bookshop in Richmond.

ARTICLE

Epic Adventures and Trickster Tales Michael Rosen was fortunate to grow up in a house where other languages were not considered utterly foreign. His father spoke German and French, and his mother French and Yiddish; and family holidays to Germany and France meant that he heard those languages in everyday use from a young age. The books that accompanied his younger years, and that stay with him still, were consequently taken not only from the pantheon of English literature but have a distinctly international flavour. Emil and the Detectives (1929)

by Erich Kästner was not only one of Rosen’s favourite books as a child, but it also represents a breakthrough in children’s literature: the first ever childdetective story. When young Emil is travelling by train to visit his grandmother in Berlin, he falls asleep and the money that he was to deliver to his grandmother is stolen. Brave Emil follows the thief, and soon comes across city-dweller Gustav and his chums. Together, the young ‘detectives’ set off on the thief’s trail... ‘The book is one of the first to celebrate the urban. Emil has to go from his countryside home to the city, and instead of it being a dangerous and frightening

A new edition of Grimms Märchen (Tulipan)

INTERVIEW

place, it’s full of companionship and a bunch of jolly mates. In the history of children’s literature that’s quite a breakthrough, because children tend to be associated with the countryside, which in turn signifies innocence; while the city is full of threats and danger. Kästner was one of the first to reverse this trend, since the thief is ultimately defeated by the goodness of the city.’ ‘One of my favourite scenes, which I often read out to my students, is about the street-lights coming on and the tram trundling along. It reads like a classic modernist paragraph, celebrating the electricity of the city. It’s so much of the period, and as such it’s an absolute key moment in children’s fiction.’ Emil’s tale is a mini-odyssey, a journey full of adventure, mishap and development; and Rosen considers the epic nature of the story to be characteristic of much great children’s literature: ‘Take Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, for example. There’s a touch of the epic about his little journey into the imagination and back again, where he literally conquers his demons.’ The Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, on the other hand, seem to Rosen to represent the opposite: ‘often quite small and inconsequential in their own right, but very terrifying all the same.’ Rosen is fascinated by these Märchen (folk tales), and what they can tell us about how stories are created and passed on over time and across national boundaries. The Grimms – or the culture that developed around them – are, to a degree, responsible for simplifying the composite and international nature of these tales. The Grimm brothers, Rosen reasons, had a particular job

to do, which was ‘to put German on the map’, to cure the Germanic lands of their inferiority complex in the face of French culture. They did so both culturally, through the tales, and linguistically through their studies of the development of the German language and their dictionaries. Consequently, although many of the tales had their origins in French stories, they quickly became nationalised and known as ‘German stories’. ‘It is fascinating to look at these tales,’ says Rosen, ‘to find the common motifs and those that are different across cultures – I’m interested just as much in the migration of stories as in their origins.’ The folk tale, and the Grimms in particular, have played an important part in the development of Rosen’s writing, as he has sought to insert a ‘folk idiom’ into some of his works. He describes the early years in a writer’s life as central to their later output: ‘The books that you read between the ages of about five and ten are very influential for any writer – of adult or children’s fiction. Several of the motifs that appeal to you are laid down then, and preferences for detective books, historical fiction or trickster tales will emerge in some way in your later writing.’ In Rosen’s case, it was the ‘trickster tale’ that was of paramount importance to him as a boy, in particular in the form of the German children’s classic Till Eulenspiegel. ‘Eulenspiegel was at the heart of all the things I enjoyed at that age. I adored the English version I had, and there is a definite influence on my own writing for children – I’m always looking for tricking and trickster ideas.’ It is not just children’s literature that has impacted on Rosen’s writing; the poetry and prose of

NBG talks to Michael Rosen – poet, broadcaster, children’s author and former children’s laureate – about his love of German books and their role in the development of his own writing. two giants of twentieth-century German literature, Bertolt Brecht and Günter Grass, also count amongst his influences. ‘I have tried consciously to imitate Brecht’s poetry in some of my adult poems – I once wrote a ballad in a rather Brechtian style about the position-changing of slightly unscrupulous people, those who take one side and then swap to the other. And I did a play for voices, a kind of documentary play, which was like the Brechtian “living newspaper” drama.’ Brecht’s aesthetic in general has been important to Rosen – his concept of ‘alienation’ in poetry, story and film has affected his whole approach to writing. Günter Grass looms large in Rosen’s world, too. Grass’s novel Cat and Mouse, which follows a group of teenage boys in Germany during the Second World War and, as Rosen puts it, ‘projects part of the history of Germany onto the boys and their friendships’, impacted on Rosen’s writing at the time – influencing in particular his poems about male friendship. Reading Grass also led him to certain conclusions about the way that children’s play functions: ‘I remember thinking that the dramas that kids play out are often microcosmic equivalents of the dramas being played out in society.’ Michael Rosen’s prolific, multifaceted and ever-vibrant oeuvre is clearly the result of engagement with a huge range of cultural forms from several countries, and of a genuine fascination with these texts. And it is the fact that these books, originally in German, made their way into English and into the poet’s hands that has enriched this oeuvre and contributed to the making of one of our finest and most influential writers.

Sylvia Heinlein

Mittwochtage – oder “Nichts wie weg”, sagt Tante Hulda

(Every Wednesday or ‘Let’s just go!’ said Aunt Hulda) January 2011, 126 pp. ISBN: 978 3 8369 5276 7

Yakamingdingding and pink Even if you are a child, you cannot let others run your life; if something is really important, then you have to fight for it. That’s the message of this quietly empowering story, beautifully illustrated by Anke Kuhl. Sara can’t wait for Wednesdays when she visits her Aunt Hulda, an ‘overweight fairy’ who lives in sheltered accommodation for ‘people with special needs’. Hulda’s simple delight in everyone and everything around her is warming and infectious; she is always positive towards others and often makes up colourful new words to describe things; and her favourite colour is pink. But Sara’s parents think their daughter is spending too much time there, and arrange for Hulda to be moved to another home – without consulting either Hulda or Sara. Desperate not to be separated from her aunt, Sara puts together a bold plan for the two of them to escape by train. Hulda simply says, ‘Let’s just go’, and their adventure finally lands them in a disused chocolate factory inhabited by artists. Readers aged 7-11 will love this fast-paced and humorous story, with its dazzling cast of characters and richly authentic dialogue, and will relish Sara’s growing independence and acts of bravery in the face of overbearing parents.

Jutta Wilke

Holundermond (Elder Moon)

Coppenrath Verlag, February 2011, 320 pp. ISBN: 978 3 8157 5305 7

Time frame A magical tale of danger, suspense and travel through time, this elegantly written and ambitious novel will be a definite hit with a 10+ readership. Elder Moon begins in a church-cum-hospital in 1783. Johanna is

watching over her little brother Samuel, who is desperately ill. In the middle of the night she sees a man with a golden chalice disappear into a painting behind the altar, and decides to follow him. Back in the present, Nele stows away in her father’s van. A church historian, he is investigating a recent spate of thefts of religious artifacts. But her father disappears after going to meet a colleague, the sinister Dr Holzer, and so Nele – together with her friend Flavio – is forced to take the investigation into her own hands. At night under an elder tree they meet Johanna, and discover they can slip from present to past through the altar painting. Now in a race against time to save not only Nele’s father but also Samuel, the children gradually unravel the mystery of the thefts and Dr Holzer’s dark purpose. Wilke blends the themes of bestsellers like The Da Vinci Code with a wonderfully evocative style and a sense of narrative and pace that will make this book an undoubted winner.

Translation rights available from: Gerstenberg Verlag GmbH & Co. KG Tel: +49 51 21 106 0 miriam.zimmer@gerstenberg-verlag.de Contact: Miriam Zimmer www.gerstenberg-verlag.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Previous works: Mama ist Geheimagentin (2011); Eddy und die Weihnachtswunschmaschine (2010); Bommes Bagger (2009) Gerstenberg Verlag’s attractive book list includes children’s literature as well as illustrated non-fiction titles for all age groups. ‘ Aunt Hulda is one of the most adorable misfits ever to grace a children’s book.’ (titel-magazin)

Sylvia Heinlein was born in 1962. After receiving degrees in art history, literature, and political science, she worked as a radio and newspaper journalist. Since 2000 she has been writing non-fiction and children’s books. She lives in Hamburg with her family.

Translation rights available from: Coppenrath Verlag Tel: +49 251 414 11 819 Email: davis@coppenrath.de Contact: Rita Davis www.coppenrath.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Jutta Wilke spent over twelve years as a lawyer, specialising in family law. After the birth of her fourth child, she retired in order to devote herself to her family. When her youngest began nursery school, she decided to start from scratch once again and finally do what she had always dreamed of: become a children’s author. Wilke currently lives with her family in Hanau, the birthplace of the Grimm Brothers. This is her first novel. Coppenrath Verlag is an independently-owned publishing house founded in 1768. Coppenrath has since become a leading German publisher of children’s books and gift books for adults. Well-known characters include the wandering stuffed rabbit named Felix, a fairy named Princess Lillifee and a loyal little pirate named Capt’n Sharky.

children and young adults’

Mirjam Pressler

Ein Buch für Hanna (A Book for Hanna)

Beltz & Gelberg, March 2011, 368 pp. ISBN: 978 3 407 81079 3

Do you believe in fairy tales? Arrested in the middle of the night, transported for four days in cattle trucks without food or drink, the convoy of Danish Jews walks the final three kilometres to the camp. If they cannot keep pace, they go under. Her muscles aching and her rucksack unbearably heavy, Hanna is unable to control her legs. Then she is confronted with an image of what she will become: the prisoners already there are grey shadows, emaciated, bent over, barely able to move.

Once in Denmark, Hannelore is given a new, less Germanic identity as Hanna. She settles on a farm where she works every day from dawn till dusk. She learns the rhythm of farming life, and learns to cope with, and then to love, the animals she is working with. Hanna remains close to her German friends, and it is only thanks to this group that she has any awareness of what is going on in the wider world – and that Germany has invaded Denmark.

A Book for Hanna is a compelling and evocative narrative,

Over Rosh Hashana in 1943 Hanna goes to stay with Sara Hvid, a friend from a domestic science course that she is taking. She is immediately struck by Sara’s attractive elder brother, Samuel. However, that night, 1st October, Danish Jews are arrested and deported. After eighteen months in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where many of her friends succumb to disease and death, she is liberated. She and Samuel Hvid, who has also survived the camp, are married and over three years eventually manage to reach Palestine together.

based on real events. Written mainly in the third person, it is cleverly interspersed from time to time with a brief chapter in the first person from one of the other main characters.

The aim of fourteen-year-old Hannelore and her friends is to escape Nazi Germany for Palestine, as her elder sister has already done. However, because of British attempts to limit the number of settlers in Palestine, they are given exit papers for Denmark. As a parting gift, Hannelore’s mother packs her copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. These stories weave into the novel throughout, providing Hannelore with reading matter, conversation, inspiration and motivation.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Mirjam Pressler was born in 1940 in Darmstadt, studied art in Frankfurt and currently lives and works as a freelance author and translator in Landshut. She has published numerous children’s and youth books with Beltz & Gelberg, most recently Nathan und seine Kinder (‘Nathan and His Children’, 2009). Her books have been awarded many prizes – in 2001, she received the Carl Zuckmayer Medal for her ‘contribution to the German language’. She was awarded the special prize of the German Youth Literature Award for her literary work as a whole, and for her work as a translator. Pressler has translated and edited Anne Frank’s diary, and she recently took part in an event about the diary at Jewish Book Week in London.

children and young adults’

This engaging and engrossing account of friendship, courage and love in the face of immense adversity is aimed at a 14+ readership. Previous works: Nathan und seine Kinder (2009); Golem stiller Bruder (‘Golem, Silent Brother’, 2007); Malka Mai (‘Malka May’, 2002); Für Isabel war es Liebe (‘For Isabel, It Was Love’, 2002); Ich sehne mich so (‘My Longing’, 1998) Translation rights available from: Beltz & Gelberg GmbH Werderstr. 10, 69469 Weinheim Tel: +49 6201 6007 327 Email: k.michaelis@beltz.de Contact: Kerstin Michaelis www.beltz.de

Beltz & Gelberg is the children’s book division of the Beltz Verlagsgruppe, the publishing venture which was established by the printer Julius Beltz in 1868. Beltz & Gelberg was set up in 1971 by HansJoachim Gelberg and has offered a rich range of children’s literature ever since. The Gulliver paperback imprint was founded in 1984. In 2002 Beltz took over the book rights of Middelhauve, and two years later founded the paperback series MINIMAX.

Reinhard Kleist

Castro (Castro)

Carlsen Verlag, October 2010, 288 pp. ISBN: 978 3 551 78965 5

‘History will absolve me’ Fidel Castro and Cuba continue to exercise a unique fascination in the minds of Western readers, and Kleist’s gripping graphic-novel treatment is a thoroughly worthy addition to the burgeoning literature on the man and the country. Castro is the story of Karl Martens, a journalist who travels

to Cuba just before the revolution to interview the rebel leader – and never leaves. Arriving in Cuba in 1958, Martens is smuggled into the rebel camp, interviews Castro, and meets Lara and Juan. He is told the story so far, from failed coup to gradual ascendency via guerrilla warfare, and learns about Castro’s childhood and early years. There are also flashbacks to Juan’s university days as a young writer impressed by Castro’s speeches. Martens is wholly converted to their cause, but as a clueless gringo he isn’t allowed to go with them into battle and returns to Havana.

After the revolution, Martens meets up with Lara and Juan again. Amidst all the excitement about building a fairer society, he and Lara become lovers; but Juan, as a gay intellectual, soon finds himself on the wrong side of the new regime. Historical events – such as the Bay of Pigs Reinhard Kleist was born in 1970 and studied Graphic Arts and Design. Since 1996 he has been living in Berlin, where he shares his studio with other comic book artists. His comic books have won several awards, including the most prestigious one for German comic publications, the Max und Moritz award for his book Cash, about Johnny Cash. Previous works: Havanna: Eine kubanische Reise (Havana: A Cuban Journey, 2008) Cash (Cash: I See A Darkness, 2006)

Translation rights sold to: France, Greece, Croatia, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

and the Cuban missile crisis – are seen from the point of view of both Martens and Castro. Martens remains throughout a diehard supporter of the Castro government; however, as the US embargo kicks in, Lara finds the shortages, hardships and restrictions unbearable. In 1980, when Castro suddenly and briefly allowed anyone who wanted to leave to do just that, she threatens to join the exodus to Florida. The next time Martens comes home, Lara’s things are gone. In a frantic and moving episode, he catches up with her at the harbour, but she, together with Juan, have made up their minds to flee. Martens watches as the boats set sail. As an old man, Martens is still in Havana. During the eighties and nineties his journalism work dried up and he was forced to make his living off the black market. He’s married and has a child. However, he wonders what would have happened if he had acted differently in 1980. Castro, also now an old man, is dictating a book in his hospital room, philosophising about Barack Obama, contemporary affairs, revolution. Kleist’s illustrative style is full of contrast and dynamism with a strong feel for body language, action and atmosphere; his storytelling is touching, evocative and convincing. Translation rights available from: Carlsen Verlag GmbH Völckersstrasse 14, 22765 Hamburg Tel: +49 40 39 804 0 Contact: Daniela Steiner Email: Daniela.steiner@carlsen.de www.carlsen.de/rights ‘ Kleist doesn’t demonise Castro, but nor does he deify him... The journalist Karl may be an invention, but he personifies the hopes that many associated with the Cuban revolution.’ (Kreuzer. Das Leipzig Magazin) ‘ The drawings are authentic and the revolution is portrayed with critical sympathy... In his protagonist Karl, Kleist characterises the socialist romantic from the North, seeking a lost paradise in the tropics.’ (Offenbach-Post)

Carlsen Verlag was founded in 1953 as a subsidiary of the Danish company Carlsen, based in Copenhagen. 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. The German translation of Tintin (1967) established comic books as an acceptable genre in the German market and, with an increasing number of publications including the highly successful Japanese Manga series, the comics list is attracting considerable interest from other European publishers. Distinguished Carlsen authors include Kai Meyer, Andreas Steinhöfel and Zoran Drvenkar, all available in English translation.

Graphic novel

Prize Winners: Outstanding Writing, Extraordinary Lives Sheridan Marshall introduces readers to the recipients of three prestigious literary prizes, awarded in recognition of the skill with which the authors make the variously ordinary and extraordinary lives of their fictional characters and historical figures available to their readers. The German Book Prize (‘Deutscher Buchpreis’) is considered to be the German equivalent of the Man Booker Prize and is awarded annually at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The prize was instituted in 2005 by the Association of German Publishers and Booksellers with the aim of raising international awareness of German language literature. The prize is open to any work of fiction written in German and published within the preceding year. 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). Following the success of the German Book Prize, the Swiss Book Prize (‘Schweizer Buchpreis’) was established in 2008 by the Association of Swiss Publishers and Booksellers and the organisers of the Basel Book Fair. It is awarded annually to a German language narrative or essayistic work by a Swiss author. NBG has reviewed earlier winners of the German and Swiss Book Prizes, and the Silver Jubilee issue in Spring 2009 featured an interview with the winner of the first Swiss Book Prize, Rolf Lappert. The European Union Prize for Literature surveys the huge field of contemporary European literature, seeking to highlight the diverse achievements of creative fiction and to encourage readers to appreciate literature from beyond their own national borders. The prize is awarded to authors selected from each of the thirtyfive countries participating in the EU Culture Programme, which has also provided €8.5 million to fund the translation of 1500 literary titles since 2007. Established in 1956, the German Youth Literature Prize (‘Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis’)

REVIEW ARTICLEs

has inaugurated a strong tradition of celebrating children’s and young people’s literature from both in and outside Germany. Awards are made in five categories for best picture book, children’s book, young adult book, non-fiction book, and the book selected by the young people’s jury. Swiss author Melinda Nadj Abonji was awarded both the German and Swiss Book Prizes in 2010 for her autobiographical novel about an immigrant family living in Switzerland, Tauben Fliegen Auf, or ‘Falcons without falconers’. Nadj Abonji is an ethnic Hungarian Serbian who lives in Switzerland and speaks German as her second language. Not only is this the first time that the German Book Prize has been awarded to a writer whose first language is not German, but Nadj Abonji is also the first Swiss writer to receive the prize. The novel chronicles the lives of the Kocsis family, telling how Miklós and Rósza Kocsis leave their home in the Serbian province of Vojvodina for a new life in Switzerland. They work tirelessly to establish themselves and to make a home for their two daughters, Nomi and Ildikó. The girls join their parents after a formative period staying with their paternal grandmother at her smallholding and much of the novel reflects upon the contrasts between Ildikó’s fond memories of Vojvodina and her experiences of Switzerland. The novel is knitted together with beguiling descriptions of the rituals of daily life: the repetitive chores involved in running the family business, the Café Mondial, and the breaks from work for coffee and cigarettes. Nadj Abonji masterfully documents the inter-familial relationships and her accounts of the characters’ interactions are noteworthy in their attentiveness both to what is said and to what remains unspoken. Few among the German literary

scene expected Nadj Abonji’s wryly humorous book to win the German Book Prize, but the judges were impressed by her novel’s sensitive treatment of the immigrant’s predicament: inhabiting multiple worlds without necessarily feeling at home in any of them. The book is punctuated by episodes demonstrating the Kocsis’ enduring estrangement from both their Serbian and Swiss communities. This sense of alienation only deepens following the outbreak of war in Kosovo in 1998. The family fight to gain acceptance in their adopted Swiss town, struggling to prove themselves worthy proprietors of their café. Countless small humiliations culminate in a shocking incident which exposes the family members’ conflicting attitudes to their immigrant status and precipitates Ildikó’s departure from the family home. As immigration remains a contentious issue in countries across Europe, Nadj Abonji’s absorbing and closely observed account of one family’s experiences offers an elegantly articulated insight into immigrant life which has justly found recognition in two national literary prizes. Iris Hanika’s novel Das Eigentliche, or ‘The Real Thing’, also engages with matters of trans-national importance in its consideration of how knowledge of the atrocities of the Holocaust affects those who live afterwards. Set in Berlin, the novel focuses on the particular challenges for Germans of living with the pervasive national sense of historical culpability. The novel follows the friendship between Hans Frambach and Graziela Schönbluhm, both in their late forties, who share an obsessive concern with the crimes of National Socialism. The thoughtfulness with which Hanika treats this subject – stemming from her personal preoccupation with Nazism for over twenty-five years – is reflected in her receipt of the European Union Prize for Literature in 2010. Hanika’s protagonist, Hans, works as an archivist at the ‘Institute for the Management of the Past’, an invented organisation which seeks to relieve German citizens of the burden of coming

to terms with the Nazi past. Hans is profoundly unhappy and hates his job and his colleagues, but finds consolation in his relationship with Graziela, a music teacher. The novel charts how their friendship has altered since Graziela began a sexual relationship with a married man, which has replaced the Holocaust as her chief concern and now dominates her conversations with Hans. This highly readable book is full of gripping emotional drama and tackles big subjects in precise, economical prose. There are chilling, awkward scenes at the institute, an official visit to Auschwitz and absorbing kitchentable discussions between Hans and Graziela. Hans struggles to come to terms not only with the Nazi crimes themselves, but with his diminishing sense of shock and shame in relation to them. In the course of the novel Hans comes to understand that he must take responsibility for his own unhappiness and, rather than blaming it on others or the past, take action to change his circumstances. Hanika has written a parable for the twenty-first century which commands our attention both for its judicious treatment of challenging subject matter and its compelling literary style. Both Nadj Abonji and Hanika’s novels document the daily struggles of ordinary people. The focus of their writing corresponds with that of prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro who, in a recent interview with the Observer, characterised the motivation of his literary fiction as follows: ‘I’m not at all interested in the brave who fight against the odds and win. I am interested in those who accept their lot, as that is what many people in the world are doing. They do their best in ghastly conditions’. For the winner of the non-fiction category of the 2010 German Youth Literature Prize, however, the opposite is the case. Christian Nürnberger reaches out to young people on the subject of Nazi Germany with his captivating volume of twelve biographical essays about men and women who had the courage to take a stand against Nazism. Many

In their thoughtful and thoughtprovoking writing, Nadj Abonji, Hanika and Nürnberger introduce us to the lives of both real and imagined people, lives which offer new insights into contemporary European society and the historical formation of that society. Each of the three books considers different conceptions of social conformism and the consequences of various forms of opposition to this. Their status as prize-winners will ensure that the extraordinary talents of these three writers bring pleasure to many more ordinary readers. By Sheridan Marshall with additional research by Vineeta Gupta and Steph Morris

Born in 1968 in Vojvodina, Nadj Abonji earned a Master’s degree in German and History in Zurich, where she now lives as an author and musician (violin and vocals). She lectured from 2003 to 2009 at the Zurich Teachers’ College, where she led a writing workshop, and has led her own writing workshop since 2007. Nanj Abonji published her first novel in 2004. Tauben fliegen auf, her second novel, won the German Book Prize and the Swiss Book Prize in 2010.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 40)

Translation rights sold to: France, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Israel, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Czech Republic

Iris Hanika, Das Eigentliche

Iris Hanika was born in Wurzburg in 1962 and has lived in Berlin since 1979. She was a staff writer for the Berlin section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and wrote a column for Merkur magazine for eight years until 2008. In 2006, she was awarded the Hans Fallada Prize. With Das Eigentliche, she was on the Hotlist 2010, was nominated for the prize of the SWR Bestseller List 2010, and received rave reviews. Das Eigentliche won the European Union Prize for Literature, which brings with it guaranteed translation funding.

‘ This book shows, in literature’s abundant ways, the antagonism of remembrance. To have illustrated this again so vividly after 65 years of intensive discussion is the merit of this novel – which was written, it must be said, after and in spite of Auschwitz.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Mutige Menschen

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Translation rights sold to: Italy, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania Translation rights available from: Literaturverlag Droschl Stenggstraße 33, A-8043 Graz Tel: +43 316 326404 Email: office@droschl.com Contact: Annette Knoch www.droschl.com

Previous works: Katharina oder die Existenzverpflichtung (short story, 1992); Musik für Flughäfen (Music for airports, short stories, 2005); Berlin im Licht. 24 Stunden Webcam (Berlin in the light. 24 Hour webcam, ed. With Stefanie Flamm, 2003), Treffen sich zwei (novel, 2008)

Application for assistance with translation costs: The European Union (Translation funding is guaranteed to recipients of the EU Prize for Literature) www.euprizeliterature.eu

Christian Nürnberger,

Translation rights available from: Jung und Jung Verlag GmbH Hubert-Sattler-Gasse 1, 5020 Salzburg, Austria Tel: +43 662 885048 Email: office@jungundjung.at Contact: Dr Jochen Jung www.jungundjung.at

Previous works: Im Schaufenster im Frühling (novel, 2004), reprinted February 2011

Tauben fliegen auf

Nürnberger’s book is superbly written. Its engaging, accessible prose speaks directly to young adults without being patronising. Each portrait reads like a gripping short story and the author skilfully weaves in personal details which bring the figures to life. Accounts of Claus von Stauffenberg’s aristocratic childhood, Sophie Scholl’s excitement about her twenty-first birthday party and Willy Brandt’s beginnings as an illegitimate child will appeal to young and older readers alike. Nürnberger reflects on the nature of courage, investigating the historical, social and psychological circumstances of the lives of his selected figures in his attempt to understand what inspired their bravery.

Melinda Nadj Abonji,

In the introduction to his book, Nürnberger expertly summarises the moral dilemma of responding to the knowledge of the Nazi period, drawing upon his own experiences of becoming aware of the atrocities of the Holocaust as a young boy. He introduces his young readers to the idea of being thankful for having been born after 1945, ‘since no one knows how they would have behaved during that time.’ Nürnberger then brings home the difficult truth that most would not have behaved like the exceptional people of whom he writes, but would rather have been part of the ordinary majority who did not resist Nazism.

of these extraordinary people paid the ultimate price for their bravery and were executed.

Christian Nürnberger was born in 1951, and is a well-known author and journalist. He studied Theology and then worked as a reporter and editor for various newspapers and magazines, including the Frankfurter Rundschau. He has been a freelance writer since 1990 and regularly contributes to the broadsheets Die Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit and to the SZ magazine. He and his wife Petra Gerster, a very well-known face on German TV news, live with their two children in Mainz.

‘ An author who writes with wit, sincerity and without the slightest sensationalism.’ (Spiegel)

Translation rights available from: Gabriel Verlag/Thienemann Verlag GmbH Tel: +49 711 210 55 45 Email: fuhrmann@thienemann.de Contact: Elke Fuhrmann www.thienemann.de/en

Previous works: Mutige Menschen. Für Frieden, Freiheit und Menschenrechte (Courageous People.

For Peace, Freedom and Human Rights, 2008) ‘ His portraits are not only enthralling to read, informative and nuanced – they also provide plenty of food for thought and discussion.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

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Zsuzsa Bánk

Die hellen Tage (Bright Days)

S. Fischer Verlag, February 2011, 544 pp. ISBN: 978 3 10 005222 3

All roads lead to Rome Eagerly awaited since Bánk’s stunning debut, The Swimmer (2005), this is a beautiful and heart-warming novel that touches on many universal issues, with characters to die for. Seri, Aja and Karl grow up in a small town in the 1960s. The best of friends, they experience the bright days of childhood at Aja’s Hungarian mother’s ramshackle wooden house by the edge of the fields. Endless summer evenings, birthday parties, swimming in the lake, climbing trees, ice-skating, cartwheels, cakes, poppies and long grass. Yet all is not quite as idyllic as it seems. All the children’s fathers are absent: Seri’s died shortly after her birth, Karl’s withdrew into his shell after his younger son disappeared, and Aja’s father Zigi is a trapeze artist who only visits occasionally. In between the descriptions of childhood, Bánk focuses on the mothers and their stories, showing the hardships each of them has suffered. We watch Aja’s mother Eví develop and form friendships with the other mothers, go out to work, learn to read, start a business and help the others to overcome their own problems.

In the second half of the novel, the three young adults move to Rome, ostensibly for their studies but of course

‘ Zsuzsa Bánk’s new novel Bright Days is musical and poetic – a modern-day fairy tale.’ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Fiction

to escape the narrow confines of small-town life and to cut their mothers’ apron strings. There, their troika turns into a love triangle, and each of them learns or reveals a secret about their past that puts their bonds to the test. How have those bright days of childhood shaped their lives and personalities? And if the assumptions they grew up with are not true, then are they still the individuals they thought they were? Beautifully narrated, the early chapters are sketchy and dreamlike, while the later sections reveal more and more detail. Bánk subtly tackles immigration issues, yet they take a back seat to the touching family stories. Political realities give the book its factual framework and are not ignored – the novel could not be set in any other period, for example, with changing women’s roles playing a key part – but they are not its focus. About three children and their mothers, about childhood and how it affects us as adults, about women surviving and bringing up children against the odds, this magnificent novel is a deeply moving story of individual lives that will appeal to a broad audience.

Zsuzsa Bánk was born in 1965 and worked as a bookseller before studying journalism, political science and literature in Mainz and Washington. She currently lives as a writer in Frankfurt am Main with her husband and two children. Her first novel, Der Schwimmer (The Swimmer), won her the aspekte Literature Prize, the German Book Prize for debut novels, the Mara Cassens Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, and was translated into English (Harcourt, 2005). She was awarded the Bettina von Arnim Prize for her short story ‘Unter Hunden’ (‘Under Dogs’).

Translation rights sold to: World English (Harcourt), World Spanish, Sweden, France, Poland, Netherlands, Israel, Hungary, Catalan, Italy, Denmark, Greece

Previous works: Der Schwimmer (The Swimmer, 2003); Heißester Sommer (‘The Hottest Summer‘, 2005)

‘ Bánk writes from her characters’ perspectives with an extraordinary empathy... The adolescents gradually learn that all idylls are fragile, that dark shadows may be present even if we can’t see them, and that pain does not pass away simply because you believe you have finally found its source.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Translation rights available from: S. Fischer Verlag GmbH Hedderichstrasse 114, 60596 Frankfurt am Main Tel: +49 69 60 62 297 Email: Ricarda.Bergen@Fischerverlage.de Contact: Ricarda von Bergen http://www.fischerverlage.de/

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.

Sabine Gruber

Stillbach oder Die Sehnsucht (Quiet River)

Verlag C.H. Beck, July/August 2011, 266 pp. ISBN: 978 340 66216 66

Still waters running deep While memory and coming to terms with the past make up the powerful themes running through this fascinating novel, Gruber provides a remarkable insight not only into little-known episodes of twentieth-century history but also into the business of historiography itself. The core of the book comprises the interlinked stories of two women, both German-speaking Italians from the fictional South Tyrolese village of Stillbach. Emma and Ines come to work in Rome at different times and end up spending their entire lives there. Alternating with an account from the 1970s told by Ines is the story of Emma, who arrived in the capital via Venice in the late 1930s, driven from her northern homeland by economic hardship. Emma remains in Rome throughout the Nazi occupation and its immediate aftermath, becomes pregnant, marries the father and eventually inherits the family business. Her fiancé, a Stillbach boy drafted into the SS, had been a victim of a partisan bomb. Vivid and painful memories of that loss well up in Emma, as well as nostalgia for her native Bozen.

light. It is found by Ines’ childhood friend Clara, who travels to Rome after Ines’ death to sort out her affairs. Clara meets up with Paul Vogel, a historian of fascism and the German occupation who had a one-night stand with Ines and saw her again shortly before she died. Clara seems less upset at her friend’s passing than at Ines making no mention of her in her writing and for skewing certain facts. But Ines’ story resulted from reading eyewitness accounts of the Nazi occupation that she happened upon in a scholarly journal, and from conversations with Emma, her former employer. The intimate personal details of Emma’s life that it contains speak of a rapprochement between the two women: genuine working through the past, it seems, does not reside in ostentatious public acts of contrition but rather is teased out in small shared acts of remembrance and reconciliation. The structure of Stillbach is a model of literary craftsmanship, dovetailing perfectly with its central themes, and the very way in which the core stories are conveyed reveals oral history to be a process every bit as painstaking as archaeology. A stunning achievement.

The novel has a framework narrative, set in 2009, in which the manuscript that Ines had been working on comes to

Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 40)

Sabine Gruber was born in 1963 in Merano, Italy. She studied German literature, history and political science at the universities of Innsbruck and Vienna. From 1988-1992 she was a lecturer at the University of Venice. Sabine Gruber lives in Vienna and has received several awards including the City of Vienna Support Award, the Austrian State Support Award and the Elias Canetti Scholarship of the City of Vienna.

‘ Gruber’s language is full of images, and in that colourful language she tells of life’s surprises, of the fragility of love, of friendship and death.’ (praise for Über Nacht on liesmalwieder.de)

Previous works: Über Nacht (‘Overnight’, 2007); Die Zumutung (‘The Impertinence’, 2003); Fang oder Schweigen (‘Catch or Be Silent’, 2002); Aushäusige (‘People Away from Home’, 1996) Translation rights available from: Verlag C.H. Beck Wilhelmstraße 9, 80801 München Tel: +49 89 38189335 Email: Jennifer.royston@beck.de Contact: Jennifer Royston www.chbeck.de

Verlag C.H.Beck is one of Germany’s best known publishing houses. It deals with both books and magazines, employs a staff of over 400 and has approximately 6,000 titles in print. It has a strong base in academic and specialised works on history, ethnology, philology, literary theory, religion and philosophy, politics, art and law. Its fiction list has grown steadily and is respected for the importance its editors place on the literary and artistic merits of its titles. ‘ Sabine Gruber is one of the most significant talents in this generation of Austrian writers, following on from Elfriede Jelinek and Marlene Streeruwitz.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Fiction

Alain Claude Sulzer

Zur falschen Zeit (At the Wrong Time)

Galiani Verlag Berlin, July 2010, 240 pp. ISBN: 978 386 97101 98

The truth will out

The seventeen-year-old narrator, ‘reserved and sensible, or maybe just boring’, lives with his mother and stepfather. About his father he knows only that he committed suicide aged twenty-four shortly after the birth of his son. A handful of holiday snapshots and a studio photograph are the only other clues he possesses to his father’s short existence; his mother prefers not to talk about him.

learn of Emil’s three bouts in a lunatic asylum, sent by his parents in attempts to ‘cure’ his ‘latently perverse infantile personality’. When André betrays him with a string of lovers and eventually leaves for Paris, Emil convinces himself he is in love with Veronika, a secretary at the asylum. They marry and Emil becomes a teacher, but he is soon seduced by Sebastian Enz, a young man training to be a teacher at the school he works at. When Sebastian decides to change mentor and has to move school, the two of them have little choice but to meet in the house that he shares with his mother. And when Sebastian’s mother discovers the affair and blackmails Emil, he and Sebastian see no way out but to kill themselves. Finally, even when confronted with the truth, the narrator’s mother tries to suppress it.

Gradually it dawns on the narrator that he might try to find out more. The name and address on the back of the studio photograph take him to Paris and his long-lost godfather, André Gros. Little by little, the narrator begins to piece together the past and the secret of his father’s homosexuality. We learn that his father, Emil, met André at school and fell in love with him, that it was through him that Emil began to discover and explore his sexuality. We

Sulzer’s introverted characters, quietly accepting and utterly incapable of communicating with one another, intensify the tragedy in a way that would be impossible if they screamed at each other or wanted to talk things through all the time. A small pool of spilt red nail polish is the closest Veronika gets to a scream. Reminiscent of Colm Toíbin and Ian McEwan, At the Wrong Time is restrained, tantalising and wholly original.

A young man’s attempt to solve the mystery surrounding his father’s suicide; the difficulties besetting homosexuals in the 1950s; a tragic love story which ends in a suicide pact – At the Wrong Time is also an utterly convincing and beautifully observed novel about the unspoken and the unspeakable.

‘ Masterfully crafted and tactfully told.’ (Die Zeit) ‘ A small, elegant masterpiece.’ (Der Freitag) Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 40)

Fiction

Alain Claude Sulzer was born in Basel in 1953. He became an internationally acclaimed author in 2008 when his novel, A Perfect Waiter (2004), was translated into English (Blooomsbury) and eight other languages. It was praised in the UK, US, and international press, and the French edition won the 2008 Prix Médicis du Roman Etranger. Sulzer has also been awarded the Hermann Hesse Prize (2009) and is longlisted for the Wilhelm Raabe prize for his new novel, Zur Falschen Zeit. Previous works: Privatstunden (‘Private Hours’, 2007); Ein perfekter Kellner (A Perfect Waiter, 2004); Annas Maske (‘Anna’s Mask’, 2001)

Translation rights available from: Anna Webber United Agents, 12 -26 Lexington Street, London, W1F 0LE Tel: + 44 (0)20 3214 0800; +44 (0)20 3214 0876 Email: AWebber@unitedagents.co.uk www.unitedagents.co.uk ‘ This novel, which touches on and then abandons several minor motives, like Umberto Giordano’s opera Andrea Genier or a poetic shrink, captivates from the first page to the last.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) ‘ Each reader will go through hot and cold showers of emotion. Zur falschen Zeit is discreet and bordering on tender in its language, and yet it grabs you with the might of a Greek tragedy.’ (NDR)

Galiani Berlin is the new imprint under the roof of Kiepenheuer & Witsch, established in 2009 by Wolfgang Hörner and Esther Kormann – the creative minds behind the programme. They publish a mixture of literature, classics and narrative non-fiction in hardcover format only. The imprint is named after Ferdinando Galiani: a true genius who was interested in everything around him, innovative, unpredictable and never boring. This reflects the path that Wolfgang Hörner and Esther Kormann are following with their new imprint. Authors include Helen FitzGerald, Karen Duve, Jan Costin Wagner. ‘Sulzer touches the core of the tragic; namely how suffering can turn back into guilt. Outstanding... An extraordinary story teller.’ (WDR3)

Gregor Hens

Nikotin (Nicotine)

S. Fischer Verlag, March 2011, 192 pp. ISBN: 978 3 10 032583 9

Raking over the ashes Irresistibly humorous, eminently readable and concerned with a contentious issue that continues to be hotly debated, Nicotine is the fascinating autobiographical account of one man’s addiction to smoking. Writing with the passion of an obsessive, the author analyses how his addiction has shaped his thought and behaviour patterns in ways that would initially appear to be entirely unrelated to cigarettes. Hens grew up near Cologne, attended a Catholic boarding school and lived for a time in Berlin before settling in Columbus, Ohio. His parents both smoked intensively and he was given his first cigarette at the age of four or five. He recalls a revelatory moment of clarity and self-awareness, when he first looked at himself from the outside and realised that life consisted not of episodic experiences and emotions, but of a connected whole whose elements could be understood and narrated. It is a state of mind which he has come to associate with cigarettes.

In one of the book’s funniest episodes, Hens recounts waking up in hospital after having crashed his bicycle into a lorry at 40kph. He hadn’t smoked in years and, once he was able to walk again, he dragged himself to a corner shop

‘ This is not a story about quitting, but an accomplished and unsettling meditation on one’s own addiction.’ (Die Zeit)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Gregor Hens was born in 1965 in Cologne. He studied German and English literature at the University of Bonn, the University of Missouri, and the University of California, Berkeley. Today he is a professor at the Institute of Germanic Studies at Ohio State University. ‘ This book is not an advice manual, nor an attempt to account for an addiction, but rather a gripping investigation: What was that first cigarette like, that first conscious inhalation of nicotine, which moments are inseparable from smoking and always will be?’ (Deutschlandradio Kultur) ‘ A passionate attempt to banish the addiction through words.’ (sf-magazin)

and bought a packet of cigarettes. As he lit up and inhaled, he found himself weeping with joy. Nicotine proceeds from here via numerous anecdotes to how his father, having smoked eighty a day, abruptly quit and then began to hold himself up as an example of superhuman will-power. Hens conducts a number of experiments on himself, such as imagining a packet of cigarettes in front of him and resisting the urge to light up, something which produces such a strong reaction in him that he has to stand up and leave the room. He visits a hypnotist but worries that he knows too much about the techniques of hypnosis to be susceptible to it. This visit is described in great detail, especially in terms of how the hypnotist’s technique of creating momentary uncertainties about where he is or what he can hear overlaps with the author’s own academic work on syntax. Moving towards its conclusion, Nicotine becomes ever more explicitly a discussion of the nature of habit and of decisionmaking. Smoking has changed Hens’s brain functions irreversibly, but he asserts his ability to learn new ways of thinking and of living, and so finally to conquer his addiction. Previous works: In diesem neuen Licht (‘In This New Light’, 2006); Matta verlässt seine Kinder (‘Matta Leaves His Children’,

2004) Translation rights available from: S. Fischer Verlag GmbH Hedderichstrasse 114, 60596 Frankfurt am Main Tel: +49 69 60 62 297 Email: Ricarda.Bergen@Fischerverlage.de Contact: Ricarda von Bergen www.fischerverlage.de

‘ “I don’t smoke any more, but there are always moments when I can think of nothing else but cigarettes. This is one of those moments. I really shouldn’t write this book, it’s much too risky...”. But Hens needn’t worry that this book might bring him harm; for even if he does start smoking again one day, Nicotine may well be his most successful book yet.’ (Die Zeit)

Literary autobiographY

Angelika Overath

Alle Farben des Schnees (The Many Colours of Snow)

Luchterhand Literaturverlag, December 2010, 256 pp. ISBN: 978 3 630 87340 4

A year of magical thinking The Many Colours of Snow is a compelling autobiographical

diary that spans a full year of the author’s new life in the Swiss mountain village of Sent. The setting, a long valley penetrating deep into the Alps, is astonishingly alien both to the reader and the author; and the sense of isolation is palpable. Sent itself is a small community relying less on tourism than other parts of Switzerland and more on traditional agriculture, which is still largely done manually and on a very small scale. Its world is regulated by the seasons, which consist mostly of winter, by a close relationship with the natural environment, and by the Romansch community to which Overath has limited access because of the difficulty of this peculiar language. The book revolves around the conditions of this special world and around the thoughts and feelings they generate in a newcomer who seeks to make this special place her home.

There is a subtle forward motion to the text, but the author is also at pains to convey a still, weightless and circular sensation – a pace of life dictated by the conditions in Sent

Angelika Overath was born in 1957 and is a reporter, literary critic, and lecturer. She has published two novels and received several awards, including the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for her journalistic work and, for her literary activities, the Thaddäus Troll Prize. She was awarded the Ernst Willner Prize in the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition for a passage in her novel Flughafenfische. Previous works: Flughafenfische (‘Airport Fish’, 2009)

and very different from the urban heart of our civilisation. There are consequently many lyrical descriptions of the surrounding mountains, which never change even though they are also, as Overath observes, always new; of the numerous dog walks, which trace the passing of the seasons; of the seasons themselves, which in the traditional village control the rhythm of life; of the celebration of particularly Sentian holidays, which emphasise the ancient, cyclic traditions of the village’s life. The very structure of the text reveals this feeling of circularity: it ends up where it began, on 1st September, in the snow. The book’s captivating charm springs from the special nature of this village and region – foreign, seeming to exist outside the modern world. Themes of belonging, roots both old and new, alienation, and the discovery of a new self in a new world loom large in the narrative and will resonate with a wide audience. It becomes an adventure for the reader to explore the strange land of Lower Engadin, the like of which it is hard to imagine existing just a few hours from metropolitan Zurich. It is possible to change your life, this book whispers, and to find a home away from home.

Translation rights available from: Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH Neumarkter Strasse 28, 81673 Munich Tel: +49 89 41 36 3313 Email: gesche.wendebourg@ randomhouse.de Contact: Gesche Wendebourg www.randomhouse.de/luchterhand ‘ Wonderfully wise, intimate and literary!’ (Annabelle) ‘ One of the most remarkable voices in German-language literature.’ (Die Tageszeitung) ‘ A personal, passionate book full of poetry.’ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 40)

Literary autobiographY

Luchterhand Literaturverlag was founded by Hermann Luchterhand in 1924 and has been publishing literary titles since 1954, an early and triumphant success being Günter Grass’s novel Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959). Its list includes literary fiction and poetry as well as definitive editions of selected writers’ complete works. In 1997 the firm was voted Publishing House of the Year by the German trade journal Buchmarkt. It is now part of the Random House Group. Authors include Christa Wolf, Ernst Jandl, Pablo Neruda, António Lobo Antunes, Will Self, Frank McCourt, Hanns-Josef Ortheil, Terézia Mora and Saša Stanišic´ .

NBG interviews the translator Lyn Marven

What was your first translation? My first translation was for Comma Press, a short story by Larissa Boehning, set in Berlin for their collection Decapolis, which features ten cities, and ten languages. I’ve continued to have a good working relationship with Comma. Their focus on short stories is a fantastic avenue for introducing new writers, and they are committed to European and world writing in translation. That first story led to them

asking me to translate Maike Wetzel’s collection of short stories, Long Days, for their new series of translations. The first story was also included in Berlin Tales, a collection of short stories about Berlin that I translated, so it sparked almost everything I’ve done since! Do you get in touch with the writers you translate? One of the joys of working on contemporary literature is the possibility of corresponding with authors, and the writers I’ve translated have been very generous in discussing their work with me. When I translated Long Days, Maike Wetzel and I bounced ideas around for the titles of her stories, which were particularly tricky. The title of her short story ‘Geister’ took us from Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (‘die Geister, die ich rief’, ‘the spirits I have summoned’) to Dickens’ ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, via Tolkien and Cassavetes, before we fixed on ‘Shadows’, from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (‘if we shadows have offended’). It’s also been a pleasure to be able to introduce writers to a wider public

not just metaphorically but literally: as a result of my translation work, we invited Maike Wetzel and Larissa Boehning to Liverpool as writers in residence, in 2009 and 2011 respectively. What is your most recent translation? Most recently I’ve translated a piece by Irmtraud Morgner, a favourite of mine for many years. Her novel The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice was the one that got away

– the novel I would have most liked to translate (it came out in 2000, translated by Jeanette Clausen). I’ve translated a short story of hers which comes from one of the sequels to that novel. It’s a rewrite of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, and in just fourteen pages the language encompasses everything from traditional Provençal songs through contemporary insurance terminology to the flight feathers of owls. Which books would you most like to translate? I’ve only really just started out in translating, and there are so many texts and authors I would love to get my hands on! It’s hard to single out

How did you get into translation? Translation is something I fell into – and I didn’t know I would enjoy it so much until I gave it a go. I’m a university lecturer, and have been working on contemporary German literature for years. I’ve come across so many fascinating, funny, intelligent and memorable books in my work, and I want to bring them to a wider Englishspeaking public. So for me, translation has grown out of my academic research. Studying and translating literature are two sides of the same coin, and the two aspects feed into each other. Both are about an intensive engagement with the text – about reading it in depth, and reflecting on the words on the page.

particular favourites but I’d have to mention Ulrike Draesner; her writing is so intelligent and at the same time playful. And Annett Gröschner’s Moskauer Eis, a darkly humorous novel about a young woman who finds her father frozen to death in his own freezer just after the demise of East Germany, would be a joy to translate. Lyn Marven is Lecturer in German at the University of Liverpool. She researches and translates contemporary German-language literature. Larissa Boehning, Lichte Stoffe, Irmtraud Morgner’s novels and Annett Gröschner’s Moskauer Eis have all been reviewed in previous issues of NBG.

Barbara Schwepcke, publisher of Haus Publishing, talks to NBG

The Programme Although its beginnings were in non-fiction, Haus has since expanded into fiction – much of it in translation. Schwepcke happily ‘blames’ this on Rafik Schami. Having published his book Damascus: Taste of a City in their Armchair Traveller series, Schami’s German publisher asked Schwepcke to recommend an English-language publisher for his novel Die dunkle Seite der Liebe. And her mother, commissioning editor of their Armchair Traveller series, encouraged her ‘to do

the crazy thing of saying, “Why don’t we do fiction?”’. Haus’s wonderful fiction list, this season alone, includes several titles translated from German, from Joachim Sartorius’ The Princes Islands (tr. Stephen Brown) to the paperback edition of Schami’s latest, The Calligrapher’s Secret

(tr. Anthea Bell). The bookHaus Haus is unusual in having a book shop on its premises. The bookHaus, 70 Cadogan Place, is a venue that allows Haus both to have their whole list permanently on display and to hold launches of their own and others’ books. Peirene Press launched last year’s Catalan title, Stone in a Landslide, to a packed bookHaus, with the audience spilling out onto the streets of Belgravia. The Books Schwepcke does not hesitate when asked to pick out a favourite from the impressive list of Haus titles – and we are back with Rafik Schami. The Calligrapher’s Secret is her pride and joy, not least because of the essay that prefaces it, on the beauty of the Arabic script and its limitations, which Haus produced as a beautifully illustrated booklet and sent out to booksellers in advance of publication. Schwepcke’s

praise for the book is unflinching. ‘It’s a lot to do with Rafik’s passion but also with Anthea’s wonderful rendering of his language; they really are a match made in heaven. Without hesitation I’d say that Rafik’s is the work I’ve been most proud of – outstanding, inspiring, and even made me start up a new company!’. The Translators That new company is ‘Swallow Editions’, and arises from Schwepcke’s commitment to promoting emerging writers and translators. Although she has a long-standing affiliation with many of her translators, she is very keen to work with new talent. When Schami was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2010, he pledged to donate any prize money to a fund that would give emerging writers from the Arab world the chance to be translated into English. Schwepcke loved the idea and suggested that Haus support the project even if Schami did not win the prize. And so ‘Swallow Editions’ was founded, as Schwepcke explains: ‘Rafik heads a group of like-minded people who support this; the first “swallow” has been chosen, and the text will be translated by an emerging translator who will be in London on a residency programme.’

The Back Story Barbara began her professional life as a journalist in Germany, before moving to work in publishing in the UK. It was during her time at Harvill Press that the idea for Haus Publishing was born, by way of that towering figure of the Anglo-German literary world, W.G. Sebald. While discussing with him the possibility of bringing his essay collection Luftkrieg und Literatur out with Harvill, Sebald suggested that she publish a selection in English of Rowohlt’s illustrated biographies – ‘the staple food of all students and school pupils’. And so, in 2001-02, Haus Books was born. In 2008, the imprint Arabia Books was founded, one of whose most successful authors is the Syrian-German writer Rafik Schami.

The Future Schwepcke is positive about the future of Haus and of fiction in translation more generally. She is particularly excited about publishing Swiss author Alex Capus’s new book, and about an English original, The Berlin Cantatas, for which she hopes to sell the rights to Germany and beyond. She praises a number of ‘fantastic initiatives, which are all going to contribute to getting more translated fiction out there’, but notes that the most vital stage now is the relationship with booksellers. There is an increased appetite for translated fiction amongst publishers, but ‘marketing and selling is the next nut to be cracked’. With figures of such energy and creativity as Schwepcke leading the way, NBG feels even more positive about this now, too.

INTERVIEW

Recently Published and Forthcoming Titles in English An Exclusive Love Johanna Adorján Translated by Anthea Bell Harvill Secker ‘An Exclusive Love is one of the most remarkable and moving books I’ve ever read. The true story of a love like no other, a couple who could not bear to be parted in their final years, this little book is perfectly formed and beautifully told. Narrated by their granddaughter Johanna, it follows this elderly couple on their imagined final day, and Johanna gradually unravels their life story as she meets with their family and friends. From their never-mentioned experiences during World War II, to their escape from Budapest and subsequent immigration to Denmark, it’s a broad sweep of the twentieth century and many of the preoccupations of our age. Johanna also adds her own memories and observations about them. It is infused with tremendous warmth and humour, but this is not a saccharine portrait: these are real people with their own scars and flaws.’ – Briony Everroad, Harvill Secker

Splinter Sebastian Fitzek Translated by John Brownjohn Corvus What if we could permanently erase our most terrifying experiences from memory? And what could go wrong? ‘Sebastian is the very model of the 21stcentury author: he made his name on the web, garnering several hundred five-star reviews on Amazon.de with his first novel; he answers every – every – email from his fans; he teases his readers with mind-warping alternate reality games; and if you ask nicely, he might even come to your house and perform a reading from one of his insanely fast-paced, mind-warping, utterly unputdownable psychological thrillers.’ – Nicolas Cheetham, Corvus

Next World Novella Matthias Politycki Translated by Anthea Bell Peirene Press ‘This novella deals with the weighty subjects of marriage and death in an impressively light manner. Shifting realities evolve with a beautiful sense of irony and wit. It is a tone that allows us to reflect – without judgement – on misunderstandings, contradictory perceptions and the transience of life.’ – Meike Ziervogel, Peirene Press ‘In this elegant novella, Politycki dissects a failed marriage with acute psychological insight and reminds us of how swiftly a breakdown in communication can make our own and others’ existence unfathomable.’ – The Independent on Sunday

News and information

Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism Hans Fallada Translated by Michael Hofmann Penguin Classics This book includes the stories ‘A Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism’ and ‘Three Years of Life’. ‘Following the enormous success of Fallada’s Alone in Berlin, it’s wonderful to have the opportunity to publish these two autobiographical stories in English for the first time, once again masterfully translated by Michael Hofmann. With their darkly comic depiction of addiction, they are incredibly current and also give great insight into the life and mind of the troubled man that was the author Hans Fallada.’ – Adam Freudenheim, Penguin Classics

The Hour of the Jackal Bernhard Jaumann Translated by John Brownjohn John Beaufoy Publishing ‘A unique detective story that’s steeped in the South West African atmosphere of Namibia. Jaumann has created a memorable heroine in young detective Clemencia Garises, who must confront the brutal legacy of the last days of apartheid.’ – John Beaufoy, Beaufoy Books The Hour of the Jackal was the

winner of the 2011 German Prize for Crime Fiction.

Stillness of the Sea Nicol Ljubic´ Translated by Anna Paterson Vagabond Voices ‘The still surface of a sea is both menacing and calmly beautiful: a perfect metaphor for this reflective novel. The narrator is a young historian, preoccupied with the case of a Serb on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for his alleged role in the incarceration and later death by arson of a Muslim family during the Balkan civil war. While the narrator tells us through long flashbacks about his love for the possible war criminal’s daughter, we come to understand more of the agonies suffered by everyone touched by the murder. The connection between his trial reports and his recollections is inexplicable at first, but gradually open up yet another perspective on the case of his beloved Ana’s father. The love affair is moving and utterly believable: charming at first, then intense and finally ripped apart by the conflict between the past and the present. The end, which cannot be revealed, is an exquisite balance between bitter realism and forgiveness: Nicol Ljubic’s ´ book is an outstanding achievement in human as well as literary terms.’ – Allan Cameron, Vagabond Voices

Alice

Crime

Judith Hermann

Ferdinand von Schirach

Translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo Clerkenwell Press

Translated by Carol Brown Janeway Chatto & Windus

When someone very close to you dies your whole life changes. Everything is different. Alice is the central figure in these five inter-connected narratives, which tell of her life at times of loss. Suddenly it is no longer possible to say what the person looked like, how he spoke, cursed, smiled, how he lived his life. Objects are left behind, books, letters, pictures and every now and again you think you can see them in a crowd.

‘Crime is one of the most chilling and memorable works of fiction you are likely to read this spring. The stories are based on some of the extraordinary cases that Schirach has defended in his work as an eminent lawyer in Berlin, but this is not sensationalist true crime. Von Schirach is a luminous literary writer whose sentences are plain, elegant and devastating – think Raymond Carver with flick knives. He also makes it incumbent on the reader to make some uncomfortable moral choices. You’ll know the famous Magritte painting of the apple, with the statement ‘Ceci n’est pas une pomme’. It is the epigraph to the book, and an apple is ingeniously hidden in the text of every case history. The apple reminds us that nothing – neither innocence nor guilt – is ever quite as it seems.’ – Clara Farmer, Chatto & Windus

Judith Hermann tells of days of transition, of waiting, of holding on and letting go – and of how clear and dazzling such days can sometimes be. Alice is a book of extraordinary power and great literary beauty from one of Europe’s finest writers.

Between Nine and Nine Leo Perutz Translated by Thomas Ahrens and Edward T. Larkin Ariadne Press

The Calligrapher’s Secret

‘Stanislaus Demba, a student and immigrant who earns his keep as a private tutor in turn-of-the-century Vienna, must come up with two hundred crowns to win back Sonja, a disingenuous office worker who plans to spend her vacation in Italy with a well-off law student. Can he succeed? In a series of humorous and intricately-connected vignettes, Leo Perutz, himself an immigrant to Vienna, sends Demba cascading through the meticulously portrayed social classes of fin-de-siècle Vienna to obtain the money even as he tries to conceal a shameful secret. Admired by Ian Fleming, Italo Calvino, Graham Greene, Jorge Luis Borges, and Hermann Broch, this successful if self-proclaimed “forgotten writer” furnishes his tale of social identity with an enigmatic conclusion, which is as delightful as it is provocative. Between Nine and Nine effectively illuminates the author’s artistic persona: as highly sensitive stylist, as fluid storyteller and caricaturist, as subtle and satirical humorist, and as insightful social critic.’ – Jorun B. Johns, Ariadne Press

Rafik Schami

The Island of Second Sight Albert Vigoleis Thelen Translated by Donald O. White Galileo Publishing ‘This semi-autobiographical novel, set on the island of Majorca between 1933 and 1936, is full of surprises and twists, in terms of both narrative and language. Thomas Mann called it one of the greatest books of the 20th century and many have compared it in scope, humour and sheer imagination to Cervantes’ Don Quixote. It is an explosive mix of historyin-the-making (its background is the rise of Nazism and fascism sweeping across Europe), travelogue, satire and philosophical treatise, all wrapped up in the tragicomical, picaresque story of Vigo and Bea. The couple, forced to seek refuge from Hitler, survive on their talents and wits alone in the face of adverse circumstances. A truly astonishing, intelligent, hilarious and thought-provoking book, quite unlike anything else you are likely to find in German literature. Galileo Publishing feels privileged to make this jewel of 20th century literature available in a much praised translation by Donald O. White.’ – Isabelle Weiss, Galileo Publishing

Translated by Anthea Bell Haus Publishing ‘The first time I met Rafik Schami he told me about the letters missing from the Arabic alphabet. It quickly occurred to me that without the letters W, E, and P my surname, Schwepcke, would be greatly reduced! O is another letter which is absent from the Arabic alphabet. Schami explained the impact of these missing letters on the Arab world, especially with the explosion of internet usage. He stressed to me that without these four letters, various problems arise in the beautiful Arabic script, especially when it comes to science, philosophy and medicine where it often interrupts the flow of words. From the moment we had this discussion, I knew I would have to publish Schami’s story. The historical, political and artistic aspects of The Calligrapher’s Secret were so intriguing and irresistible to me as a publisher.’ – Barbara Schwepcke, Haus Publishing

C.H.I.X Book 1 – The Summer Gang Cornelia Funke Translated by Oliver Latsch Chicken House After looking after Charlie’s grandma’s chickens, best friends Charlie, Hannah, Izzie and Xa (Alexandra) form a secret club formed by the first letters of their names. They are the C.H.I.X. They wear a feather around their necks, look for adventure and swear an oath never to eat poultry! Despite attracting the unwanted attention of a local boy-gang, known to the girls as the Foxes, ultimately they enjoy an easy-going boy/girl rivalry, eventually becoming good friends while always dealing with their own on-off friendships and family dramas. The perfect chick-lit series for girls aged 10+ written by bestselling author, Cornelia Funke. The original series of five books in Germany has sold more than a million copies where it has captured the imagination of a generation of readers.

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Claus-Ulrich Bielefeld & Petra Hartlieb

Auf der Strecke. Ein Fall für Berlin und Wien (Non-stop to Berlin)

Diogenes Verlag, May 2011, 368 pp. ISBN: 978 3 257 24068 9

A tale of two cities Set in Berlin and Vienna, this elegant and sophisticated literary whodunnit thrives on the cultural rivalry between the two capitals, and on the personality clash between the lively and outspoken Viennese detective, Anna Habel, and her sceptical colleague from Berlin, Thomas Bernhardt. On the night train from Vienna to Berlin, up-and-coming young writer Xaver Pucher – ‘a would-be German Bret Easton Ellis, an amoral moralist’ – is brutally strangled. Habel, herself a lover of literature, is charged with investigating his murder. Hoping for guidance in what seems an overwhelmingly complex case, she reluctantly contacts Bernhardt. Between them, they begin their enquiries.

Events take a turn for the worse when Pucher’s agent, a key witness, is found murdered. Bernhardt is assaulted at the scene of the crime and begins to suspect that money is the true motive behind the murders. After three days of misunderstandings over the phone, the two detectives finally meet to attend Pucher’s funeral. Next morning, Habel awakens to the news that Pucher’s former lover has attempted suicide in an apartment belonging to a rival author. As the plot unravels, links come to light between Claus-Ulrich Bielefeld was born in 1947 in Bad Schwalbach. He studied German, sociology and philosophy. He currently works as a literary editor for Berlin-Brandenburg Radio, and as a literary critic for numerous newspapers. Petra Hartlieb was born in Munich in 1967 and grew up in northern Austria. She studied psychology and history in Vienna, and then worked as a PR representative and a literary critic in Vienna and Hamburg. Since 2001, she has run a bookshop in Vienna with her husband.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany/Austria (see page 40)

Crime fiction and thrillers

a property tycoon with roots in the former East Germany on the one hand and the Austrian communist party on the other, with the dandy Pucher mixed up in the middle. Finally Habel, who was convinced all along that the ‘solution lies in the manuscript’, manages to decipher the ominous text of Pucher’s last manuscript. The plot is seamless and the style consistently elegant and witty. The joint authors skilfully produce distinct differences in tone and emphasis between the two settings. The descriptions of the many faces of Berlin, past and present, are strikingly evocative and succinct, clearly written by somebody who knows the city and its people inside out. The tone of the Viennese chapters is livelier and more openly humorous. There is a delightful scene in which Habel accompanies the forensic experts through her recently burgled flat, utterly distraught at the sight of her belongings scattered throughout her bedroom. She then shows them to her sixteen-year-old son Florian’s room, with an equally detailed description of the chaos awaiting them, only to remark that, no, the burglar clearly hadn’t entered that room. A literature-lover’s crime novel par excellence. Translation rights available from: Diogenes Verlag AG Sprecherstrasse 8, 8032 Zürich Tel: +41 44 252 84 07 Email: bau@diogenes.ch Contact: Susanne Bauknecht www.diogenes.ch

Oliver G. Wachlin

Tortenschlacht (Cake Fight)

Emons Verlag, September 2010, 304 pp. ISBN: 978 3 89705 766 1

Tortuous times Once arrested for attempting to flee the former East Germany and now living in the western half of Berlin, Wachlin draws on personal experience of both sides of the Iron Curtain in this thrilling crime novel. Set in Berlin ‘between two states’ – just after the GDR officially ceased to exist but before it became part of the new Germany in 1990 – Cake Fight is the second novel featuring chief inspector Hans Dieter Knoop.

©Britta Schmitz

West Berlin police superintendents Knoop and Hünerbein are sent to assist in a case in East Berlin, with a brief to support and train former East Berlin police officers on the job. Their starting point is the dead body of a punk, lying in the ruins of a burned-down house. Knoop’s own daughter Melanie seems to be involved with the East Berlin alternative scene of punks and squatters; however, she seems to be connected to another death – apparently a case of suicide. Confusion reigns when yet another dead body, this time a West German politician, is discovered. Former members of the East German secret police seem to be caught up in the crimes, and in the end all the leads point to one man. Siggi is a real-estate speculator and ex-husband of Knoop’s ex-girlfriend Monika. His large-scale acquisitions of East Oliver G. Wachlin, born in 1966, is a screenwriter who knows both sides of the former divided Berlin very well. In one part, he was arrested for trying to flee, and he now lives with his family in the other. That part of western Berlin was also the location of his first crime novel, Wunderland, a detective story set against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin wall. Previous works: Wunderland (‘Wonderland’, 2008)

German buildings turn out to be one huge laundering of Stasi money. Cake Fight involves everything a good crime novel should:

murder, corruption, drugs, romance and a tough copper who can’t be fooled. Turbulent times in German history are masterfully reflected in a turbulent story. One of Wachlin’s great strengths is to show the huge differences between the two Germanys and the great challenges inherent in achieving their successful integration. At the official unification ceremony, the East German Volkspolizei is integrated into one united German police. The military band performs both national anthems and the policemen exchange uniforms. A former GDR chief inspector is feeling disorientated, not knowing where he now belongs: his feelings and thoughts speak for many citizens at that time. The switching narrative perspectives give a very strong impression of the chaotic times in which the book is set. With his description of the different characters of East and West Berlin, Wachlin convincingly depicts a watershed period of transition in which many were hoping for better times, while others were just trying to gain some advantage. Translation rights available from: Emons Verlag GmbH Lütticher Str. 38, 50674 Köln Tel: 0049 221 56977-15 Email: info@emons-verlag.de Contact: Angela Eichner www.emons-verlag.de ‘ Exhilarating, humorous, and full of surprises – and as such, no ordinary crime novel.’ (Antenne Brandenburg)

Emons Verlag was founded in 1984 by Hermann-Josef Emons in Cologne. Today the company is market leader in the Regional Mystery sector, with forty different series. Besides mystery stories, the publisher’s list has always included other titles with a regional background, such as historical suspense novels, guide books, atlases, illustrated books and non-fiction books concerning culture, history and the documentation of National Socialism. In 1995 Emons published Frank Schätzing’s Novel Death and the Devil, which has become an international bestseller.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Crime fiction and thrillers

Elisabeth Herrmann

Zeugin der Toten (The Cleaner)

List (Ullstein), March 2011, 432 pp. ISBN: 978 347 13503 79

Clean-up operation Herrmann’s debut thriller, The Cleaner, is a genuinely thrilling read with breathless twists and turns throughout and satisfyingly unexpected outcomes right up to the end. A sparkling follow-up to her award-winning crime novels. Judith Kepler is a ‘cleaner’ – the person who removes all traces of death once the police have completed their work at a crime scene. A clean-up job after a particularly drawnout and bloody murder plunges Judith into the dark world of international espionage, when she discovers that the murdered woman – Christina Borg – had Judith’s own files from the children’s home that they once apparently shared. Judith’s quest to discover her link to Borg attracts the attention of the CIA, of German intelligence agencies and of unknown rogue agents who are trying to find a ‘lost’ microfilm uncovered by Borg and which contains details of top East German spies in senior positions in the West. Judith tracks down Quirin Kaiserley, a former top agent for the West who is suspected of sabotaging the handover of the microfilm years before. This in turn leads her back to the children’s home where she and Christina were brought up.

Woven into this action, Kaiserley joins other agents in trying Elisabeth Herrmann is one the most exciting voices of our time. Lively, dark and atmospheric, her writing style has been delighting readers of crime fiction since the publication of The Sitter in 2005, which is currently being filmed. The author lives in Berlin with her daughter. Previous works: Konstanze (‘The Love and Life of Constance of Aragon’, historical novel, 2009); Die letzte Instanz (‘Blind Justice’, crime fiction, 2009); Die siebte Stunde (‘The Seventh Hour’, crime fiction, 2007); Das Kindermädchen (‘The Sitter’, 2005)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Crime fiction and thrillers

to track down Judith, with at least one of them determined to kill her. The action intensifies; Judith and Kaiserly become more entwined as they follow the trail to Sweden, where she is kidnapped, drugged and framed for the murder of Borg’s mother. Shady deals, the use of multiple identities, suspicious behaviour by unexpected characters and technical wizardry create a race to the dénouement. As the plot twists and turns, and Judith reaches further back into her past, she discovers her mother’s story. Working as an informer for the Stasi, her mother accepts an offer from the West German security services to flee to Sweden. But the escape fails catastrophically, and Judith’s mother throws herself under a train to avoid arrest by the Stasi. Judith witnesses this horror, and is subsequently sequestered in a children’s home by the Stasi. A girl of her own age is taken from the children’s home and sent to Sweden in her place – so that the Stasi can still arrest the West German agents on charges of people-smuggling. The result is a supremely well-crafted thriller, with multiple cliff-hangers and relentless suspense. Strikingly visual, it would make an excellent adaptation for the screen. Translation rights available from: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH Friedrichstr. 126, 10117 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 (0) 30 23456 - 450 Email: pia.goetz@ullstein-buchverlage.de Contact: Pia Götz www.ullstein-buchverlage.de ‘ The novel infects you with its brilliant dialogue, multi-faceted protagonist and convincing historical background. 430 pages that you’d love to swallow in one gulp.’ (WDR-4) ‘ A fascinating journey into the past.’ (GoFeminin)

Ullstein was founded in Berlin in 1903 by the famous family-owned Ullstein newspaper publishers. The company quickly rose to become Germany’s leading book publisher. In 1934 Ullstein was expropriated by the Nazis. In 1952 the house reopened in Frankfurt and seven years later it was sold to the publishing group Axel Springer. In 2003 Ullstein’s book division was bought by the Swedish media group Bonnier, who brought Ullstein back to Berlin in 2004. The Ullstein publishing group includes the imprints Ullstein, List, Claassen, Marion von Schröder, Tanja Graf Verlag, Econ, Propyläen and Allegria. The broad spectrum of titles includes bestselling authors such as Jo Nesbo, John le Carré, James Ellroy and Helene Hegemann in fiction; Shlomo Sand, Richard Dawkins, Natascha Kampusch and Timothy Ferris in non-fiction.

Sven Böttcher

Die Prophezeiung (The Prophecy)

Kiepenheuer & Witsch, February 2011, 448 pp. ISBN: 978 3 462 04278 8

Too little, too late Prophecy is a tour de force. The highly successful co-author of such novels as the 9/11 thriller, Das fünfte Flugzeug, Böttcher weaves together a gripping story from the strands of climate conspiracy theory and hard scientific knowledge.

Concerned with human intervention in an enraged natural world, the novel is divided into four chapters. ‘Prometheus’ sets the scene, the name of a secretly developed computer program that delivers uncannily accurate prognoses about the changing weather. ‘Kassandra’ focuses on the heroine of the novel, scientific researcher and whistleblower Mavie Heller, and her attempt to reveal the secret of Prometheus to the public. The sudden death of a journalist friend in whom she confided her discovery is the starting-gun for a race to warn the world before the conspirators catch up with her. In ‘Pandora’, the warning prophecy of the book’s title begins to come true and the whole planet descends into chaos. The reader is catapulted into a world of severe drought around the equator and permanent monsoon conditions in the northern hemisphere. The algorithms predict hundreds of millions of victims. The clock begins to tick for Heller as leading scientists misuse her findings to plan the detonation of a volcano in Chad with a nuclear Sven Böttcher was born in 1964 and has been writing novels, non-fiction books and film scripts for twenty-five years. He has also developed successful TV shows. He has written a thriller trilogy about an advertising mogul and a series of philosophical science fiction novels. His four most recent thrillers and works of non-fiction were published under a pseudonym. With The Prophecy he returns to using his real name. Previous works: Ein Kuckuckskind der Liebe

(‘A Cuckoo Child of Love’, 2005); Der tiefere Sinn des Labenz

(‘The Deeper Meaning of Labenz‘, 2004); Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Heldenherz. Das ungeheure Abenteuer des Magnus Morgenstern

(‘A Hero’s Heart: The Incredible Adventure of Magnus Morgenstern’, 2003)

warhead in order to throw dust into the stratosphere and shield the planet from cosmic rays. The final chapter, ‘Styx’, returns Heller to the start of her journey, on the banks of the Elbe in her native Hamburg. Swollen by the incessant rainfall, the tumultuous river is filled with a plague of jellyfish. However, the unexpected appearance of the sun behind the doom-laden rain clouds proves irrefutably that the prognosis is flawed – that man is able neither to predict nor harness nature on a global scale. The book ends with the task of picking up the pieces and re-evaluating our position. The media, scientists, political strategists, private investors and the energy generators are all criticized for their role in fuelling the catastrophe rather than contributing to an equitable solution for all mankind. Praised by Frank Schätzing, author of the bestselling The Swarm, as ‘intelligent and fast-paced’, and with real potential for transfer to the screen, Prophecy mounts a successful challenge to the widely-held myths surrounding global warming and alternative energy development.

Translation rights available from: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG Bahnhofsvorplatz 1, 50667 Cologne Tel: +49 221 376 8522 Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de Contact: Iris Brandt www.kiwi-verlag.de ‘ Sven Böttcher has written a thorny book about the existential threat to our planet. His gift is his ability to describe the decline of the environment dramatically and vividly – and he has the scientific background to back up his claims.’ (Südkurier) ‘ Intelligent and resonant! A climate change thriller that will set you on fire and chill you to the core.’ (Frank Schätzing)

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.

Crime fiction and thrillers

‘Den beiden Schweizern zum Geburtstag’: commemorating Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt anything else. Furthermore, the tendency to categorise them together as politically engaged, outspoken Swiss authors obscures any differences regarding their backgrounds – Frisch was born in Zurich, the son of an architect, and Dürrenmatt spent his early years in the small municipality of Konolfingen in the canton of Bern, his father the parish priest. The importance placed on their shared nationality also overshadows their often complex and ambivalent relationship with their native country, and their controversial status within Switzerland. Frisch in particular was very vocal in public debates on culture and politics in Switzerland. Whilst his

Vergangenheitsbewältigung

(‘mastering the past’), and most German A-Level students will be familiar at least with Andorra (Frisch) and The Visit (Dürrenmatt). Both writers have come to stand for a concept of literature which demands the active participation of their readers and audiences. It is hard to conceive of these figures as being anything but friends. And yet their correspondence – published by Diogenes and due out in English translation in May 2011 – fills a very slim volume. It is full of long gaps between letters, which bear witness to an increasing distance and estrangement, fuelled by disagreements, misunderstandings, rivalry and the awareness that their friendship had run its course. This suggests that their friendship was as much a creation of their reception as

Article

The correspondence in English (Seagull Books)

Letters between the two authors (Diogenes)

There is a long-established precedent to marking the one hundredth anniversary of Max Frisch’s birth and the ninetieth anniversary of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s together. As Frisch once remarked, they had little choice in the matter of being friends, and it has been suggested more than once that it was precisely the public perception of the Frisch-Dürrenmatt phenomenon that put such pressure on their friendship. They were both resigned, it seems, to joining the long tradition of literary ‘dioscuri’, as Hans Meyer put it, alongside Goethe and Schiller, Grabbe and Büchner, Gottfried Keller and C.F. Meyer. And to a degree, their similarities are undeniable: they were both Swiss, wrote plays and novels, were born within ten years of one another and died within months of each other. They lived through some of the most significant events of the twentieth century, and they engaged with many of them in their writings. On undergraduate syllabus courses they have become synonymous with post-war German literature and

By Carly McLaughlin

Max Frisch (left) and Friedrich Dürrenmatt (right)

early journalistic writings show him to have been conservative and nationalistic in his views, his later writings indicate a distinct move to the left. This tendency led to Frisch’s involvement, in 1966, in a heated literary debate with the literary critic Emil Staiger, who was suspected of having national-socialist leanings; and it underpinned his sympathy with the youth protests at the end of the 1960s, his criticism of Switzerland’s treatment of guest workers and, in the last few years of his life, his protests against the continuation of the Swiss army. In 1989, Frisch was directly implicated in Switzerland’s ‘Fichenaffäre’, when he discovered that he had been under surveillance for over forty years. At the end of his life he stated that the only thing linking him to Switzerland was his passport. Yet the fact that Frisch still chose to live out his last years in Zurich, where he died of cancer on 4 April 1991, just weeks before his eightieth birthday, suggests an enduring, deeply personal connection to a country he loved to hate in public. The fact that all but one of his plays had their premiere at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich is also indicative of a loyalty which endured in spite of his international reputation and success in other Germanspeaking countries. Dürrenmatt mainly kept himself at a distance from such public debates and controversies, and was therefore never such a vocal, public figure as Frisch. This is in keeping with his refusal to tie himself to one particular position, whether it was artistic, religious or political, stating that he was ultimately only concerned with the ‘human’. In

later years he did however voice his position on matters such as the Israel conflict, although always with the refusal to define and commit to a specific world-view. Like Frisch, he was also critical of the idea of a Swiss army and once likened Switzerland to a prison. Both writers considered being an author as much a profession as a calling. For both Frisch and Dürrenmatt, the decision to make a living as a writer was not always straightforward. Initially, Dürrenmatt was undecided whether to make a living as a painter or a writer. And although he finally chose to be a writer, and earned a living in his early years as a journalist and theatre critic, his love of painting remained, and he continued to paint and exhibit during the 1970s and 80s. He enjoyed financial success before international literary fame as the writer of radio plays and crime novels. His life as a writer is documented in pictures in the forthcoming volume Dürrenmatt. Sein Leben in Bildern

(Diogenes, 2011). Similarly, after a few years as a newspaper journalist, and a few

A pictorial biography of Dürrenmatt’s life

A brand new biography of Max Frisch (KiWi)

early writing successes, Frisch decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and study architecture, and in 1940 he got his first job in an architecture firm. In 1943 he won a competition to design a swimming pool, the Freibad Letzigraben, which is still in use today and recently underwent complete restoration to return it to its original condition. Frisch eventually returned to being a fulltime writer, but he continued to write and lecture on architectural themes for the rest of his life. In their own ways, both Frisch and Dürrenmatt bridged the gap between literature and politics, high culture and low culture, Swiss insularity and global politics, all of which are indicative of a refusal to allow art to be an insular practice unconcerned with matters of the real world. The one hundredth anniversary of Frisch’s birth on 15 May 2011 is being marked by numerous publications and events which serve as a reminder of the breadth and diversity of his work and impact. A new biography by Volker Weidermann, Max Frisch. Sein Leben, seine Bücher

(Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2010) acknowledges from the outset the paradoxical undertaking of writing a biography of a man who regarded a life as one version of many possible stories. Weidermann does not shy away from those aspects of Frisch’s writing – his early conservative, nationalistic journalism – which previous biographers have preferred to neglect. A further publication was a source of controversy even before its release. The publication of Frisch’s

third diary, Entwürfe zu einem dritten Tagebuch (Suhrkamp, 2011), the existence of which was only discovered in 2009, has triggered a debate on the moral justification of making public a diary which Frisch never clearly intended to publish. It is a debate which has caused a rift within the Max Frisch foundation, of which the editor of the diary, Peter von Matt, is president. The publication of the diary was decided upon by a vote; and all members, with the exception of the writer and literary scholar Adolf Muschg, voted in favour of the publication. Muschg’s reasoning that the third diary is a weak and tired piece of work held no sway against the excitement of the discovery. Peter von Matt’s view of the diary is that the work is not simply the jottings of Frisch in his later years, but is as much a product of work and self-stylisation as his previous two diaries and thus has a place in Frisch’s oeuvre, providing new and original insights into his work. There is no doubt that with the opening this year of the safe which contains unpublished material such as the so-called ‘Berliner Journale’ and other sensitive writings, which Frisch himself asked to be sealed until the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the debate on the rights of posterity over authors’ materials will continue. The anniversary has also been marked by several Englishlanguage publications which introduce some of Frisch’s less well-known works to nonGerman readers. Two texts from the late 1960s, Zurich Transit and Biography: A Game, were published last year by Seagull Books, in English translations by Birgit Schreyer Duarte, and will no doubt be new to most readers. They are less political than his best-known plays Andorra and Biedermann und die Brandstifter; and in their intensive engagement with themes of identity, causality and fate they are much closer thematically to the better known novels Homo Faber and Stiller. Nevertheless, they are important works in themselves, not least because they show Frisch experimenting with new genres. Zurich Transit is the outline for a film based on an episode from the novel Mein Name sei Gantenbein of 1964, which tells the story of a man

who, on a business trip away from home, reads his own obituary in the newspaper and returns home to attend his funeral without revealing his presence to the mourners. The play Biography: A Game, revised again in 1984, continues with some of the themes from the film script but is at the same time a real attempt to create a new form of drama. In Frisch’s view, theatre offered what life did not: the chance to experiment, repeat, go back and undo. The play shows the main character using the script of his life to return to scenes and re-act them, thereby changing the outcome of his life. The play shows his failure to re-act a scene that might have prevented him from marrying his future wife, which resulted in an unhappy marriage. Whilst this might seem to suggest that it is not impossible to change one’s fate, it is clear within the play that this failure lies with the protagonist’s character and not with the power of the gods. At the end of the play, the wife is offered the chance to return to the scene in which she met her future husband and prevent their eventual marriage, which she accepts. The play thus remains a statement on the potential for free will and freedom of choice. Both publications by Seagull are beautiful editions and the translations convey the modernity and enduring relevance of Frisch’s language. Although by no means necessary, a translator’s preface would have been useful for situating these relatively unknown works within the context of Frisch’s

Frisch’s Zurich Transit in English for the first time (Seagull)

oeuvre for the benefit of their English-speaking readers, and for addressing any translationrelated issues. It is perhaps to their credit, however, that these Seagull publications do not present Frisch’s works as scholarly texts, but allow the works to stand on their own. Perhaps these publications will be followed by further translations of Frisch’s lesser-known works, including his diaries, the second of which contains his ‘Fragebogen’, eleven questionnaires based on themes such as marriage, friendship and money, the answers to which are left up to the reader. Quite apart from being excellent dinnerparty conversation fodder, the partly unsettling, partly infuriating experience of reading a work which raises questions and offers no answers is one with which the reader of Frisch will be familiar. Anniversaries are busy times for publishers and academics, but aside from their purpose as a useful marketing tool, they also offer an opportunity for reflection and evaluation. The fear that the deaths of Frisch and Dürrenmatt signalled the death of Swiss literature has proved unfounded. Nor have their deaths resulted in a decline in their impact and popularity. Their plays remain a standard feature of most theatre repertories, they are part of the school canon in German-speaking countries and in Britain, and their works continue to be republished and translated. Whilst the rush of publications celebrating Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s one hundredth birthday are yet to come, there is no doubt that they will; just as there is little doubt that Max Frisch will also feature amongst Dürrenmatt’s anniversary celebrations, as they continue in many ways to be inseparable, ‘die beiden Schweizer’ to the end. Carly McLaughlin completed a doctorate on the poetry of Richard Dehmel in the German department at Queen Mary, University of London in 2008. Since then, she has worked as a lecturer in the Department of British Culture at the University of Bamberg, where she has taught courses on Cultural Studies, Northern Irish literature and religion in Modernism.

ARTICLE

Christoph Simon

Spaziergänger Zbinden (Zbinden the Walker)

Bilgerverlag, August 2010, 186 pp. ISBN: 978 3 037 62014 4

‘The last gentle soul on earth’ A humane, wise and witty book, Zbinden the Walker defies categorisation but invites reading and re-reading.

great discoveries have been made by scientists and artists while they were out walking, we are reminded.

Set in an old people’s home, the narrative is effectively an inner monologue, spoken by a resident of the home, Lukas Zbinden. He is making the strenuous walk down the stairs of the home on the arm of Kâzim, a young man assigned to the home for his spell of community service. Zbinden, now in his eighties, reflects on his life, past and present, and on his family, and introduces Kâzim to the other residents they meet on their way.

The entire book is a gentle meditation on what it means to live a good life. Deploring the competitive nature of modern life, Lukas asks of his granddaughter: ‘Why should she sacrifice her youth to attain wealth, only to spend her wealth trying to stay young?’. The other residents are shrewdly but indulgently observed, often to hilarious effect. Of Frau Jacobs, a former film actress in her late eighties who now lives in the home, he observes that she doesn’t like being recognised in the street, but even less does she like not being recognised in the street.

Little by little we learn the story of his life, his career as a schoolteacher and his long marriage to his beloved and now-deceased Emilie. As a teacher he was unconventional, believing that the purpose of education is to learn how to get on with other people, and that practical experience trumps book learning. But, as the title intimates, walking is the theme on which the whole narrative is hung. For Lukas and Emilie, walking is not just the healthy option: it is the meaning of life. Walking is a process of developing one’s awareness of the world, and of becoming self-aware, becoming properly and fully human. Walking is the antidote to the rat-race. And Christoph Simon was born in 1972 in Langnau. He attended secondary school in Thun, and then studied jazz at a music school in Bern, where he now lives. In 2001 he published his first novel, Franz oder

Warum Antilopen nebeneinander laufen, which has sold over 10,000

‘ My intention with Spaziergänger was to explore how one makes a love last a lifetime. What are the secrets of enduring love?’ (Christoph Simon) Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 40)

Fiction

copies. Following this success, he published Luna Lena and Planet Obirst, which continues the story of the central character in his first novel, Franz Obrist. This novel won Simon the 2006 Canton of Bern Literature Prize, and a place on the Ingeborg Bachmann selection committee.

Human nature is observed with humour and affection as the writer’s thoughts switch from one subject to the next, just as things occur to him. Several pages are devoted to the pursuit of the married Emilie by an admirer whom she had met on a bird-watching course. He boldly comes to their home to press his suit, and Lukas notes Emilie’s gracious smile – ‘not at all the kind of smile you give to Vogelbeobachtungskursbekanntschaften [“people one has met on a bird-watching course”]’. Irresistible. Previous works: Planet Obrist (‘Planet Obrist’, 2005); Luna Llena (‘Luna Llena’, 2003); Franz, oder Warum Antilopen nebeneinander laufen (‚Franz, or Why

Antelopes Run in Herds‘, 2001) Translation rights available from: Bilgerverlag GmbH Josefstrasse 52, 8005 Zürich Tel: +41 44 271 8146 bilger@bilgerverlag.ch Contact: Ricco Bilger www.bilgerverlag.ch

‘ With Spaziergänger Zbinden, Christoph Simon has produced a wonderful, heart-rending, beautiful book; multi-layered, witty and moving.’ (Buchkultur) ‘ Lingustic consistency and rigorous content characterise Zbinden the Walker. Simon’s fifth novel is a polished gem, with insight and perception that know no cultural bounds.’ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)

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 the 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.

Urs Faes

Paarbildung (Pairing)

Suhrkamp Verlag, September 2010, 166 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42131 4

The remembrance of loves past A delicate handling of sensitive subjects and a rare ability to describe subtleties of emotion will attract a wide readership to Faes’ impressive new novel.

Psychologist Andreas Lüscher has recently started work in the oncology unit of a hospital. In his new role, Andreas goes to great lengths to distance himself from the painful realities of his clients. But his composure is suddenly lost when he recognises the name of a new patient. The mention of a former girlfriend, Meret Etter, opens the floodgates to memories of their shared past and experiences of loss, which Andreas has long suppressed. The two meetings between the former lovers as patient and counsellor are deftly worked studies in their conflict between intimacy and distance. Meret opts for a meeting where a curtain separates patient and counsellor. Communication seems impossible for Andreas; but for Meret it appears to be the only way of re-establishing contact. Their second meeting begins haltingly, but gradually Meret gains confidence and begins to speak more openly about the years since their separation and her illness. Meanwhile, Andreas’s incapacity to communicate in words with his ‘patient’ becomes acute and finally he can contain himself no longer. Yet Meret

Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 40)

Urs Faes was born in Aarau in 1947 and now lives and works in Zurich and in San Feliciano (Italy). Faes received the Swiss Schiller Prize for his novel Und Ruth and for his last novel, Als hätte die Stille Türen, he was awarded the Canton of Zurich’s 2005 prize. He was shortlisted for the Swiss Book Prize in 2010. Selected previous works: Liebesarchiv (‘Archive of Love’, 2007); Ombra (1997) ‘ A tender account of great love... it is as if Meret and Andreas were shouting out their yearning for each other and the pain of their isolation in every sentence.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

shuns his attempts to approach her. Now the thoughts and memories of each character are afforded equal space. Andreas travels to Italy, to a place where he and Meret had previously holidayed. Here his thoughts revolve around the past. In passages told from Meret’s point of view, Faes offers a sensitive portrait of the state of mind of a woman struggling with serious illness and now burdened by the memories of a failed relationship. Yet the mood at the end of the novel is optimistic. A letter from Meret leads to another meeting, this time far removed from the fraught atmosphere of their hospital encounters. Here they manage to find a way of talking about their past together. In this new context a genuine healing process is set in motion for both characters. Pairing alternates between a sparse style which captures

the emotional sterility of both protagonists and richly descriptive passages where Meret and Andreas recall episodes from the past. With a light touch Faes weaves allusions and symbols into vivid descriptions of nature. And the restrained style characteristic of much of the narrative is abandoned as Meret and Andreas become reconciled. Translation rights available from: Suhrkamp Verlag Pappelallee 78-79 10437 Berlin Tel: +49 30 740 744-0 Email: hardt@suhrkamp.de; mercurio@suhrkamp.de Contact: Dr. Petra Hardt (USA); Nora Mercurio (UK) www.suhrkamp.de/foreign_rights_ 462.html ‘ Faes writes without pathos but with the attention of an author who quite rightly believes in his creative talent, and can rely entirely on his characters and their experiences, rather than narrative commentary, to express all that he wants to say.’ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)

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

Rocko Schamoni

Tag der geschlossenen Tür (Closed for Business)

Piper Verlag, January 2011, 261 pp. ISBN: 978 3 492 05421 8

What are you waiting for? Closed for Business is a quirkily original novel that

successfully combines genuine literary technique with a tongue-in-cheek critique of the world we live in today. Schamoni’s anti-hero Michael Sonntag is an unconventional character who defies society’s expectations by refusing to invest his energy in building a career. He is out of fulltime work, having never been able to keep a position for very long as a result of his preferred hobby of deliberately catching illnesses in hospital waiting rooms. He pays his rent by writing a regular column for a newspaper, and is occasionally pulled from his lethargy by a friend’s crazy money-making ideas, although these never come off.

More than anything, Sonntag likes doing it his own way rather than conforming or fitting in. He ‘tries on’ different persona, for instance attending the annual bikers’ festival dressed up in full biker gear, or donning a suit to pose as a banker at an expensive after-work club in the financial district. In his ample spare time Sonntag writes deliberately clichéd and soppy popular novels, and sends them off to publishing companies, fully anticipating their rejection. Indeed, he joyfully collects the rejection letters in an album.

‘ Dry humour at its finest… Schamoni is yet again the author of some of the funniest and most absurd moments of urban literature in Germany.” (Deutschlandradio Kultur) Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Fiction

Rocko Schamoni was born in 1966 in Schleswig-Holstein and now works in theatre, film and television. He tours Germany on a regular basis, and his many roles – including musician, writer, comedian and actor – have won him a dedicated fan base. His debut novel Risiko des Ruhms was followed by the bestseller Dorfpunks, which was adapted for the theatre and released as a film in the spring of 2009. Read more about the author at www.rockoschamoni.de. Previous works: Sternstunden der Bedeutungslosigkeit (‘Great Moments of Meaninglessness’, 2007); Dorfpunks (‘Village Punks’, 2004); Risiko des Ruhms (‘The Risks of Glory’, 2000)

Sonntag’s determined avoidance of convention is borne of his animosity towards much of society. Despite their often flippant tone, Sonntag’s observations and actions lay bare many of the absurdities of modern society – for instance, thoughtless planning that results in cities with no soul, or the lack of thought of what to do with an ageing population. At other times, the protagonist openly voices his discontent with his environment. Although Sonntag is a self-proclaimed outsider, and for the most part enjoys his unconventional lifestyle, there is also a more tragic side to his character. Low in self-esteem, he admits he is lonely and even puts an advertisement in the newspaper to find a ‘best friend’. His love life is also unsuccessful. However, Sonntag’s luck does eventually turn around. One of his book proposals is accepted, and a former lodger leaves him a large sum of money from a bank robbery. Schamoni is a master of word play; his style is both colloquial and eloquent; and Closed for Business is also very funny, both in terms of language and situation, sometimes bordering on the absurd. This nuanced portrait of a man struggling to find his place in the world will strike a chord with many readers. Translation rights available from: Piper Verlag GmbH Georgenstr. 4, 80799 Munich Tel: +49 89 381 801 26 Email: sven.diedrich@piper.de Contact: Sven Diedrich www.piper.de ‘ Staggeringly funny and ingenious.’ (Berliner Morgenpost) ‘ Rocko Schamoni stands out for his absurd ideas, irony, and quirky writing. This is big-city-loser literature as it should be!’ (Radio Fritz) ‘ Extremely entertaining and witty.’ (Hamburger Morgenpost)

Piper Verlag was founded by Reinhard Piper in 1904. The firm published many leading contemporary authors, a tradition followed by his son and his grandson. After 1945 the programme expanded to include philosophy and non-fiction. Piper Verlag is well known for its lists in German and international fiction and non-fiction. Authors published by Piper include Ingeborg Bachmann, Markus Heitz and Ferdinand von Schirach. Piper Verlag has been part of the Swedish Bonnier Group since 1995. In 1996 the Piper publishing group acquired the imprint Malik Verlag (literary travel writing, adventure, mountaineering), and since 2002 Piper’s list has been further enriched by the addition of high quality fantasy literature. Piper acquired the imprints Pendo (commercial fiction and non-fiction) in 2008.

Clemens Setz

Hinrich von Haaren

Die Liebe zur Zeit des Mahlstädter Kindes

Die Überlebten

(The Unfinished Child)

Suhrkamp Verlag, March 2011, 350 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42221 2

The grey zones of sadness With his characteristic blend of grotesque imagination, beguiling detail, rich allusion and stylistic flair, Setz has followed up his award-winning novels with a remarkably versatile and intriguing collection of short stories. Business cards develop welts and infect other objects with corrosion; a woman lives in an apartment on a Ferris wheel; a wife demands that her reluctant husband lock her in a cage. In Setz’s fiction, the line between tenderness and horror constantly wavers. There is mesmerising beauty and lyricism in his details, and he has a knack for striking images and similes. Sometimes his metaphors are so apt that it seems amazing no one ever thought of them before: in Manhattan, one character has the feeling of ‘turning the pages of a book when he walked northward through the streets with their ascending numbers’. Setz’s elegant and meticulous craft, his understated transitions between the everyday and the fantastic, the simple grace of his sentences, the precision of his imagery, the empathetic depiction of his characters’ all-too-human idiosyncrasies, and his revelatory approach to mundane detail have established him as a young author of great distinction.

(The Survivors)

Luftschacht Verlag, September 2010, 183 pp. ISBN: 978 3 902373 58 8

The devil is in the detail Funny and moving, believable yet surprising, The Survivors is a superb debut from a master storyteller. ‘On a Dark Lake’ features a group of tourists on a cruise round Lake Nasser. Figures emerge, relationships develop, and just as the reader is beginning to think that – despite the evocative sense of place, precise observation of character, and deft delineation of dynamics – holidays are, well, a bit boring, someone dies. Surprising reactions ensue in the now acutely awkward atmosphere. In ‘The Air in Your Bones’, the impulsive Astrid meets the phlegmatic Lawrence, and they begin a relationship. He charms her dog Clive, but in a rare moment of exuberance Lawrence gets carried away playing with Clive and the dog is killed by a car. Astrid never really forgives Lawrence, and, having buried Clive on Hampstead Heath, she decides to go travelling – on her own. ‘The Potential of Love’ centres around an imbalanced ménage à trois in London. Jane and the male narrator become obsessed with Trip, an older man of considerable charisma and wealth. Suspicion, jealousy and deceit abound, yet finally the narrator’s mind is opened to the reality of desire and potential of love. On the evidence of these wonderful short stories, economical and ambivalent, von Haaren’s first novel will be eagerly anticipated.

Translation rights available from: Suhrkamp Verlag Tel: +49 30 740 744 0 Email: h ardt@suhrkamp.de; mercurio@suhrkamp.de (see page 29 for contact information) Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 40)

Previous works:

Clemens J. Setz was born in 1982 and now lives in Graz, Austria. He was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2009, won the Bremen Literature Prize in 2010, and is shortlisted for the 2011 Leipzig Book Fair Prize.

Söhne und Planeten (‘Sons and Planets‘, 2007); Die Frequenzen

(‘The Frequencies‘, 2009) Winner of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2011! ‘ The Wunderkind of German literature’ (Die Zeit)

For information about publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag see page 29

Translation rights available from: Luftschacht Verlag GmbH Tel: +43 699 1958 5048 Email: buchberger@luftschacht.com Contact: Stefan Buchberger www.luftschacht.com Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Hinrich von Haaren was born in 1964 in Bremerhaven and studied German literature in Berlin. His radio plays have been broadcast on Radio Bremen and Ostdeutscher Rundfunk, which also awarded him the Radio Play Prize. Von Haaren currently lives in London. Luftschacht Verlag is both financially and politically independent. Its program includes fiction, narrative prose that transcends particular genres, children’s books, illustrated books and graphic novels. ‘ Whether a tour group in Egypt or a ménage à trois in London – the psycho-sexual dimensions of love are explored. A real bounty and a fascinating read.’ (Die Lesefrucht)

SHORT STORIES

Novel Tales from Established Voices As well as introducing an international readership to the best new novels by emerging writers, NBG keeps readers up to date with the latest works by more established authors. During the past few months, three giants of the Germanlanguage literary scene have published new novels. Sorcha McDonagh introduces these acclaimed figures, surveys their oeuvre and existing translations in English, and reviews their new novels.

Peter Handke

Peter Handke is in the avantgarde of the avant-garde movement in Austria. He was born in Austria in 1942 and was brought up by his mother and step-father. While still a pupil at a Catholic boarding school, he had his first taste of his future career when his work was published in the school newspaper. He began a degree in law at the University of Graz in 1961 and it was there that he contributed to the avant-garde literary magazine manusckripte. Three years later, Handke’s first novel was accepted for publication, and he cut short his studies in order to focus on his writing. Handke’s first play was entitled Publikumsbeschimpfung

(literally: ‘Audience-insulting’), and it won admiration for its unconventional and bitingly satirical take on the theatre. Four actors speak directly to the audience in a piece that is less about plot than about provoking the audience into reconsidering the very nature of theatre. They end with a brief round of insults directed at all the theatregoers present. The play had its Englishlanguage premiere at the Oval House Theatre in London in 1970, in a production by The Other Company. Handke, who is himself a translator from English, French, Slovenian and Ancient Greek into German, has had many of his other works translated into English. These include The Goalie’s

(1978), an elegiac tale of a woman who separates from her husband and cannot stop listening to the same record over and over again. Handke has long been passionate about film and has both written screenplays and directed films, including co-writing the film Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987) with director Wim Wenders. The film remains a classic and inspired the Hollywood remake City of Angels. Handke’s deeply moving memoir of his mother, who committed suicide, was published in English as A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (2001). Handke is noted in Austria and throughout the German-speaking world for his highly original use of language and his postmodern style. They have earned him fans, honorary degrees and awards such as the prestigious Büchner Prize. Yet Handke remains a controversial figure due to his outspoken political views on such issues as Serbian involvement in the Balkan Wars. Handke’s latest novel is Immer noch Sturm (‘The Continuing Storm’) and is published by Suhrkamp Verlag. It is about a family during the Second World War who live in the GermanSlovene region of Austria. The narrator is seen as a traitor by his family because he was fathered by a German officer and because he eventually leaves home, turning his back on the Slovene language and culture. A series of his now-dead relatives come back to visit him

Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

(1972), which describes a murder committed by a footballer after being sent off during a match, and The Left-handed Woman

REVIEW ARTICLEs

Peter Handke, Immer noch Sturm (Suhrkamp, 2010)

over the course of the narrative and the conversations that he has with them form the basis of the novel. Dialogue has such an important role that this could be described as a play in prose. This is a strange and beautiful book, with an English connection that becomes forcefully apparent at its conclusion.

Uwe Timm

Uwe Timm is perhaps best known as the author of Germany’s student revolutionary generation, the ‘68ers’. Born in Hamburg in 1940, Timm’s first job was as an apprentice to a furrier. After working in the industry for three years, he travelled to Munich and Paris to study philosophy and German. It was during his time at university in the late sixties that he became involved with the student revolts, an experience that has shaped his writings ever since. In 1971 Timm received his doctorate in German literature and published his first collection of poetry. So began a long and illustrious career as an extraordinarily versatile writer: a poet, essayist, children’s author, young adult author, memoirist, screen-play writer and, of course, a novelist of the highest order. Timm has written four books for children, the most well-known of which is Rennschwein Rudi Rüssel (1989), a book about the adventures of a young family and their pet pig. It won the German Youth Literature Prize a year after its publication and was released as an English language film called Rudi, the Racing Pig in 1994. A number of his other works have also been translated into English and they showcase many of Timm’s most common themes. Snake Tree (1989), Headhunter (1994) and Morenga (2003) all reflect his engagement with foreign cultures; while The Invention of Curried Sausage (1995) and In My Brother’s Shadow (2005) prove how much he engaged with his own culture and history. The latter is one of his most significant works and is a memoir of his elder brother’s time in the SS and the repercussions it had on the rest of the family. Although Timm

Uwe Timm, Freitisch (KiWi, 2011)

was just two years old when his brother joined the SS, and little older when his brother died, his life was always overshadowed by the mythological figure of the brave and dutiful brother whom he never really knew. Through an investigation of military reports, letters, family photos and cryptic entries in his brother’s diary, he developed a more nuanced picture of the role his brother played in the war. Timm was awarded the prestigious Heinrich Böll Prize in 2009. Uwe Timm’s latest book, Freitisch (Free Meal), is published this year by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. It takes the form of multiple stories within a story, and engages once again with the student movements of the 1960s. In the main narrative, two men who knew each other at university meet for a coffee more than forty years later. They reminisce about their days as idealistic students of the ‘68 generation, telling stories about the lunches they ate for free as part of a bursary scheme run by a local insurance company (hence the title). Their café conversation provides a small stage on which the whole of recent German history can be played out. This is a book that ranges from human comedy to discussions about the works of the idiosyncratic literary great Arno Schmidt, but at its heart it is a powerful novel about the loss of youthful idealism.

Walser’s first novel, a huge success both critically and commercially, was published in English as Marriages in Philippsburg

(1961). It casts a critical eye on post-war German society by examining a different character in each of its four chapters. Walser’s most well-known novel appeared in English as A Runaway Horse (1966). The novel centres around two former school friends with very different attitudes to life, who run into each other while on holiday with their wives. The novel builds to a dramatic climax when the two men are caught in a raging storm on board a sailing boat. Other works by Martin Walser in English translation include two books that follow the character Anselm Kristlein as he negotiates his way through life in an obsessively competitive society

– Halftime: A Novel (1960) and The Unicorn (1983); and Swan Villa (1983) about an estate agent whose every action results in abysmal failure. While more than twelve of Walser’s works have been translated into English, many more have never found the English-speaking audience they deserve. Walser has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Büchner Prize in 1981 and the 1998 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Never one to shy away from controversy, he faced a backlash after his acceptance speech for the Peace Prize, in which he criticised the frequent discussion of the Holocaust in the media and the use of Auschwitz as a ‘moral cudgel’. Walser’s new work, Muttersohn (literally: ‘Mother-Son’), is published this year by Rowohlt Verlag and is set in two former monasteries in south-west Germany. One of the monasteries, on the shores of Lake Constance, has been converted into a psychiatric hospital, while the other lies on an island in the middle of the lake. The cast of characters includes the protagonist (Percy), his friend ‘the professor’ at the mental hospital, and Katze, the head of a local motorcycle gang. Walser writes as delightfully as ever with the same sense of sardonic irony with which he burst onto the literary scene. This is a complex but very fine piece of work which addresses weighty themes: the power of love, the power of belief and the power of language.

Peter Handke, Immer noch Sturm For information about publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag see page 29

Walser is considered one of the most influential German writers of the post-war era. Born at Lake Constance in 1927, he began to help out with the family businesses of coal-dealing and inn-keeping after the early death of his father. He was a member of the German army during the final year of the Second World War but returned to school once the war had ended and completed his state exams. Walser went on to study literature, philosophy and history at the Universities of Regensburg and Tübingen, receiving a doctorate in literature in 1951 for a thesis on Franz Kafka. He worked in radio as a reporter, producer and radio play author for some years before deciding to concentrate on his career as a novelist.

Translation rights available from: Suhrkamp Verlag GmbH Pappelallee 78-79, 10437 Berlin Tel: +49 30 740 744 0 Email: hardt@suhrkamp.de Contact: Dr. Petra Hardt www.suhrkamp.de

Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 40)

Uwe Timm, Freitisch

With these new novels, Handke, Timm and Walser have again made important contributions to the story of modern European literature – gems that will resonate just as much in English as they do in their original language.

Martin Walser, Muttersohn

By Sorcha McDonagh with additional research by Samuel Pakucs Willcocks, Stefan Tobler and J.A. Underwood.

Martin Walser, Muttersohn (Rowohlt, 2011)

‘ A poetic game, alternating between light-heartedness and heavy-handed sobriety, in which the author as an older child imagines his younger ancestors. With pathos and a religious undertone; with heroism and petty family quarrels, teasing, and notso-petty tragedies, transfigurations, and disenchantments; Handke takes positions not to state them, but to pose questions and undermine traditional structures.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) ‘ Continued Storms is a family epic, maybe Peter Handke’s most successful, in every way a very personal piece – a work that, like his earliest dramas, lets the prose do the work.’ (Die Welt)

Martin Walser

Translation rights available from: Rowohlt Verlag GmbH Hamburger Strasse 17, 21465 Reinbek bei Hamburg Tel: +49 40 7272 257 E-mail: carolin.mungard@rowohlt.de Contact: Carolin Mungard www.rowohlt.de/foreign

REVIEW ARTICLEs

Peter Kurzeck: Nothing will be lost Andreas Maier introduces the extraordinary oeuvre of author Peter Kurzeck. Throughout the summer of 2010, Kurzeck publicly dictated his new novel Vorabend (‘The Evening Before’) at the Frankfurt Literature House. It is published this spring.

Peter Kurzeck’s life and works cannot be separated in the usual way. He writes books, records audiobooks without a script, and at his readings often improvises his narratives. He moves in his own storytelling sphere, and in that sphere he has found a language for the memory of how things were. It is not so much autobiography as the attempt to preserve the world and everything in it, by finding a language for it. For over fifteen years Kurzeck has been working on a powerful cycle about the years 1983 and 1984 in Frankfurt: The Old Century. The plot can be told in a few words. Sybille, the narrator’s partner, has just left him. Their four-year-old daughter Carina lives with her now. The narrator remembers the three years they all lived together: taking Carina to the nursery every morning, going to the flea market with her, the book he wrote during those years. He also remembers their visits to friends and how he would tell of his own childhood, and of the village of Stauffenberg, where he grew up. Sentence by sentence a whole world is revealed. The cycle of books gradually works its way deeper and deeper into the Frankfurt of the time, into its social poverty and the milieu where left-wing intellectualism met more

Article

The cycle’s narrator was once, like Kurzeck himself, an alcoholic. For decades never sober, a few years before the narrative’s present he stopped drinking, and didn’t touch a drop after that. In the books he often comes across tramps at liquor kiosks. ‘You see yourself standing with them and drinking and swaying, the earth turning, and arguing drunkenly. Boozed-up, you can be right your whole life.’ To the narrator, time is now like the little bottles that people drink at the kiosks: there one minute, gone the next. But ‘nothing will be lost’. It is the same for the tramps who drag themselves along pavements, their trolleys loaded up with dozens of bags and yet somehow kept together. They too keep hold of themselves in the most miserable of situations. And the children in the nursery, where the afternoons are eternities, also rebel against time, as if they had the power over it which the narrator wishes he had: ‘We aren’t going to be picked up,’ they say to him once. ‘We’re staying here forever! You can stay with us here forever, too.’ The narrator’s little daughter has a very particular relationship to ‘things’ and ‘words’. They have a ritual, for example, for unpacking bags from a shopping trip: the narrator takes out individual things and puts them in his daughter’s hand. ‘Every thing on its own. As if it had just been created, or re-created each time. And its name, origin, classification and where it should go.’ Naming brings these things into the world. Naming creates them, new each time. As if they wouldn’t exist without the right word. The naming corresponds conspicuously with

her father’s notes, jottings and – above all – his books, with which the narrator is always and ever ‘behindhand’. Because the world is always passing and even the shift workers from over thirty years ago, whom he saw return home every evening, have been crowding into his head for decades, ‘and now they won’t stop interrupting the book, trying to get into it’ – so that they don’t die. When the three of them are at home in the evening, the narrator starts to say out loud the sentences which he has noted down. He walks about and gestures with his hands as he does. ‘Before you start writing, you always have to recite everything. Like a song, like a prayer. . . . An incantation. Again and again and each time more true.’ That produces a distinct note of urgency. At one point the narrator says: ‘Little children like it when people speak rhythmically. They feel the musical notes. Almost as if the voice nudges and caresses and tickles them.’ That is just the effect that Kurzeck has on his readers.

stimulation. Impatience blocks the reading of this prose, and is an obstacle to enchantment. Kurzeck’s language is certainly the best being written by an author in Germany today. It has a subjective form, through and through. It is a world of its own. And it all comes from someone who, as we learn in every sentence, is in a rush, and driven, and fearful – not the least reason why Kurzeck’s books are the absolute opposite of introspection. They come from a naked need to survive. They are an author working out his life, so that he does not lose it.

You might hesitate to call the narrator in Kurzeck’s cycle a narrator, or a storyteller. What Kurzeck does has little to do with the usual telling of a narrative. His books are not an author speaking to his audience, but the ‘narrator’ in the book talking to his daughter. He tells stories as you do when you are with a child. As you do when time disappears around you and everything spoken becomes the present, as if it were there (‘you can almost touch it’).

Andreas Maier was born in Bad Nauheim outside Frankfurt in 1967. He won the Ernst Willner Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann Literary Competition in Austria in 2000 and received the Jürgen Ponto Foundation’s Literary Support Prize and the Aspekte Literary Prize for his first novel, Wäldchestag. Open Letter published his novel Klausen in English in 2010.

It is the actual act of speaking which this prose is all about. It is the gentleness with which things are said, the unthreatening nature and peacefulness of it. This is why Kurzeck’s books cannot be read like other books. You cannot read in order to find something out. You cannot read for intellectual

Translated by Stefan Tobler A version of this article, ‘Nichts soll verloren gehen’, appeared in Die Zeit on 12 April 2007 and online: www.zeit.de/2007/16/L-Kurzeck Peter Kurzeck was born in Tachau, Bohemia, in 1943. Today he lives mainly in Uzès, France. His titles are published by Stroemfeld / Roter Stern, Frankfurt, with paperback editions by Suhrkamp.

Photo: Brigitte Friedrich

extreme political resistance. It also works its way ever further into the past and tells a whole history of Germany since the War.

Heike Otto

Antje Vollmer

from the East became a family drama)

(Double-life: Heinrich and Gottliebe von Lehndorff’s Resistance to Hitler and von Ribbentrop)

Beim Leben meiner Enkel: Wie eine Doppelleben: Heinrich und Gottliebe DDR-Flucht zum Familiendrama wurde von Lehndorff im Widerstand gegen (On My Grandchildren’s Life: How an escape Hitler und von Ribbentrop Hoffmann und Campe, March 2011, 288 pp. ISBN: 978 3 455 50204 6

Double crossing

Eichborn Verlag, September 2010, 416 pp. ISBN: 978 3 8218 4773 3

On My Grandchildren’s Life is an extraordinary account of personal

tragedy under an authoritarian regime – made all the more effective by the conflicting versions of events given by the main protagonists. Their uncertainties become the reader’s uncertainties. Was a husband betrayed by his wife? She swears not; others insist he was. The mystery is only finally resolved by the reports on the police files. On skis, disguised in white underwear, three men escape from East to West Germany in the winter of 1984. Their wives are to follow later; but under interrogation by the Stasi, Jürgen Resch’s wife confesses all. Receiving conflicting accounts of his wife’s willingness to live with him in West Germany, Jürgen successfully crosses the border again to confront her. But Stasi officers storm the house and Jürgen is arrested. After a prison term, divorce and attempted suicide, he meets a new partner, Andrea Otto, the sister of the author, and decides to stay in East Germany. An exceptional story in itself, the juxtaposition of autobiographical narratives and historical documents allows the ‘perpetrators’ to speak alongside the victims, which in turn allows the reader to piece together the clues, as in the best detective novel.

‘Why didn’t they do more to stop it?’ Vollmer’s brilliant and moving account challenges the widely accepted but simplistic belief that the German resistance, and particularly the failed coup d’état headed by Stauffenberg and Tresckow, was a case of too little, too late. Heinrich von Lehndorff took over the estate of Steinort, one of the largest in East Prussia, in 1936. He loved the land and managed it well. For his wife Gottliebe, its peace and natural beauty were a world apart. Their double-life proper began in 1941 when, just fourteen kilometres from Steinort, Hitler established his headquarters for the Eastern Front – his ‘Wolf’s Lair’. From then until late 1944, Hitler spent the majority of his time there. Foreign Minister Ribbentrop wanted to be housed nearby, and he took over one wing of Steinort. Meanwhile his ‘hosts’, members of the German Confessing Church and now fully signed up to the resistance, welcomed quite different guests in the other wing. Former Green politician Vollmer makes a convincing case for the importance of their story and for the place they deserve in the annals of history.

Translation rights available from: Hoffmann und Campe Verlag GmbH Tel: +49 40 44188 281 Email: nadja.mortensen@hoca.de Contact: Nadja Mortensen www.hoca.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Hoffmann und Campe Verlag was founded in 1781 by Benjamin Gottlob Hoffmann and his son-in-law August Campe. The family firm was Heinrich Heine’s publisher. Despite changing hands several times during the first half of the twentieth century, the firm managed to retain its liberal traditions. Its international fiction list includes the complete works of Siegfried Lenz as well as books by Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul.

Heike Otto was born in Saxony in 1968, and was a teacher before working for many years as a reporter and editor for SWR/ARD Radio in Stuttgart. Today she lives in Munich and works as a freelance journalist. The research for this book spanned several months, and involved collecting many original documents and examining the official Stasi files.

Translation rights available from: Eichborn Verlag Tel: +49 69 25 60 03 767 Email: j.willand@eichborn.de Contact: Jutta Willand www.eichborn.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

Antje Vollmer was born in 1943 and was a member of the German Parliament for almost twenty years, serving as the Vice President from 1994 to 2005. She is the recipient of both the Carl von Ossietzky Medal and the Hannah Arendt Prize. For her role in the German-Czech reconciliation, she was honoured as a member of the Masaryk Order by President Vaclav Havel. Previous works: Gott im Kommen? (‘God on the Rise?’, 2007); Eingewandert ins eigene Land (‘Immigrants in our own

Country’, 2006) Founded in 1980, Eichborn is regarded as a young and bold independent publishing house. Its strong and diverse list includes fiction, non-fiction, humour, and reference books.

NON-FICTION

David Berger

Der heilige Schein (The Holy Illusion)

Ullstein Verlag, November 2010. 304 pp. ISBN: 978 3 550 08855 1

A love that dares to speak its name Part memoir, part exposé, this book offers a full and frank assessment of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church. First and foremost, Berger is an academic theologian, and because of the privileged position that he once occupied within the Church, he is able to offer a highly topical firsthand testimony. Berger speaks with urgency about the conservative turn the Church has recently taken, having frequented the influential academic circles in Germany and Austria, Poland and Rome. And Berger’s perspective is all the more pertinent because he is openly gay.

Berger decided very early not to become a priest. However, both he and his partner quickly gravitated towards the conservative end of the Catholic Church for a combination of academic, personal, and aesthetic reasons. They were not alone, as Berger identifies a number of elements within this kind of religion that appeal to gay men. He also cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that gay people are to be treated with respect and sensitivity, and that they should be protected from discrimination. By Berger’s estimation, as many as fifty percent of Catholic clergy may be gay. He tries to analyse why they are attracted to the priesthood, and suggests the

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

NON-FICTION

David Berger came out in early 2010 after the Bishop of Essen described homosexuality as perverse and a sin during an appearance on a television chat show. Berger resigned from his position as publisher of the magazine Theological and a few weeks later he lost his professorship at the Vatican. Until 2010, Berger had been part of the influential ultra-conservative circle that defends the church’s claim to be the highest moral authority. Berger now works as a school teacher near Cologne.

power of sublimation, denial, and the appeal of celibacy and collegiality. Berger identifies celibacy as a cover for the sexual immaturity of many priests, which in turn is the root cause of paedophilia. He therefore rejects the official Catholic position that would blame homosexual orientation for all acts of paedophilia. Indeed, Berger argues that it is in the interests of the Church hierarchy to keep its priests immature and thus docile and dependent. He describes the repressive and infantilising atmosphere in many Catholic schools and seminaries, which works to keep priests (and some laypeople like himself) under control. Berger’s revelations of hypocrisy, secrecy and sexuality in the Church make for an intriguing read, while the personal elements of his story enable the reader to sympathise. His own analysis of the systemic problems in the Catholic Church today arises organically from his experiences, yet the wide-ranging conclusions that Berger draws ensure that this work will be read as much more than a personal memoir. The result is an important book that will interest psychologists and social scientists as well as theologians and religious commentators, but even more so deserves to be widely disseminated to a general audience. Translation rights available from: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH Friedrichstr. 126, 10117 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 23456 450 Email: pia.goetz@ullstein-buchverlage.de Contact: Pia Götz www.ullstein-buchverlage.de ‘ David Berger’s book delivers plenty of explosive material.’ (DW-World) ‘ This book is an attack on the Holy Roman hypocrisy and will raise a fiery debate.’ (Stern)

Christian Lehmann

Der genetische Notenschlüssel. Warum Musik zum Menschsein gehört (The Key to Music’s Genetics: Why Music is Part of Being Human) Herbig Verlag, September 2010, 256 pp. ISBN: 978 3 7766 2646 9

Striking a Chord Musicologist, singer and academic, Lehmann brings all these attributes to this fascinating journey through the origins of music and its role in human development, culture and society.

The opening section examines the first stirrings of music in animals, birds and fishes, before moving on to humans in prehistoric times, and how it is an integral part of our nature to make musical sounds for family bonding (e.g. singing a baby to sleep) and social occasions. The second section follows the evolution of musical culture from ancient Greece and the educational theories of Pythagoras and Plato. After the predominantly religious music of the Roman/Christian era, the first great musical landmark was in 1000 AD, when Guido di Arezzo devised the stave and music could now be written down instead of just being passed on verbally. The author examines the relationship between ‘art’ and folk music (in the Middle Ages, the former was in Latin and the latter in the vernacular), and goes on to explore the flowering of secular music, the development of conservatoires to teach music and the democratisation of music with the rise of the middle classes and salon music. In 1877 came the second great landmark: Edison’s invention of the phonograph. Now for the first time music could be Christian Lehmann was born in 1966 and studied musicology, biology, German language and literature, as well as vocal arts. He is a professor at the University of Munich, and is currently researching the evolution of music. He was a voice coach for the Regensburg Cathedral Choir for several years, sang in the Gewandhaus-Kammerchor Leipzig, and has worked with various choirs such as the Collegium Vocale Gent, the Rheinische Kantorei, and the Münchner Kammerchor. He also performs as a vocal soloist.

repeated and preserved, listened to anywhere, alone or in company. The third section deplores the decline of singing in our society and how we are becoming a race of listeners rather than music-makers. It considers our personal reactions to music – emotional, intellectual, subconscious and therapeutic – and the effects of the present-day ubiquitous ‘muzak’ which has made music a part of everyday life but also made it independent not just of the performer, as previously, but of the listener as well. It is now experienced impersonally, like the weather or the scent of flowers. With modern technical developments pop music has become the only really lasting ‘new music’ and the chain of ‘serious’ musical development has been broken. Few books on music are as rewarding as this one. Anything remotely technical is clearly described and yet the musically well-informed are not patronised. Well-chosen examples and amusing asides help to make this a highly informative and extremely readable book – a must for anyone interested in the development of music and how integral it is to the human condition. Translation rights available from: F.A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH Thomas-Wimmer-Ring 11, 80539 Munich Tel: +49 89 29 088 157 Email: s.schmidt@herbig.net Contact: Sonja Schmidt www.herbig.net ‘ Christian Lehmann sends the reader straight into the history of music, explaining why music is an inherent part of humanity on a journey through various musical and cultural epochs.’ (Financial Times) ‘ An expert introduction in layman’s terms to the history of music.’ (ekz bibliotheksservice)

Verlagsgruppe LangenMüller is one of the most respected publishing companies in Germany. Their wide range of titles are published in many languages. The company continues to challenge conventional wisdom, setting trends in both subject and format, while maintaining a list that includes novels, biographies, non-fiction, giftbooks and books that entertain the entire family. ‘ With impressive examples, Christian Lehmann explains exactly why music is part of being human. An entertaining journey through the cultural history and evolution of mankind, he reveals that music is an indispensable part of human nature.’ (BR/HF Klassik)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40)

NON-FICTION

A Forgotten Gem Marlen Haushofer

Die Wand (The Wall)

List Verlag (Ullstein), 1963, 288 pp. ISBN: 978 3 548 60867 9 Marlen Haushofer was born in Frauenstein in Austria in 1920. She studied German in Vienna and Graz, subsequently settling in Steyr. In 1941 she married Manfred Haushofer, a dentist. She later divorced then remarried her husband, and had two sons. Haushofer published her first novel, A Handful of Life, in 1955. In 1958, We Murder Stella was published. The Wall came out in 1963, and The Loft, her final novel, appeared in 1969. Haushofer received the Grand Austrian State Prize for literature in 1968. She died of cancer in Vienna in 1970. The Wall was published in English by

Quartet books in 1991, translated by Shaun Whiteside. Quartet are publishing Haushofer’s novel The Loft, translated by Amanda Prantera, in May this year. Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 40) Translation rights available from: Ullstein Buchverlage Friedrichstr. 126 10117 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 23456450 Email: pia.goetz@ullstein-buchverlage.de Contact: Pia Götz http://www.ullsteinbuchverlage.de Ullstein was founded in Berlin in 1903 by the famous family-owned Ullstein newspaper publishers. The company quickly rose to become Germany’s leading book publisher. In 1934 Ullstein was expropriated by the Nazis. In 1952 the house reopened in Frankfurt and seven years later it was sold to the publishing group Axel Springer. In 2003 Ullstein’s book division was bought by the Swedish media group Bonnier, who brought Ullstein back to Berlin in 2004. The Ullstein publishing group includes the imprints Ullstein, List, Claassen, Marion von Schröder, Tanja Graf Verlag, Econ, Propyläen and Allegria. The broad spectrum of titles includes bestselling authors such as Jo Nesbo, John le Carré, James Ellroy and Helene Hegemann in fiction; Shlomo Sand, Richard Dawkins, Natascha Kampusch and Timothy Ferris in non-fiction.

A forgotten Gem

As a new film is set to revive interest in this classic dystopian novel, Emily Jeremiah introduces readers to ‘The Wall’. A middle-aged widow wakes up one day in her cousin’s holiday home in the countryside and finds herself alone; her hosts have failed to return from an evening out in the nearby village. Perplexed, the woman investigates, accompanied by her hosts’ dog, Luchs. The pair soon encounter an invisible wall, separating them from the world outside. Beyond the wall is a man, frozen mid-motion; all is still. The narrator quickly establishes the limits of her new, walled world, a sizeable area that is partially forested and occupied by a variety of animals. Haushofer’s 1963 novel begins arrestingly. The wall of the title is never explained. The nameless, first-person narrator occasionally anticipates the arrival of the ‘victors’ who have created it. But they never come and their existence is by no means certain. Like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this dystopian work refuses to offer answers and simply presents the new reality as it is. Indeed, a great deal of the power of this unnerving and moving novel arises from its painstaking attention to detail. This meticulousness encourages a strong and instructive identification with the narrating consciousness at its heart. The heroine of The Wall is a female Robinson Crusoe, learning to live as best she can amidst nature. She must ensure her own survival and that of her companions: Luchs the dog; a nameless cat who later bears kittens; and Bella, a cow found nearby. She learns to cultivate vegetables, to hunt, to milk Bella, and to prepare and preserve meat. She must provide shelter and food for Bella, engaging in heavy physical labour as she carries out such tasks. We follow these activities in detail, inhabiting as we do the narrator’s mind and being compelled to wonder what we would do, how we would survive. The novel offers a far-reaching and profound examination of what it means to be human. This is a ‘green’ book and a ‘posthuman’ one; it explores humans’ interaction with the non-human world and it decentralises the human being. The narrator’s very body changes; her hands become tools, her appearance is irrelevant. Her femininity is revealed as an artifice. What matter in her world are survival, continuity, occasional creature comforts. The companionship of animals is of profound importance here. Bella is key to the narrator’s survival, demonstrating the interdependency of human and animal. The cow’s possible pregnancy is a major source of dramatic tension for a long stretch of the narrative. Will she calve? It is testimony to the power of the writing – deft, unfussy, clean – that we care deeply. The description of Bella’s eventual calving is gripping and affecting. All the animals are sharply evoked, acting as major characters: a remarkable technical achievement. Luchs, in particular, is a powerful, touching presence; his demise during the shocking climax proves devastating. The fate of the narrator’s writings is uncertain: who will read them, if she is the last human? Why does she write? This message-in-a-bottle demands an active engagement with some of the most pressing issues of our age: the place of the human, nature, technology, animality; and it does so with subtlety, wit and compassion. The Wall was critically acclaimed upon publication, winning the 1963 Arthur Schnitzler Prize. But it did not attract widespread attention until a new edition was published in 1983, when its concerns seemed fresh and pertinent. Renewed interest is assured by the film that is currently under production, with the principal role filled by German actress Martina Gedeck, best known for her starring role in Oscar-winning The Lives of Others. Haushofer herself termed the work ‘eine Katzengeschichte’ – a story about cats – but it is much more than that. Its resourceful heroine, who attempts not to master nature but rather to live within it, offers a powerful and provocative model for our times. Emily Jeremiah is a lecturer in German at Royal Holloway, University of London, and an award-winning translator of poetry. She lives in London.

To a Poltergeist in the Bedroom’s Northward Wall Your senile hollow knocking has remained ever the same, no development, no punctuation, you repeat yourself day after day, night after gray sleepless night, always with the same beat, as if you were a heart seeking to strike sparks on the stones of the old house. A heart knocking softly with knuckles on the incisors of the future, seeking an entrance or a reason to stay.

The Theory of Literature An infinite number of monkeys with typewriters, it is said, would ultimately produce the complete works of Shakespeare. And shortly thereafter the works of Dante, then Joyce, Goethe, Kafka, Dickens, Dostoevsky. Then, after some months, a few personal writings about things such as paws, trees, or perpetual repetition. Then a little Dostoevsky again followed by the whole of Shakespeare all over from the beginning, line by line. And in between a few pieces about trees, paws, bananas, and perpetual repetition.

The Palace at Four in the Morning When nobody is looking, the queen removes her garments, leaf by leaf, the prince sinks into the tub, the lithe princess rolls under her bed. Only the king, a strutting Tom Thumb, marches valiantly on through his empty, forlorn chambers, his eyes gazing at black, black windows and the bitter truth of the tapestries.

Under Stones I sat on a stone and thought of the grass beneath it: ungreen, broken blades in the heavy dark. Silent, thinking, I settled in.

Counter Today I woke up around one in the morning on my twenty-sixth birthday, got up and walked about in my dark apartment. The video recorder was recording something and I tried to remember what it was. The minutes counter went from twenty-six to twenty-seven. Then to twenty-eight. Thirty-eight. Forty. By the time the movie reached fifty minutes, I’d peacefully fallen asleep again in the lonely armchair next to the television. That’s where they found me in the morning, woke me, and wished me many happy returns.

Clemens Setz is a young Austrian poet, novelist, magician, jazz pianist, and mathematician. His novel Die Frequenzen (‘Frequencies’) was shortlisted in 2009 for the German Book Prize, Germany’s most prestigious literary award, and his poetry and prose have also received the Ernst Willner Prize (2008), the Bremen Literature Prize (2010), and the Outstanding Artist Award (2010). His first collection of poetry is forthcoming with Suhrkamp Verlag, who have also published his first collection of short stories (see review p. 31). That collection was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2011.

As well as writing two highly acclaimed novels and a new collection of short stories (see p. 31), being shortlisted for the German Book Prize and winning the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, Austrian author Clemens Setz is soon to publish his first collection of poetry. Here we present an exclusive selection of those poems, in English versions by prize-winning translator Peter Constantine.

Peter Constantine’s most recent translations include Sophocles’ Theban Trilogy and The Essential Writings of Machiavelli. A 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, Constantine was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories, by Thomas Mann, and the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov. He is one of the editors of A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900–2000 and of The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present.

North Sea The little witch Bibi Blocksberg has a brother by the name of Boris. But only up to the ninth episode, then “he is sent off to live with grandma and grandpa by the North Sea.” The reason we are given is that he has a cough and that the fresh sea air will do him good. That’s the last we ever hear of him. Even at Christmas and Easter the family no longer mentions him.

‘The Theory of Literature’ and ‘To a Poltergeist in the Bedroom’s Northward Wall’ first appeared in World Literature Today, November 2010.

ARTICLE

Information for Editors n The

selection process for books that we review in NBG is entirely independent.

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.

each issue, we start with approximately 150 titles. At our first editorial meeting we select around seventy of these to send to our experienced team of reviewers.

n Different

reviewers are translators, academics, editors and agents – all extremely well-read and with a good feel for the market.

n Our

n For

n Our

our second editorial meeting, our committee discusses the reviews and selects approximately 30 titles for the issue.

n At

guest members are invited to join the committee each time, and include publishers, literary agents, booksellers and translators. 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 worldwide.

Translation Grants – How to Apply 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.

Austria

Germany

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 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.

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: Tel.: +43-1-53120-6850 robert.stocker@bmukk.gv.at

Gerhard Auinger: Tel. +43-1-53120-6852 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: copy of the original book n a substantial amount of the translation n a 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

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 Susan Bernofsky’s translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation (Portobello) was part-funded by the Goethe-Institut. The novel received glowing reviews in the British press and has been longlisted for the prestigious Wingate Prize alongside Howard Jacobson, David Grossman and Edmund de Waal. It has also been longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Visitation is out in paperback in July.

Issue 29 – The Editorial Committee Editorial Committee for this issue: Anthea Bell, Translator; Ben Harris, NBG Editorial Consultant; Tanja Howarth, Tanja Howarth Literary Agency; Andreas Langenbacher, Pro Helvetia; Susanne Ott-Bissels, London Library; Elisabeth Pyroth, Goethe-Institut; Sorcha McDonagh, NBG Editorial Assistant; Saara Marchadour, The Travel Bookshop; Charlotte Ryland, NBG Editor; Franziska Heimgartner, Embassy of Switzerland; Waltraud Strommer, Austrian Cultural Forum; Anna Webber, United Agents; Shaun Whiteside, British Centre for Literary Translation; Meike Ziervogel, Peirene Press Associate in the USA: Riky Stock Director German Book Office New York 72 Spring Street, 11th Floor New York, NY 10012 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.

Tel: +1 (212) 794-2851 Fax: +1 (212) 794-2870 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.

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

Steering Committee for New Books in German: Claudia Amthor-Croft (Goethe-Institut); Barbara Becker (Frankfurt Book Fair); Ben Harris (NBG Editorial Consultant); Tanja Howarth (Tanja Howarth Literary Agency); Cord Meier-Klodt (German Embassy); Peter Mikl (Austrian Cultural Forum); Charlotte Ryland (NBG Editor); Franziska Heimgartner (Embassy of Switzerland); Elisabeth Pyroth (Goethe-Institut); Waltraud Strommer (Austrian Cultural Forum); Shaun Whiteside (British Centre for Literary Translation) 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. Design: Suzanne Mobbs Printed by: SGC Printing, Stephens & George Ltd © The British Centre for Literary Translation and contributors respectively, 2011

IN GERMAN GERMAN NEW AN NEW BOO NEW BOOKS I Zsuzsa Bánk David Berger Ulrich Bielefeld & Petra Hartlieb Sven Böttcher Urs Faes Sabine Gruber Hinrich von Haaren Peter Handke Iris Hanika Marlen Haushofer Sylvia Heinlein Gregor Hens Elisabeth Herrmann Reinhard Kleist Christian Lehmann Pedro Lenz Melinda Nadj Abonji Christian Nürnberger Heike Otto Angelika Overath Andri Perl Mirjam Pressler Astrid Rosenfeld Rocko Schamoni Albrecht Selge Clemens Setz Christoph Simon Alain Claude Sulzer Uwe Timm Antje Vollmer Oliver G. Wachlin Martin Walser Jutta Wilke n

New Books in German c/o Goethe-Institut 50 Princes Gate Exhibition Road London SW7 2PH

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