New Books in German, Autumn 2011, Issue 30 by Charlotte Ryland

AUTUMN 2011 JUBILEE ISSUE 30 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 History of Science Prize-Winners Book News n

WWW.NEW-BOOKS-IN-GERMAN.COM

DEBUTS

NON-FICTION

2 Antonia Baum: vollkommen leblos, bestenfalls tot 3 Ursula Timea Rossel: Man nehme Silber und Knoblauch, Erde und Salz 4 Max Scharnigg: Die Besteigung der Nordwand unter einer Treppe 5 Michel Božikovi´c: Drift

42 Werner & Elisabeth Heisenberg: “Meine liebe Li”. Die Korrespondenz 43 Jürgen Gottschlich: Der Bibeljäger 44 Thomas Großbölting & Rüdiger Schmidt: Der Tod des Diktators 45 Michael Martens: Heldensuche

FICTION

A FORGOTTEN GEM

7 8 9 10 11

Albert Ostermaier: Schwarze Sonne scheine Michael Kumpfmüller: Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens Sibylle Lewitscharoff: Blumenberg Ilija Trojanow: EisTau Christoph Hein: Weiskerns Nachlaß Sherko Fatah: Das weisse Land Larissa Boehning: Das Glück der Zikaden

SHORT STORIES 13

Peter Stamm: Seerücken

CRIME & THRILLER 18 19 20

Cay Rademacher: Der Trummermörder Linus Reichlin: Er Jan Costin Wagner: Das Licht in einem dunklen Haus Simon Urban: Plan D

FICTION 30 31 32 33 34 35

Jo Lendle: Alles Land Kathrin Gerlof: Lokale Erschütterung Angelika Klüssendorf: Das Mädchen Christoph Poschenrieder: Der Spiegelkasten Monika Helfer: Oskar und Lilli Peter Henisch: Grosses Finale für Novak

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS’ 37 38 39

Agnes Hammer: Nacht, komm! Frank Schmeißer: Schurken überall! Kirsten Reinhardt: Fennymores Reise Kathrin Schrocke: Freak City Andrea Weibel: Freya und das Geheimnis der Großmutter

Brigitte Reimann: Die Geschwister

POETRY 47 Ulrike Almut Sandig and Judith Zander, translated by Bradley Schmidt

CRIME FEATURE 16-17 Criminal Masterminds in German Fiction by Sam Hancock 21 Swimming with Sharks: Heinrich Steinfest by Dan Toller

AUTHOR FOCUS 6 F. C. Delius: Stuart Taberner and Blake Morrison celebrate the winner of the 2011 Büchner Prize 27 Alois Hotschnig, by Tess Lewis

ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS L iterature, Nature and Thermal Spas: Leukerbad Literature Festival, by Donal McLaughlin 14-15 Cat Mountains. An extract from Katzenberge by Sabrina Janesch 23 An interview with Stefan Tobler, founder of publisher And Other Stories 36 Emily Ruete’s Memoirs of an Arabian Princess, by Kate Roy

NEWS AND INFORMATION 22 Initiatives for Translators 24-26 NBG Choices – New and Forthcoming Publications in English Translation 28-29 Frankfurt Book Fair: Graphic novels, new media and more 40-41 Book News: Prizes and Literary Festivals 48 Information for Editors: Applying for Translation Grants

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

Antonia Baum

Vollkommen leblos, bestenfalls tot (Perfectly Lifeless: Ideally Dead)

Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, September 2011, 240 pp. ISBN: 978 3 455 40296 4

Hitler would have loved techno Taking up where Helene Hegemann’s Axolotl Roadkill (NBG Spring 2010) left off, Baum’s uncompromising portrait of modern life links the past of National Socialism with present-day capitalism in a way that is compelling, persuasive, and relevant. Her ability to combine multiple narrative strands through a first-person narrator makes the novel an intense reading experience. Teenage Rosa feels she does nothing but wait. Her parents are divorced, and her relationship with her father and his second wife is turbulent. She decides to move to the city, but fails to gain entry to university and finds herself unhappily attached to Patrick, whom she dubs the ‘remotecontrolled gardener’ due to his propensity for the ciphers of success: the right clothes, fashionable home furnishings, desirable career (he works for a magazine). Rosa quips that his idea of a perfect girlfriend is one who is ‘perfectly lifeless, and ideally dead’. The stifling nature of their relationship means that Rosa often escapes for long periods, losing/finding herself in drink and drugs. After marrying Patrick and working for the magazine for a brief period, Rosa’s mental health deteriorates to such an extent that she sabotages the online newsfeed by inserting random

Antonia Baum was born in 1984 and studied literature and history. She is currently studying for a masters degree in cultural studies at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. She has published several short stories and this is her first novel.

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

DEBUTS

Nazi-inflected obscenities. Her violent fantasies then culminate in a particularly graphic scene in which she envisages torturing and dismembering Patrick. Rosa subsequently leaves and falls in love with Jo, an actor. However, this new relationship is equally unsatisfying, and Jo soon distances himself from Rosa, who becomes pregnant. Rosa is reunited with her mother briefly, who advises her to have an abortion – regretting her own decision as a young woman to keep Rosa. Rosa decides in favour of an abortion and attempts to carve out a life of her own by enrolling in university. However, she drops out and descends into self-imposed isolation, anorexia and self-harm. With Rosa intent on suicide, the novel ends as she is about to jump from a tall building, leaving it unclear whether she will or not. Baum’s narrative style is as violent as the fantasies of her protagonist. Innovative neologisms and compound nouns command the reader’s constant attention. The protagonist’s lengthy reflections are juxtaposed with moments of irrational action, which lend the narrative its dark humour. An astonishing debut. Translation rights available from: Hoffmann und Campe Verlag Harvestehuder Weg 42, 20149 Hamburg, Germany Tel: +49 40 44188 281 Email: nadja.mortensen@hoca.de Contact: Nadja Mortensen www.hoffmann-und-campe.de Shortlisted for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2011 (see page 40)

Hoffmann and Campe Verlag is a publishing house with a long tradition. Founded in 1781, the publishing house was graced in its early days by such authors as Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Hebbel, as well as other members of the rebellious group of young writers known as ‘Junges Deutschland’. Hoffmann and Campe is one of Germany’s largest and most successful general publishers with a portfolio which embraces the works of famous authors and young talent. Since 1951, all works by the eminent writer Siegfried Lenz have been published by Hoffmann and Campe, and it also holds the world rights to authors such as Irene Dische, Matthias Politycki, Nicol Ljubic and Wolf Haas. The non-fiction list includes Stefan Aust, Joachim Bauer, Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder and Peer Steinbrück.

Ursula Timea Rossel

Man nehme Silber und Knoblauch, Erde und Salz (Take silver and garlic, add soil and salt) Bilgerverlag, August 2011, 340 pp. ISBN: 978 3 037 62018 2

Curiosity killed the cat Rossel’s quirky novel is reminiscent of the David Mitchell bestseller, Cloud Atlas: stories within stories, each narrative strand happening in a different time and place, and the ‘reincarnating’ of a character. And the book opens with a bang.

she has four different lives: she lives as a self-taught dentist in Switzerland, a camel-herd to a rich man in the desert, with guerilla fighters in the jungle, and with a team making a film about lions in the Himalayas. The final section is an imaginative re-telling of the life of St. Ursula on behalf of the Vatican.

Anyone who is a non-reader is asked to stop before the story begins proper. This narrative voice (whom we later find out has the same name as the author) is struggling to find writing work so she takes an assignment to guard a ‘Schrödinger box’ instead. This is a box with a cat in it, as per Schrödinger’s thought experiment. When she gives in to curiosity and opens the box, a lion jumps out. This is apparently the spur she needs to start work as a ‘crypto-geographer.’ So she goes to Morocco and there she steals a notebook which turns out to be Wigand Behaim’s first draft of his global atlas, an attempt to chart the whole world in all its forms.

The narrative includes passages where the author is directly addressing the reader or even her characters as though they were real. It also includes letters, extensive notes from Wigand’s atlas, and short descriptions of the different ways in which cultures measure time. It ends with a fake bibliography of books ‘written’ by the characters, such as a book about yaks by a Sherpa from the Himalayan segment. There are often very original nuggets that are only mentioned once, such as when Wigand periodically disappears without explanation and it turns out he is going off to donate ‘time’ at his local time bank.

From his notebooks, we learn about Wigand’s life and adventures as an atlas maker, travelling to the South Pole to look for Atlantis, meeting the god Atlas and falling in love with Sibylle Blauwelsh. Sibylle is reincarnated, so that

This book is more about the telling of stories and adventures than an attempt to have a clear structure and plot. The themes of time and place and how they interact run through the entire book. A wonderfully original tour de force.

Ursula Timea Rossel was born in 1975 in Thun, Switzerland, and now lives in Olten. She worked as a journalist and editor on numerous publications, writing articles, reports and satirical texts. Since 2006 she has been a freelance author. ‘ An overwhelming book that whistles around your ear like wind suddenly passing by.’ (Peter von Matt)

Translation rights available from: Bilgerverlag GmBh, Zürich Josefstrasse 52, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland Tel: +41 44 2718146 Email: bilger@bilgerverlag.ch Contact: Ricco Bilger www.bilgerverlag.ch

Bilgerverlag was founded in 2001 by Ricco Bilger and specialises in contemporary Swiss literature. Authors include Katharina Faber, Urs Augstburger, Kaspar Schnetzler, Urs Mannhart, and Christoph Simon. Ricco Bilger opened his Zurich bookshop in 1983, and ten years later, another bookshop in mountain spa town of Leukerbad, where he went on to found the successful Leukerbad Literature Festival. In 2007 Bilger was the driving force behind the formation of SWIPS, the forum for Swiss Independent Publishers.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 48)

DEBUTS

Max Scharnigg

Die Besteigung der Eiger-Nordwand unter einer Treppe (Climbing the North Face of the Eiger Under the Stairs) Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, February 2011, 144 pp. ISBN: 978 3 455 40313 8

‘An axe for the frozen sea within us’ With Kafka-like moments of surreality and pathos, Scharnigg’s disarming debut novel is an absurd epic, assured, ironic and full of charm. Slight but tightly structured, and spanning just a few days, its appeal lies in its bathetic descriptions, beautiful clear images, and lyrical moments between characters. Nikol has moved out of the flat he shares with his girlfriend, M., and taken up residence under the stairs of his apartment building. Together the couple had become more and more isolated from the outside world, and M. has not left the house in more than a year. Journalist Nikol has become used to no one seeming to notice him anymore, so it’s quite comfortable in the stairwell. And he’s busy composing in his mind an article about the heroic ascent of the north face of the Eiger in 1937. He has retreated to this burrow because of the sight, in front of his apartment door, of a pair of shoes. Who could have been visiting? Nikol is now too far outside his comfort zone and would rather not go into the apartment to find out.

At first, Nikol claims he is perfectly happy just sitting unnoticed under the stairs, making cynical observations about the identical lifestyles of the yuppie couples who

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

DEBUTS

Max Scharnigg was born in 1980 and works as a journalist and author. He is one of the editors of jetzt.de, the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s magazine for young people, and writes among others for AD, Cosmopolitan and das SZ-Magazin. His regular column in the Süddeutsche Zeitung recently appeared in book form under the title Das habe ich jetzt akustisch nicht verstanden (‘I didn’t quite catch that’). Die Besteigung der Eiger-Nordwand is his first novel, for which he won the Munich City literary bursary and was nominated for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2010. Max Scharnigg lives in Munich.

ascend and descend above his head, running through his memories of his relationship with M. and trying to figure out why and when she became ill and reclusive, and composing his epic. The Eiger narrative is interwoven with Nikol’s story to wry effect, the gripping tale of four historical mountaineers a sardonic commentary on the narrator’s absurd struggle to climb the stairs back up to his flat. Then Schmuskatz, an eccentric old man living opposite, invites him over to his flat for paprika chicken and a few drinks. Nikol talks about his Eiger project, Schmuskatz of his days as a pioneering glacier photographer; Nikol talks about his relationship with M., Schmuskatz kits both of them out in antiquated mountaineering equipment. Roped up, they embark on the perilous climb two stories up to Nikol’s apartment. Will Nikol, blind drunk, emotional and lost, manage to emulate his Eiger heroes and complete the ascent? The book has a lovely originality and pulls off its highconcept structure superbly. It is funny, genuinely moving and very readable. The combination of literary ambition, historical adventure and affecting love story make for an extraordinarily accomplished debut. Translation rights available from: Hoffmann und Campe Verlag Harvestehuder Weg 42, 20149 Hamburg, Germany Tel: +49 40 44188 281 Email: nadja.mortensen@hoca.de Contact: Nadja Mortensen www.hoffmann-und-campe.de ‘ In his first novel the author and columnist Max Scharnigg writes a miniature play which takes the reader first under a dark staircase, then over the north face of the Eiger, and finally up to the mysterious door of a second-floor apartment.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

‘ This little book of 140 pages is wonderful and resembles either a perfectly moulded sculpture or a flawlessly composed sonata, according to your taste.’ (Hamburger Abendblatt)

Michel Božikovi´c

Drift (Drift)

Klett-Cotta Verlag, August 2011, 320 pp. ISBN: 978 3 608 50211 4

The spoils of war Božikovi´c’s arresting debut novel is structured as a story within a story: Martin, a journalist, is interviewing Julien, a veteran of the Balkan conflicts of the early 1990s in which he fought as a volunteer. Martin is a wreck – unemployed, left by his girlfriend, and a heroin addict – but desperate to turn his life around, hoping for a major break-through by publishing Julien’s story.

Julien, a second-generation Yugoslavian immigrant, was nineteen when he stole his mother’s car to drive to Croatia to fight and to give meaning to his life. Fiercely determined, he manages to get through to the front line, and the first clash with the enemy proves that he is a natural. Julien soon falls in love with Marina, another member of his squad. On a mission to kill a high-ranked Serbian officer Julien and Marina both get badly injured. After recovering sufficiently to leave hospital, Julien visits Marina at her home and they spend their one and only night together, both high on heroin. For him, it’s the first experience of hard drugs, but for Marina heroin has become the only way to cope with the unbearable pains of her injury. The next morning she is dead, killed by an overdose. Julien is devastated and cannot return

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Michel Božikovic´ was born in Zurich and studied philosophy, political science, journalism and communication studies in Constance and Zurich. From 2000 to 2006 he ran his own studio (with his own label) as well as managing a publishing house. He wrote scripts and also skippered a yacht. Since 1992 he has worked in advertising, both writing texts and coordinating strategy. Today he lives in Zurich and works in Basel. Drift is his first novel. A second work is now on the way.

to the fighting. He ends up becoming a drug runner to Switzerland, where years later he gets the chance to recount his story to Martin. Yet at this point in the narrative Martin is also in a state of despair, seeing no chance of escaping from the drugs and alcohol. Finally he takes Julien’s gun in order to commit suicide. By the end of the book, it seems that Martin and Julien might actually be the same person, maybe already dead or maybe still alive, but definitely on the final drift away from real life in one way or another, despite visions of what might have been. Božikovi´c’s style is strong and involving, drawing the reader through the scenes of violence and despair that are mixed with images of happier days. Being published on the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Yugoslav war, Drift is an unconventional and compelling take on a conflict that is far from being forgotten in today’s Europe. Julien and Martin’s shared stories demonstrate with an unerring eye how war not only kills but also destroys lives.

Translation rights available from: Klett-Cotta Verlag (J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger GmbH) Rotebühlstr. 77, 70178 Stuttgart, Germany Tel: + 49 711 66721257 Email: r.knappe@klett-cotta.de Contact: Roland Knappe www.klett-cotta.de Shortlisted for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2011 (see page 40)

Klett-Cotta Verlag has a reputation as a prestigious literary and scientific publishing house dating back to 1659. Cotta was the original publisher of Goethe and Schiller. Klett-Cotta publishes both classical and contemporary fiction by German and foreign authors as well as books on the humanities, psychology, philosophy, history, politics, management, educational theory and ecology. Klett-Cotta authors include Stefan George, Ernst Jünger, Doris Lessing and Seamus Heaney.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

DEBUTS

This year, F.C. Delius was awarded Germany’s most prestigious book prize, the Büchner. Stuart Taberner and Blake Morrison introduce readers to the author’s significant oeuvre.

Held der inneren Sicherheit

(‘Hero of Internal Security’, 1981); Mogadischu Fensterplatz

(‘Window Seat at Mogadishu’, 1987); Himmelfahrt eines Staatsfeindes (‘Ascension of an Enemy of the State’, 1992). This thematises the German experience of terrorism in the 1970s but also tackles important questions about the balance between security and civil liberties that are central to debates raging today after 9/11 and the 7/7 attacks on London. In addition, Delius is also a prolific essay-writer, newspaper columnist, and political activist. Much of Delius’s writing is socially and politically engaged, and often looks back over post-war German history in order to make sense of the intertwining of the political and the private – of what it means to be there when epoch-defining events occur. The short novel Amerika-Haus und der Tanz um die Frauen (‘America House

and the Dance around Women’, 1977), for example, looks back to the late 1960s and the heady mix of political protest and selfdiscovery that characterised that period for many young people. The more substantial Mein Jahr als

AUTHOR FOCUS

2004) revisits the same era and examines the temptations to political violence in a country in which former Nazi judges are acquitted while the wife of a resistance fighter is hounded by the courts. In Der Sonntag, an dem ich Weltmeister wurde

(‘The Sunday That I Became World Champion’, 1994), on the other hand, the victory of the West German team at the 1954 World Cup is experienced by a young man (who bears a strong resemblance to the author himself) as a liberation, both from his restrictive upbringing and from Germany’s past, and also as the symbol of a new, democratic spirit. The short work Die Flatterzunge (‘Flutter-Tongue’, 1999) and the novel Königsmacher (‘KingMaker’, 2001), by contrast, deal with political correctness and the pitfalls of marketing. In Die Flatterzunge a musician is ostracised after jokingly signing a bar tab in Israel with ‘Adolf Hitler’, whereas in Königsmacher a middle-aged writer struggles to get published in a contemporary world in which looks matter more than substance. Delius is at his best when he is most personal. Bildnis der Mutter als junge Frau (‘Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman’, 2006), published in English by Peirene Press (2010, tr. Jamie Bulloch), is a singlesentence 125-page re-imagining of one day in his mother’s life as the wife of a German army officer in Rome in 1943. In this highly rhythmical work, Delius gently tests the limits of his mother’s understanding of her situation and of the Nazi propaganda with which she has grown up. The result is a subtle, empathetic yet probing examination of the (self-)delusions of one very ordinary woman during the Nazi period. Mein Jahr als Mörder

and Der Sonntag, an dem ich Weltmeister wurde also have autobiographical roots, inviting the reader to experience the author’s own fallibilities, whether for the self-righteous anger of the would-be assassin of an unrepentant former Nazi judge or for the illusion that football can change the world. These books, which meld German history and individual life stories with broader issues relating to the capacity we all possess for self-delusion, transcend the borders between countries and cultures and would surely appeal to an international audience. Die Flatterzunge, too, though less directly autobiographical, challenges us to identify with a protagonist whose motives are ambivalent at best — is his ‘Hitler joke’ a defiant act of protest against political correctness or a childish attempt to draw attention to himself and mask his mediocre career and failed personal relationships? Delius’s prose is highly readable. His style is modest and understated,

with a lightness of touch and an unobtrusive but compelling musicality that translate well into English. The plotlines are strong and drive the narrative forward, drawing the reader into the everyday psychological dramas experienced by the author’s unexceptional protagonists as they struggle with a set of dilemmas that are as universal as they are individual. At what point does moral indignation turn into selfrighteous self-delusion? Are we more than simply the products of a particular past and a particular present? How can we tell our story and be understood? A worthy winner of the 2011 Büchner Prize, F. C. Delius is long overdue for translation into English. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture and Society at the University of Leeds

Delius, born in Rome in 1943, published his first poetry collections in the mid-sixties, along with satirical exposés of the collusion between big business and the dominant Christian Democratic Union in the early days of the Federal Republic. In the mid-seventies, he began to write novels, most notably his ‘German autumn’ trilogy: Ein

Mörder (‘My Year as a Murderer’,

Writer Blake Morrison picked Delius’s Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman as one of his top reads of last year. Here, he tells NBG why. In Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, F.C. Delius

defies the normal meanings of the words ‘small’ and ‘large’. His book consists of a single sentence, but that sentence stretches to 125 pages. It describes a walk that takes only an hour but which assimilates the whole of a young woman’s life. It is set in a particular place (Rome) at a particular time (January 1943) but the fears, hopes, experiences and memories it recounts are timeless and universal. Alone in a strange city, pregnant, afraid and badly missing her husband, the young woman at its centre doesn’t pity herself but counts her blessings: how much worse it is for the

Italians, she reflects, and how fortunate to be in the Eternal City, on which the Allies will surely never drop bombs. There’s something deeply engaging about her innocence and compassion as she struggles with her ambivalent feelings, not least about Hitler and Nazism. ‘On her own she could not work out what you were allowed and not allowed to say, what you should think and what you ought not to think,’ she reflects. Yet implicitly, by the end, she does work these things out, finding in music and Christianity an antidote to racial hatred and military triumphalism.

When it was announced that Friedrich Christian Delius had been awarded the Büchner Prize for 2011, few industry insiders were surprised. Indeed, the only question was why it had taken the committee so long to recognise the talents of one of the country’s foremost writers.

Albert Ostermaier

Schwarze Sonne scheine (Shine, Black Sun)

Suhrkamp Verlag. May 2011, 360 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42220 5

‘Belief and the unbelievable’ Ostermaier, leading poet and playwright, is a maximalist, and his eagerly awaited, possibly autobiographical, second novel is magnificent and baroque: a wonderfully over-thetop self-examination of the artist as a young man, and a profound investigation into our deepest fears.

It is 1991 and Sebastian is a reluctant Law student who spends most of his time working on his poetry. Two years ago, he returned from a trip to Yemen seriously ill. Even though he has since made a full recovery, when an old family friend suggests he see a specialist who saved his own life, Sebastian agrees. The old family friend is Silvester, the Prior of the monastery in Sebastian’s home town, and the first person actively to encourage his artistic ambitions. The specialist is Sybille Scher. When the results of Scher’s examination come in, Sebastian’s world implodes: apparently, he carries a deadly virus and has a maximum of six months to live. His girlfriend Klara, a Protestant who is inherently suspicious of Silvester and the Catholic establishment he represents, insists that he get a second opinion. This shows Sebastian to be healthy; and the professor who examines him also makes inquiries into Scher and finds out that she is, by all accounts, an impostor.

‘In Shine, Black Sun everything is vital, powerful, complex and thrilling. Albert Ostermaier’s expressionistic verve ought to be exemplary for young writers.’ (Die Zeit) Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

For a second time, Sebastian’s world implodes: has he been betrayed by Silvester, the one person he trusted more than anybody else in the world? However, the question of Silvester’s involvement with Scher remains unanswered because Sebastian’s parents beg him not to take the story to the media – as small business owners in a provincial town they cannot afford to alienate the Catholic establishment. For the next twenty years, silence reigns in Sebastian’s family about these events. Finally, Sebastian has to undergo emergency surgery and, coming to after the operation, decides that he will remain silent no longer. By making his protagonist and narrator a young writer, Ostermaier cleverly manages to justify, and at the same time ironically undercut, even his most outrageous flourishes. So the real pleasure in reading the novel is in the ongoing interior monologue Sebastian conducts with himself throughout the book, a monologue that’s rich in allusions to literature and culture high and (occasionally) low and that is clearly, and charmingly, in love with its own verbal inventiveness. The language makes Shine, Black Sun what it is. A darkly sparkling gem.

Albert Ostermaier is one of Germany’s foremost poets and playwrights. He was born in Munich in 1967 and has been writer-in-residence at the National Theatre in Mannheim and at the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel in Munich. Albert Ostermaier has received various prizes for his dramatic works and has published more than twenty books and twenty-eight plays with Suhrkamp.

Translation rights available from: Suhrkamp Verlag Pappelallee 78-79, 10437 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 740744 0 Email: hardt@suhrkamp.de (USA), mercurio@suhrkamp.de (UK & Commonwealth) Contact: Dr. Petra Hardt (USA), Nora Mercurio (UK & Commonwealth) www.suhrkamp.de/foreignrights

Previous works: Zephyr (2008)

‘An almost unbelievable story told in a tragicomic style. A daredevil rollercoaster ride examining every facet of an electrically wired mind.’ (Herbert Grönemeyer)

‘Shine, Black Sun is a beautiful book. It is sad and oddly funny, absurd and warm.’ (Frankfurter Rundschau) ‘The book vibrates and pulses; unharnessed and extreme in its reactions.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

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

Michael Kumpfmüller

Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens (The Glory of Life)

Kiepenheuer & Witsch, August 2011, 240 pp. ISBN: 978 3 462 04326 6

Kafka’s last stand Much of this intriguing novel about Franz Kafka’s last year is mediated through letters, telegraphs, and the telephone; the author has genuinely captured the excitement of modernity, a world with cinema, mobility, and long-distance communications. At the same time The Glory of Life achieves a meditative quality and offers beautiful insights into what really makes life worth living.

To say that Franz is indecisive would be an understatement, and it is precisely this aspect of his character that gives the book its structure. Twelve chapters describe his tentative ‘coming’ to Berlin, twelve more cover his difficulties ‘staying’ there, and the last dozen depict Franz slowly ‘leaving’ this life, nursed by his lover Dora and a friend called Robert. Friendship nourished by communication and loyalty is skillfully portrayed. There are touching descriptions of the physical intimacy shared by both Robert and Dora with the dying Franz, as they wash and feed him together. Beginning with a holiday-cum-convalescence on the Baltic Sea in July 1923, and ending with his death in a sanatorium near Vienna in July 1924, it is surprising that the last year of Kafka’s life can be told as a love story. The perspective shifts between Franz and Dora. Dora is in her

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Fiction

Michael Kumpfmüller was born in 1961 and now lives as a freelance writer in Berlin. In 2000 his celebrated debut novel Hampels Fluchten was published, in 2003 his second novel Durst, and in 2008 Nachricht an alle. He was awarded the Döblin Prize for this most recent novel.

mid-twenties, while Franz is already forty. Yet as the pair fall in love, Franz impulsively decides to move to Berlin in order to join Dora there. The problem is that 1923 was not a good year for anyone to move to Berlin. Inflation was sky-rocketing, and for Franz and Dora there are occasional glimpses of the antiSemitism that was deeply ingrained in early twentiethcentury European society. Franz himself has ambivalent feelings towards Judaism, the Hebrew language, and even to Jews. But the greatest obstacles he has to overcome are the influence of his domineering sisters, his fear of an authoritarian father, and his resulting inability to assert himself. There are several well-observed passages about Franz’s psychology, notably regarding the difficulty of telling lies over the phone, or analysing the facts that are not written about in his letters. A very convincing combination of historical research and fictional reconstruction of events, The Glory of Life will appeal to a wide audience not only for its contribution to our appreciation of Kafka but also its depiction of Weimar Germany and central European society. Translation rights available from: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG Bahnhofsvorplatz 1, 50667 Köln, Germany Tel: +49 0221 376 85 22 Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de Contact: Iris Brandt www.kiwi-verlag.de

Previous works: Hampels Fluchten (2000); Durst (2003); Nachricht an alle (2008)

Translation rights sold to: Kumpfmüller’s previous works have been published in translation in Finland (Tammi), France (Denoel), UK (Weidenfeld), Italy (RCS Libri), The Netherlands (Ambo Anthos) and Spain (Seix Barral).

‘ An unbelievably tender, beautifully poetic love story at the end of a life.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung)

Kiepenheuer & Witsch was founded in 1949 in Cologne by Gustav Kiepenheuer and Joseph Caspar Witsch. The press’s early authors included Joseph Roth, Heinrich Böll and Erich Maria Remarque. Today Kiepenheuer & Witsch continues to publish leading contemporary German, Austrian and Swiss writers, as well as international authors in translation. Its list includes among many others the book prizewinner Kathrin Schmidt, Frank Schätzing, Uwe Timm, David Foster Wallace and J.D. Salinger. Its non-fiction subjects cover sociology, psychology, history and biography. Kiepenheuer & Witsch is part of the Holtzbrinck Group.

Sibylle Lewitscharoff

Blumenberg (Blumenberg)

Suhrkamp Verlag, September 2011, 220 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42244 1

The lion-hearted philosopher Not a word is wasted by Lewitscharoff in this superbly written novel where everything is significant. Themes and style alike contribute to the overall effect: a clever blend of poetry, philosophy and comedy by an author who is a master of her craft. The novel centres on a fictionalised version of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg, most famous for his concept of ‘metaphorology’, who died in 1996. Suhrkamp has recently reissued Löwen, a volume of notes on ancient and modern stories about lions taken from Blumenberg’s unpublished papers, and Lewitscharoff’s narrative gives the philosopher an actual lion, which turns up in his study one evening in 1982, and becomes his silent companion for the rest of his life. The lion is an ontological puzzle: is he real, tangible, or simply a lengthy hallucination? When Blumenberg’s wife eventually finds him dead in 1996, there is a smell of lions in the room, and a few yellow hairs cling to his clothes.

Running parallel to the philosopher’s narrative are those of a handful of his students in the year the lion appears. Isa is in love with Blumenberg, though he doesn’t know it,

‘ Sibylle Lewitscharoff is capable of a particular kind of linguistic excitement which is unique in German literature.’ (Paul Jandl, Neue Züricher Zeitung) Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Sibylle Lewitscharoff was born in Stuttgart in 1954 and now lives in Berlin. She has received numerous awards for her writings, including the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize and the Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize. Her recent novel Apostoloff earned her the prize of the Leipzig Book Fair, and is forthcoming in English with Seagull Books. Previous works: Consummatus (2010) Apostoloff (2009) Translation rights sold to: Apostoloff has been published in translation in English (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Hidalgo), Italy (Del Vecchio Editore), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Estonia (Atlex), Macedonia (Magor)

and in despair she throws herself off a motorway bridge. Richard imagines Blumenberg reading his dissertation, and is so crippled by the professor’s imagined disdain that he cannot complete it. He travels to South America, where he is brutally murdered in an alleyway. Hansi, an oddball who torments his fellow students and the general public by relentlessly reading poems at them in bars and restaurants, becomes even more eccentric after leaving university, and eventually drops dead whilst being arrested for creating a public nuisance with his aggressive philosophising. Only Gerhard, a dedicated ‘Blumenbergian’, manages an academic career, and even he turns up in the book’s final chapter, set in a kind of waiting room in the afterlife, where Blumenberg and his lion are reunited with his dead students. Interesting stylistic twists make Blumenberg difficult to pigeonhole. The lion takes the narrative into the territory of magic realism, and the final chapter in the afterlife goes beyond this. There are also interventions from the narrator, who, for example, having told us what is going through Isa’s mind in the seconds before her death, muses on whether it’s actually possible for a narrator to know this, and how much of it is plausible. A highly original work. Translation rights available from: Suhrkamp Verlag Pappelallee 78-79, 10437 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 740744 0 Email: hardt@suhrkamp.de (USA), mercurio@suhrkamp.de (UK & Commonwealth) Contact: Dr. Petra Hardt (USA), Nora Mercurio (UK & Commonwealth) www.suhrkamp.de/foreignrights ‘Apostoloff is brimming with ferocity, plays on language and impertinence. Sparkling, enjoyable literature.’ (Der Spiegel) ‘The most dazzling stylist of contemporary German literature.’ (Die Welt)

Fiction

Praise for Frau Paula Trousseau: ‘ A courageous novel, beyond great gestures’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung) ‘The most beautiful work Christoph Hein has written so far.’ (Frankfurter Rundschau) ‘Christoph Hein’s novels […] have a charismatic aura.’ (Neuer Zürcher Zeitung)

Ilija Trojanow

Christoph Hein

EisTau

Weiskerns Nachlass

Carl Hanser Verlag, August 2011, 176 pp. ISBN: 978 3 446 23757 5

Suhrkamp Verlag, August 2011, 319 pp. ISBN: 978 3 518 42241 0

Like unto whited sepulchres

Crash landing

Melting Ice is an activist’s book that recognizes the problem

Weiskern’s Estate is classic Hein. In a case study at once social

of activism – an angry, powerful, and often funny book.

and psychological, the reader experiences the protagonist’s bewilderment at contemporary society and anguish as he recalls incidents from his past that have led to his current plight.

(Melting Ice)

(Weiskern’s Estate)

Zeno Hintermeier, a glaciologist, is working as a lecturer on a cruise ship in the Antarctic. He is surrounded by his beloved ice – and passengers and journalists who, for all their concern about the environment, will soon return to their usual lifestyles. Hintermeier, on the other hand, is plagued by a nightmare in which he is sitting on a rock, clutching a handful of melting ice. Things come to a head during an art installation. The passengers line up on the ice to spell out an SOS. For Hintermeier, only a genuine distress signal could do justice, so he invites the crew to join the formation, returns alone to the cruise ship, and sails off. When the ship is found, there is no sign of the hijacker, just a notebook, the text of which we have been reading. Hintermeier’s narrative, full of arresting images and poetic descriptions, is interspersed with memories of his childhood, his failed marriage, and the end of his academic career. These alternate with short, untitled and fiercely poetic chapters written as single sentences that provide an angry, energetic and anonymous commentary.

Life doesn’t seem to accord literature professor Stolzenburg the respect due to his age and profession. He slaves part-time at an institute for cultural studies, and finds it increasingly hard to uphold his high standards at a time of cutbacks and apathetic students. His real passion is his life work, a Complete Works of obscure librettist Weiskern. But will anyone publish it? Soon the cracks in Stolzenburg’s life start to show: an unexplained tax bill; being suspected by the police of offering faked documents for sale; assault by a group of schoolgirls. Everything comes to a head when he is on a flight to give a guest lecture, and suddenly the propellers stop working… Hein’s works have consistently achieved wide appeal, and this novel also turns a mirror on some universal aspects of European societies: ageing, the crisis of higher education, the plight of older people, rising street violence, generation gaps, and the marginalisation of literature in the digital age.

Ilija Trojanow was born in 1965 in Sofia, Bulgaria, grew up in Kenya and now lives in Vienna. His work has won numerous awards, most recently the 2008 Berlin Prize for Literature, and has been translated into several languages.

Translation rights available from: Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG Tel: +49 89 998 30 509 Email: Friederike.Barakat@hanser.de Contact: Friederike Barakat www.hanser-literaturverlage.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Fiction

Angriff auf die Freiheit. Sicherheitswahn, Überwachungsstaat und der Abbau bürgerlicher Rechte

(‘The Assault on Liberty‘, 2009, with Juli Zeh); Der entfesselte Globus (‘The Raging Globe’, 2008); Der Weltensammler (The Collector of Worlds, 2006); Translation rights sold to: Brazil (Companhia das Letras), Bulgaria (Ciela), France (Libella), Netherlands (De Geus) For information on Carl Hanser Verlag contact NBG

Previous works:

Translation rights available from: Suhrkamp Verlag Tel: +49 30 740744 0 Contact details: see page 7 www.suhrkamp.de/foreignrights Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Christoph Hein was born in 1944 and currently lives in Berlin. He has written novels, novellas, short stories, plays, essays and children’s books. Suhrkamp Verlag acquired the world rights to Hein’s works in 2002. He has garnered numerous literary awards for his work. When the Pen centres in East and West Germany merged, Christoph Hein was President of the German Pen Centre from 1998 to 2000. Selected previous works: Frau Paula Trousseau (2007; World English Rights sold to Metropolitan Books); In seiner frühen Kindheit ein Garten (2005; World English Rights sold to Metropolitan Books); Landnahme (Settlement, 2004) ; Willenbrock (2000) For information on Suhrkamp Verlag see page 7

‘ Where is there such a thing in German literature? Adventure in high art? Here we have it, with Sherko Fatah.’ (Die Zeit)

‘ An engrossing family history that you read hungrily from beginning to end.’ (Spiegel Online) ‘ A great epic about the search for love and a self-determined life.’ (Petra)

‘ With Fatah, a new quality enters German literature.’ (Der Tagesspiegel)

Sherko Fatah

Larissa Boehning

Ein weißes Land

Das Glück der Zikaden

Luchterhand Literaturverlag, September 2011, 480 pp. ISBN: 978 3 630 87371 8

Galiani Berlin, July 2011, 320 pp. ISBN: 978 3 86971 039 6

‘Good at killing’

‘… Since they all have silent wives’

Following his successful 2008 novel, Das dunkle Schiff, which told the story of a young Iraqi during the first Gulf War, Fatah turns his considerable powers to an epic story exploring the relationship between Iraq and Germany during the Nazi period, and the history of the Jewish community in Iraq.

Belief and betrayal, illusion and disillusion run through the heart of The Song of the Cicadas, as it traces the lives of three generations of women, from 1930s Moscow to a divided Berlin. These personal themes are echoed in the political settings, from communist repression to the emotional cost of comfortable living in a capitalist society.

(A White Land)

(The Song of the Cicadas)

A White Land is packed with character and incident, opening in 1955 when Anwar, an Iraqi veteran of the Second World War, spots a German doctor in a local hospital. Can it be the same Dr Stein who treated Anwar during the war? The plot shifts back in time to Anwar’s youth in Baghdad, when he betrayed the trust and affection of his Jewish friends and became involved with the Black Shirts, and progresses chronologically through his posting to Berlin as a bodyguard to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and into his years as an SS soldier on the Eastern Front, where he participates in the systematic massacre of Russian partisans and civilians. The final chapter returns to 1955 and solves the mystery of what has brought Dr Stein to Iraq.

Translation rights available from: Luchterhand Literaturverlag Tel: + 49 89 4136 3313 Email: Gesche.Wendebourg@ randomhouse.de www.randomhouse.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

The narrative perspective of this arresting novel is reminiscent of Fallada’s Alone in Berlin, swinging between different points of view and keeping the main characters at a tantalising distance from the reader.

Sherko Fatah was born in 1964 as the son of an Iraqi Kurd and a German mother. He grew up in East Germany and, in 1975, moved with his family to West Berlin, via Vienna. He studied philosophy and the history of art. He has received numerous awards and grants for his narrative work including the Hilde Domin Prize, the Alfred Döblin Grant, the honorary Award of the German Critics’ Prize, and the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin Grant. Ein weißes Land is his fourth novel. Previous works: Das dunkle Schiff (The Dark Ship, 2008; forthcoming in English with Seagull Books, 2012); Onkelchen (2004); Donnie (2002), Im Grenzland (2001) A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

A unique perspective on the Second World War, and a shocking picture of a young man who apparently commits atrocities without motivation.

The three main characters have been silenced by external forces or inner compulsion. Nadja is an actress forced to leave her native Russia because she married a German. Nadja’s daughter must choose between following her true love, the father of her unborn child, to East Germany or settling for a safe existence with a man she does not love. Nadja’s granddaughter suffers from an acute sense of isolation that leaves her prey to the lies of a compulsive gambler. In a twist on the title of the book, however, none of the men is happy either, bound up as they are with women who do not feel free to express themselves.

Translation rights available from: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch Tel: +49 221 376 85 22 Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de Contact: Iris Brandt www.kiwi-verlag.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Larissa Boehning, born in 1971, grew up in Hamburg and has lived in Spain and Berlin. She works as a graphic designer, lecturer and freelance writer. She was awarded the Literaturpreis Prenzlauer Berg (2002) for the story ‘Schwalbensommer’ from a previous collection. Her debut novel Lichte Stoffe was longlisted for the German Book Prize in 2007 and earned her the Kulturpreis der Stadt Pinneberg and Mara Cassens Prize for the best debut novel of the year. Previous works: Schwalbensommer (Swallow Summer, forthcoming with Comma Press), Lichte Stoffe (‘Light Materials’, 2007) A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Fiction

Literature, Nature & Thermal Spas

Poet Rolf Hermann led the twohour walk through the Dala Gorge on Friday morning. A guide from Leukerbad Tourismus explained the various springs en route, while – when there was space to gather round – Rolf entertained

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with various performance pieces. The walk ended at Hotel Regina Therme, in time for Peter Stamm to read two of the stories in his latest collection, Seerücken.

Peter Stamm reads on the Alpina Terrasse

An important feature of the festival is that invited authors read at least twice, sometimes with a separate ‘in conversation’ event, thus allowing readers to negotiate clashes. Just as well for this visitor, too – as I learned of a Swiss novel I am to translate just as short story writer Anna Weidenholzer, Leipzig Book Prize winner Clemens Setz, and Belarusian poet Valžhyna Mort were next up. The news had to be celebrated. With the author. Rolf Hermann was back, late afternoon: first, as part of a session devoted to Lyrik; then, assisted

by Walter König and Alexander Tschernek, with a stunning account - including audio and film footage – of black author James Baldwin’s visits to Leukerbad in the 1950s. A meal followed, with Pro Helvetia representatives and their ‘cultural mediator’ guests; before the surprise of what was soon being labelled the ‘new swimming pool’ – and stand-out readings by German and Swiss Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji, supported by musician Balts Nill; Ukrainian novelist Oksana Sabuschko; and German author Katja Lange-Müller. At midnight, up the Gemmi, TV presenter Monika Schärer and publisher Gerd Haffmans presented translations of Samuel Pepys.

Saturday afternoon offered chances to catch up with Sabuschko, Setz, and LangeMüller. And a first chance to hear Michail Schischkin, a Zürich-based author, writing in Russian, whose Venushaar makes brilliant use of Schischkin’s experience as an interpreter for asylum-seekers in Switzerland. Even better, for me, was a last-minute, stop-gap event: Katharina Narbutovic in conversation with Swiss novelist Urs Mannhart (recently returned from Finland and Minsk) and Belarusian poet, Valžhyna Mort. Narbutovic, who chaired, interpreted, and read her own translations of Mort, was nothing short of sensational. And so to the traditional ‘Long Literary Evening’, the programme for which becomes available on the day: three 15-minute readings per hour, from eight till late. It isn’t meant to be a contest, but this particular cross-section of the festival demonstrated the strengths of that generation of Swiss writers still under fifty. Melinda Nadj Abonji (again with Balts Nill and his tins and plastic bottles), Pedro Lenz (Das Kleine Lexikon der Provinzliteratur) and Christoph Simon (Spaziergänger Zbinden) raised the bar – and the roof – when it came to performance.

Saturday began with the focus on a translation workshop, conducted during the week in nearby Leuk, where Abonji had worked closely with translators (or potential translators) of Tauben fliegen auf, courtesy of the LCB and Pro Helvetia. Jürgen Becker chaired with customary aplomb as the Swedish, French, Romanian, American, Slovene and Serbo-Croat translators aired the challenges involved, before reading versions of that great passage in which the immigrant family plays Monopoly.

Sunday morning, traditionally, is time to get your bathing cossie out. This year, Nina Maria Marewski read at the Roman-Irish bath. A trio of prose readings – Weidenholzer, Simon and Schischkin – then concluded the festival, and Schischkin’s take on asylum-seekers’ interviews with immigration officers provided a sobering counterpoint to the pleasures of literature, mountain landscapes, and hot springs. Donal McLaughlin will feature as both author and translator in Best European Fiction 2012

The Literary Evening in the ‘new swimming pool’

(Dalkey Archive Press). He will also accompany Swiss writer Urs Widmer on a reading tour of India in January.

This year, co-directors Hans Ruprecht and Anna Kulp had invited twenty-three authors from Austria, Belarus, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Russia, the UK, the Ukraine – and, of course, Switzerland. Most congregated on the Thursday evening in the Rinderhütte, a ‘Panoramarestaurant’ on the Torrent (2350m) to enjoy views of twenty 4000m peaks in the Valais Alps and Rhône Valley; a dramatic thunderstorm; much talk of books; and the best raclette in the world. We took the cable-car back down late evening, and ‘work’ would begin the next day.

The Literary Evening in the ‘new swimming pool’

Arriving via Visp and Leuk, even regular visitors are stunned each year by what James Baldwin called an ‘absolutely forbidding’ landscape; the sheer verticals that surround this mountain village. Part of the charm of the festival is its ability to combine international writing – in the form of readings, interviews, workshops, and literary walks – with an eclectic mix of venues: the Dala Gorge; the former railway station; the gardens of plush hotels; the restaurant at the top of the Gemmi (2322m); and the thermal baths. This time, a permit had been denied for the former swimming pool. Would Saturday’s Literarischer Abend be the same without the cafestyle set-up in what was once the pool itself? Bad Rehazentrum Leukerbad, built in the 1950s and now a listed building, proved the perfect substitute.

The Swiss version of that board game counted amongst the translators’ first ‘difficulties’.

The sixteenth International Literature Festival in Leukerbad took place on what, for me, was my final weekend at Translation House Looren, aka heaven on earth for literary translators: perfect working conditions, the tranquillity of the setting, great conversations with staff and fellow translators. For four weeks, Zurich had (mostly) failed to lure me away. Leukerbad, or Loèche les Bains – 1411m above sea-level in Valais, south-west Switzerland – succeeded, though. Leukerbad lured me away.

Peter Stamm

Seerücken (Beyond the Lake)

S. Fischer Verlag, March 2011, 189 pp. ISBN: 978 3 10 075133 1

Homelessness of the soul This year the New York Times described Stamm as ‘one of Europe’s most exciting writers.’ Beyond the Lake, his fourth volume of short stories, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2011, demonstrates why. Against the background of various alienating and utilitarian settings, Stamm describes the inner lives of individuals struggling to come to terms with the circumstances of their existence – loneliness, fear, loss, failure – yet occasionally enjoying brief moments of enlightenment or momentary connection with other individuals. In this way Stamm’s short stories capture fleeting thoughts and events in lives which are in a constant state of flux and uncertainty. But, like photographs, they offer neither judgment nor simple solution.

‘Sweet Dreams’ focuses on the hopes, doubts and fears of Lara, who’s recently moved into her first flat together with her boyfriend. Stamm is particularly good at portraying the tensions in the relationship between the sexes, for example with a childless couple on holiday in ‘The Way of Things’. Sometimes there are indications of mental instability in Stamm’s characters, as in the collection’s opening story, ‘Summer Guests’. ‘In the Forest’ tells of the life of a girl who,

‘In Seerücken, too, Stamm proves himself as master of the personal failure, the private disaster.’ (Frankfurter Rundschau) Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 48)

Peter Stamm was born in 1963 and now lives near Zurich. He had his international breakthrough with his debut novel Agnes in 1989. Since then his books have been translated into thirty languages. For his novels and collections of stories he has received various prizes, including the Ehrengabe des Kantons Zürich (1998 and 2001), the Rauris Literary Prize (1999), the Rheingau Literary Prize (2001), the Schiller Prize, the Carl-Heinrich-ErnstKunstpreis (2002) and the Alemannischer Literaturpreis (2011). Previous works: Sieben Jahre (2009); Wir Fliegen (Stories, 2008); Heidi (children’s book, 2008); An einem Tag wie Diesem (2006); Agnes (1998)

having been subjected to the drunken and violent behaviour of her parents, spends three years living in a nearby forest while still attending school. There are intimations that living in the natural environment of the forest enables the girl to experience a contentment which is denied to her first by her unhappy home life with her parents, and then later when she lives on an anonymous new housing estate with a faithless husband and two children. The girl’s mind is haunted by the image of a hunter whose potential to end her life she perceives as a source of comfort. Described as a ‘master of minimalism’, and of ‘linguistic asceticism’, Stamm writes in a concise, unpretentious and understated manner which conveys a sense of quiet reflection, humour, humanity and honesty. With subtle gestures and brief exchanges of dialogue, he is able to articulate elusive insights into a variety of universally recognisable issues and dilemmas concerning life and relationships. His portrayal of contemporary life expresses a sense of unease and alienation in an uncertain world in which it’s increasingly difficult to feel at home. Furthermore, the twists and turns of the plotlines are unpredictable and thought-provoking, raising questions in the reader’s mind. Translation rights sold to: World English (Other Press), France (Christian Bourgois), Spain (Acantilado) Translation rights available from: Agentur Liepman AG Englischviertelstrasse 59, CH-8032 Zürich, Switzerland Tel: + 41 43 268 23 81 Email: info@liepmanagency.com Contact : Marianne Fritsch marianne.fritsch@liepmanagency.com For UK English rights please contact Carol Lazare, clazare@otherpress.com ‘ There is nothing coincidental about Peter Stamm’s short stories; the chains of motifs are as carefully arranged as the intertextual allusions. Each one of the ten stories in Seerücken has its own independence and force.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

S. Fischer Verlag was founded by Samuel Fischer in Berlin in 1886. He was the first to publish many now famous authors such as Franz Kafka, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal and Thomas Mann. Both S. Fischer Verlag and Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag focus on literature, psychology and history. Contemporary authors writing in German include Julia Franck, Michael Lenz, Marlene Streeruwitz, Christoph Ransmayr and Wolfgang Hilbig. The firm’s distinguished list also includes many leading international authors in translation. ‘ Extraordinary, intoxicating, brilliant: with his new collection Seerücken, Peter Stamm proves once again his exceptional talent.’ (Die Weltwoche)

SHORT STORIES

Sabrina Janesch

Translated by the participants of the BCLT Summer School 2011, with Shaun Whiteside. Every summer, the British Centre for Literary Translation holds a Summer School, bringing together aspiring and experienced translators from several languages for a week of intense and inspirational workshops, seminars and lectures. The focus of the school is the group translation of a text whose author joins the translators for the whole week. This year the German author was Sabrina Janesch, whose novel Katzenberge was reviewed last year in NBG. Here, Shaun Whiteside, who ran the German workshop, introduces the fine results of that lively week. Does wheat grow tall or high? If it grows high, then what do you do with ‘high summer’? Are we going with ‘yards’ or ‘metres’? Does ‘St George’s Cathedral’ sound a bit, well, Anglican, for a church in Lviv? And what about those catfish – would an English-speaking reader have any idea what we were talking about? These were some of the more straightforward issues we pondered at this year’s BCLT Summer School at the University of East Anglia, when the German working group was joined – thanks to New Books in German – by the young German novelist Sabrina Janesch, author of the wonderful Katzenberge (Cat Hills or Cat Mountains? We settled for ‘mountains’ – they’re a real range in western Poland, with, as Bryn pointed out, their very own Wikipedia entry.) We had eleven students this year, from undergraduates to academics, gifted amateurs and professional translators, and it made for a very lively, often very funny series of discussions. Sabrina generously joined in with enthusiasm, moving from group to group (we divided first into three, then into two groups), joining in the process with what looked like genuine fascination, and explaining as best she could what was meant by a ‘Blütenrispe’ (a cluster of blossoms, in this instance on a false acacia tree), or what the ‘Platz’ in front of a Polish-Ukrainian farmhouse might look like. Katzenberge is a family saga told on two time levels at once – Nele, a Polish-German girl, attends her grandfather’s funeral in western Poland, and is impelled to discover the truth about his life, in particular his origins in a village in the East, in the present-day Ukraine. The passage she chose for the workshop is perhaps a bit more upbeat than some other bits of the novel, and with a hint of magic realism about it.

So what particular challenges did the passage pose (leaving aside the question of pronunciation when we presented the translation in semi-dramatised form at the end of the Summer School)? In the end the major difficulties arose around the exotic and unfamiliar setting. Units of measurement and unfamiliar foodstuffs – for a few glorious moments we came close to rendering ‘meterlange geräucherte Welse und Zander’ as ‘ells of eels and perches of perch’, before settling for the rather more sober ‘yards of smoked catfish and pikeperch’. (In the process discovering the monstrous Wels Catfish, which is well worth Googling if you have a spare moment.) Did we want to risk overstressing the Biblical echoes of the birth in the story, by having the villagers ‘bearing gifts’ as they waded through the white acacia blossom? Would readers automatically know that ‘Janeczkowa’ was Janeczko’s wife? And ‘schnapps’ or brandy? We settled for ‘schnapps’, but ‘brandy’ had much to be said for it. And what of that ‘blutjunge Zigeunerin’ who magically blessed the birth? A difficult one: a word to suggest a girl on the cusp of womanhood. We settled in the end on ‘lass’, even though we were aware that it might carry incongruous suggestions of northern dialect.

Shaun Whiteside

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Translation is usually a solitary process, and the opportunity to work intensely on a short text, in teams and with the author, is invaluable – you carry the voices with you for weeks afterwards. Sabrina seemed to have a great time – she’s mentioned the ‘inspired atmosphere’ at the Summer School, and her delight at hearing her text ‘become so incredibly alive’. It was a great week, I hope everyone enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoy our translation.

Cat Mountains Sabrina Janesch

Grandfather said the place where he was born was surrounded by fields of wheat so tall that in the height of summer it could barely be seen. Only those who knew exactly what the tops of the beech trees in the middle of the village looked like could get through to it. And that’s why the midwife was late, even though his mother had been in labour for more than twelve hours. Lula Timofjejew said later that she had set off from Rosalki in plenty of time, but that soon after leaving her village she had lost her way in a thicket of wheat and rye, and met a raven who pointed her in the wrong direction. In the end she had emerged, soaked in sweat and covered in wheat · · husks, not in Zdzary Wielkie but in Krawcze, where the curious clan of the Yellow Bellies lived. No one believed her, but even years later she still swore blind that the Yellow Bellies had waylaid her, forcing her to join in their celebrations and dance on the table. Sławomir Janeczko stood outside the kitchen window and listened to the piercing cries of his wife from the bedroom. Old Romanyszyn’s wife was with her, and together they had hauled the kitchen table into the bedroom and heaved Bogdana onto it. As soon as Romanyszyn’s wife had placed a wad of cloth between Bogdana’s teeth and pushed her skirts up, Sławomir Janeczko had gone outside. Beside him, on the garden bench, sat his first-born son, Leszek, who was picking his nose as he strained to hear the cries coming from the bedroom. His father fixed his gaze on the acacias that bordered the well and the entrance to the cellar. Their

branches had become so full that they almost touched the eaves. Sławomir Janeczko remembered his own grandfather once telling him that when he was a boy the acacias had been so small that they were barely taller than he was. They had blossomed particularly late that year: it had been a cold spring with snow-storms well into April. The farmyard was strewn with white sprigs of acacia; relatives and neighbours who had come with gifts to marvel at the newborn child waded ankle-deep through white blossoms. But the baby kept them waiting. Hour upon hour went by without anything happening, without anyone coming out of the house to say, ‘The child is born,’ or ‘Go home, everyone, and put on your mourning clothes.’ The first of the visitors had appeared early in the morning once word went round that Janeczko’s wife was in labour. And by now it was long past noon. Some of the villagers had sat down in the nearby meadow and were starting to feast on the gifts they had brought: loaves as big as cartwheels and yards of smoked catfish and pikeperch. When they saw Sławomir Janeczko sitting on the bench they waved him over to join them in the meadow. He pretended not to understand and instead paced anxiously up and down the yard. Only Kovalczuk took pity on him: he brought him a glass of schnapps, patted him

on the shoulder and went back to the villagers, who had by now produced an accordion and were singing songs, some Ukrainian, some Polish. They had chosen a spot where they could clearly be seen from the bench. They didn’t want him to forget who had turned up to pay their respects to his second-born son. After all, he owned most of the surrounding fields: get on his good side, and he would let you grow turnips or potatoes in one, maybe two, of his fields without asking anything in return, and that was worth losing a day’s work for. · Wielkie However, no one in Zdzary had really believed that Janeczko’s wife, whose hair was already heavily streaked with grey, would make it through a second birth. In their hearts they had said their goodbyes weeks before, sure that she would die together with the child. There had already been complications with the birth of her first son, Leszek, two years before, and for two whole days and nights Bogdana Janeczko’s wails had echoed around the village, robbing them of their sleep. When, on the evening of the second day, Mihail Kovalczuk, the blacksmith, told his wife Hanka he was going to fetch his gun and go over there, she gave him such an earful that they didn’t even notice when Bogdana’s cries finally fell silent and Leszek was born. In the days before Stanisław’s birth, when Bogdana had realised how often the women of the

The Summer School group, with Sabrina Janesch. From left to right: Elizabeth, Bryn, Sabrina, Bradley, Chenxin, Laura C, Laura W, Peter, Shaun, Jamie, Rebekah, Emma, Barbara

village were dropping by, she threw them and their gifts out, yelling that such behaviour was the surest way to bring the devil and all his flea-ridden henchmen into the house. Taras Romanyszyn, the oldest Ukrainian in the village and also the producer of its strongest plum schnapps, would later proclaim that the birth of Stanisław Janeczko was a miracle and that, as proof of their God-fearing ways, all the villagers should make a pilgrimage to the icon of Saint George’s Cathedral in Lviv, preferably on their knees. · · In response, the priest of Zdzary Wielkie, Marian Strzelnicki, let it be known that if it really was a miracle then it was a Catholic one, and that if Taras Romanyszyn wanted to mark the happy occasion he might more usefully contribute a few jugs of plum schnapps rather than a load of sanctimonious drivel which was in any case utterly misguided. Most of the villagers paid no heed to either Romanyszyn or Strzelnicki because they knew the real reason why the birth had turned out well: it was the lingering magic of the gypsies, who had passed through · · Zdzary Wielkie just months before and been allowed to pitch their tents on Janeczko’s field. Everyone had seen that gypsy lass standing in front of Janeczko’s house, peeing in a high arc. And that was what had spared Bogdana and Stanisław Janeczko from dying in childbed, that and nothing else. Grandfather said being born late at night in a village like that, particularly with the wind from the Galician steppes blowing pollen and dust into people’s faces, was bound to lead to bloody-mindedness. Fate might easily have intended for him to be born in Lviv or Krakow, in Kiev or Warsaw, but his unborn spirit only consented to become flesh when · · it happened upon Zdzary Wielkie: the village on the River Bug, where childhood was all about teaching frogs to talk and hiding in the forked branches of trees in autumn, lying in wait for the king of the foxes and then pelting him

with a shower of walnuts. Tasks that elsewhere demanded sweat and toil seemed to take care of themselves in this place, for no sooner had the seeds been sown than they started growing at such a rate that the villagers found it impossible to store the entire harvest in their barns, and had to take much of it to the markets in the larger towns. The earth: so rich and plump, almost good enough to eat. There were mushrooms in the woods so large that anyone able to harvest them from the loamy soil could carry them home over their shoulders like an umbrella. Then the people: they too were tall, their hair the colour of the wheat that grew in their endless fields. And even though they were rural folk, they had a strong sense of language and culture. This was no wonder: while thousands of people of different backgrounds were scattered across hundreds of streets in the cities without ever having spoken to each · · other, in Zdzary Wielkie Poles and Ukrainians lived together in close proximity and spoke both languages. The only things to fear were the spirits of cold who throughout those six long months of winter would rattle on the doors and windows, demanding to be let in. And wherever those spirits spied a gap in a roof or gate, they told their allies, the wolves and the bears. Grandfather said, all the deliberations must have taken place before his birth – how else could you explain his feelings of familiarity, in his earliest years, with places he had never been to? – that had in the end led to him · · being born in Zdzary Wielkie and nowhere else. Of course it was the soil that he would live on that he chose, rather than the family he was born into. But as soon as he took his first steps towards that field of sunflowers, he knew he had come into the world in exactly the right place. Janesch’s novel Katzenberge is published by Aufbau Verlag (see page 31).

ARTICLE

Criminal Masterminds in German-Language Fiction Sam Hancock seeks out the German crime writers that might rival the current wave of Nordic thrillers – and finds a stash of exhilarating tales that stretch from Finland to Namibia, many of which are already available in English translation. Walking down the street these days is to risk being avalanched by placards championing the latest Stieg Larsson novel, film, spin-off or gaudy branded mug. Other Scandinavian authors are not far behind. Camilla Läckberg has sold an astounding number of books in her native Sweden (more than one for every second person). Publishers – mine included – are bombarded with reams of Scandinavian manuscripts, as agents desperately seek to make their clients the next Stieg, Jo or Camilla. So far, so good: Stieg et al are proving something that all NBG enthusiasts should cherish, that quality crime fiction can – and indeed does – work in translation. But where are the Germanlanguage crime writers in all this? The language whose speakers invented the much-celebrated Krimi? Where are Dürrenmatt’s successors hiding? Not far behind. In fact, I recently saw Jan Costin Wagner’s latest work, Silence, sitting snugly alongside Stieg on the front-of-store tables at a bookshop in Piccadilly. Costin Wagner, though, is just one of the

Sorry, by Zoran Drvenkar

Article

plethora of stunningly original German-language authors seamlessly moving into the English-language market. Croatian-born and Berlin-bred, Zoran Drvenkar is a case in point. Already the author of a wonderful range of books for children and young adult fiction, Drvenkar turned to writing adult crime in 2009 with Sorry, a harrowing thriller. Sorry sees a group of four young and disaffected Berlin adults come up with a breathtakingly simple yet highly lucrative idea to extricate themselves from economic misery: an agency which vicariously apologises for the misdeeds of others. Their notion takes off spectacularly, and soon they are acting on behalf of a rag-bag of corporate, private and frankly bizarre clients. Things are going well – almost too well – when one of their clients seems to turn on them. They arrive at a deserted flat in Kreuzberg to discover a woman’s mutilated corpse nailed to a wall – she has been crucified. The group is terrified: their idea has been taken to the extreme, and somehow they end up apologising vicariously through a series of murders across Berlin and beyond. In a denouement centred around a villa in Wansee, the reader is taken on an emotional journey at the end of which – really – these crucifixions seem justified. But what is it about Drvenkar that really sets him aside from his contemporaries? What is his work’s standout feature? Drvenkar’s British publisher, Patrick JansonSmith of Blue Door, is unequivocal in his answer to this question: ‘Quite simply, Sorry is the best thriller I have read since Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon. It’s a tough, brutal and complex novel, but

utterly, utterly compelling from first page to last. I can think of no British writer – and I admire many of those who write in the crime/thriller genre, not least Mo Hayder, Simon Beckett and Val McDermid – who could deliver such a story in such a fashion. It’s not really a question of there being something “lacking” in British or, indeed, American writers, it’s just that Zoran Drvenkar has written a very special novel that is deserving of the widest possible audience.’ Drvenkar’s ability to pull off the second-person narrative voice (rarely executed successfully by writers of any genre, and a feature which crops up throughout his oeuvre) is testament to the originality Janson-Smith touches upon. This feature lends the novel a unique sense of directness. Indeed, I read much of the book as if in a trance. Drvenkar’s latest novel You is just as magnificently original – and bone-chillingly terrifying – as Sorry. The novel opens in medias res, directly addressing a man known only as ‘The Traveller’, who proceeds to kill a vast amount of people in their cars on a grid-locked Autobahn. Drvenkar never allows the pace to slip from thenceforward, relating the story from the perspectives of a group of young, colourfully-named and, again, maladjusted Berliners: Taja, Stinke, Rute, Mirko, Nessi and Schnappi. The theft of five kilograms of heroin by one of the gang kicks off a fight with a group of ruthless Turkish men, led by Rangar, which can only end in death. Drvenkar’s labyrinthine plot takes us to the heart of the Berlin criminal underworld, leading us on a journey in a stolen Range Rover to an abandoned house in Norway – with a denouement intricately linked to the key characters’ dark

histories. Again, this is all executed with an originality and deftness which leaves the reader feeling like they’ve never before read anything even remotely similar. Drvenkar takes fate, coincidence, filial loyalty and interconnectedness as his central themes, stretching these to extremes and in the process exposing an array of deep, dark secrets within the characters’ psyches. But Drvenkar and Costin Wagner are not alone. What is behind this renaissance in enthusiasm for German crime, I wonder? Janson-Smith puts it down to a liberalisation in attitudes toward publishing commercial fiction in translation in general, asserting, ‘It takes only a few foreign-language successes for us publishers to start jumping on the bandwagon. The extraordinary success internationally of the Scandinavian writers has helped fuel British publishers’ resolve. But even before the “Scandinvasion” there were the one-off successes: for example, Perfume by Patrick Susskind, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, etc. I think we, the British reading public, have finally woken up to the fact that there are literary (and not so literary) treasures to be found from all around the world. Thank goodness!’ One such recent gem is Bernhard Jaumann’s latest novel, German Crime Prize-winning The Hour of the Jackal. Set in modern-day Namibia, Jaumann’s novel follows Clemencia, a black police chief, in her quest to discover the culprit of a series of murders that follows the brutal killing of a gardener in Windhoek, which in turn thrusts the reader back to events just prior to the southern African nation’s successful campaign for independence in 1990.

Jaumann’s prose is shot through with an unusual ability to ‘conjure up the heat and aridity’ and he deploys this with panache throughout The Hour of the Jackal.

The Hour of the Jackal,

by Bernhard Jaumann

Bernhard Jaumann

Clemencia’s journey takes her across most of the region and back to a forgotten murder almost twenty years previously, when white SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization – the Namibian liberation movement) lawyer Anton Lubowski was gunned down by a circle of apartheid fanatics, which later disintegrated. The novel paints a carefully crafted and visceral description of independent Namibia – a country slowly shaking off the shackles of the apartheid mentality, whose population, though disenchanted with the ideals of twenty years earlier, muddle on with their everyday lives in the face of adversity. Jaumann captures this ambivalent relationship beautifully, creating multifaceted and humane characters, with a sumptuously described backdrop. In the words of his translator, John Brownjohn,

The novel’s structure and title (a ‘Fata Morgana’ is a form of superior mirage which distorts objects in focus, in some instances rendering them completely unrecognisable) mirror the experiences of the two fathers, both of whom can but wish that their experiences were optical illusions. This intimate depiction of the personal is matched by the panoramic view the novel offers of the prevalent cultural landscape in the first half of the last decade. But Lehr is not afraid to inject a frisson of humour, the presence of melodramatic TV reporters being a case in point.

Translator John Brownjohn

This willingness to tackle broadbrush themes is evinced in a similar, but far more lyrical, novel which tackles ‘crimes’ of a very different nature: Thomas Lehr’s Fata Morgana. Focusing on two sets of father and daughter and criss-crossing between New York and Baghdad, Lehr’s novel gives us a coalface perspective on two events that have helped shape modern history: New York in 2001 and Baghdad in 2004. On the one hand we have Martin, a divorced professor of German (of dual USGerman origin) and his daughter Sabrina, who dies tragically in the World Trade Center attacks. In Iraq, meanwhile, we follow the life of Tarik, a Paris-educated Iraqi, whose daughter Muna dies in the war in 2004. Lehr acquaints us intimately with their respective psyches, showing us the profound effects of the two macrocosmic events.

swapping perspective between the two men, in a style Lehr has claimed he derived from Homer’s Iliad. This is strengthened by the joint cultural roots shared by Tarik and Martin, and indeed the pivotal experiences both men must endure, and illustrates something also evident in both Drvenkar and Jaumann’s writing: a willingness to be different, to approach macrocosmic themes in an idiosyncratic manner and, above all, a startling originality. That’s why British publishers are starting to sit up and take note. There are far more shining lights of contemporary German crime fiction than can fit into this article, but two other writers worthy of mention are Ferdinand von Schirach (published by Chatto & Windus) and the aforementioned Jan Costin Wagner, whose three previous novels (Silence, Ice Moon and Winter of the Lions) are published by Harvill Secker. The last of these is the third outing of Kimmo Jonetaa, Wagner’s elusive and enigmatic protagonist, a man haunted by flashbacks of his dead wife and whose idiosyncratic methods often prove the only way of solving complex crimes. Munich-based defence lawyer von Schirach, meanwhile, has been delighting readers worldwide with Crime, a set of short stories based around strange cases taken on by his chambers. Each of the stories boasts a noirish and dry narrative voice, yet one laced with humanity – and his legions of readers are eagerly awaiting the publication of his first novel this autumn, Der Fall Collini.

With barely punctuated sentences, Lehr’s novel offers the reader a series of stream-of-consciousness passages which bring us to the centre of the respective protagonists’ psyches, in prose often reminiscent of the poems of e. e. cummings or Alfred Döblin’s undervalued classic Berlin Alexanderplatz. Its intertextuality and bombardment of the reader with cultural experiences is reminiscent of Biberkopf’s experience in Döblin’s novel. But beneath this superficial lack of form the novel has a strong underlying structure: rigidly

September Fata Morgana,

by Thomas Lehr

In the last analysis, therefore, there is no ‘roter Faden’ which ties together this crop of fantastic crime fiction, bar, that is, the originality and scope of each of the respective novels. What has changed is British publishers’ stance towards these stories and their willingness to embrace their quirks – something we should welcome with open arms. n

S orry by Zoran Drvenkar,

translated by Shaun Whiteside, will be published in the US in September 2011 by Knopf and in the UK on 1 March 2012 by Blue Door. You will follow in 2013. n

T he Hour of the Jackal by

Bernard Jaumann, translated by John Brownjohn, was published on 1 August 2011 by John Beaufoy Publishing. n

C rime (March 2011) and Guilt

(January 2012) by Ferdinand von Schirach, translated by Carol Brown Janeway, are published by Chatto & Windus. n

I ce Moon (tr. John Brownjohn), Silence and The Winter of the Lions (tr. Anthea Bell) by Jan

Costin Wagner are published by Harvill Secker. Sam Hancock studied English and German at the University of Warwick, and is now a digital editor at HarperCollins, working across the HarperFiction, Blue Door and Voyager imprints. Crime, by Ferdinand Von Schirach

ARTICLE

Cay Rademacher

Der Trümmermörder (The Rubble Murders)

DuMont Buchverlag, October 2011, 334 pp. ISBN: 978 3 8321 6154 5

The truth is out there A compelling read, and as much a historical novel as a crime novel, The Rubble Murders recreates life in post-war Hamburg under the British occupation. Rademacher engages all of the reader’s senses with writing that is both visual and persuasive. The characters are complex and distinct, while rich concrete details bring the text to life. The year is 1947 and Hamburg is in ruins. The corpse of a naked young woman is found in the rubble. Police Inspector Stave is assigned to the case. Maschke from the vice squad and Lt MacDonald from the British occupation force join his team. No one reports the missing woman; nobody has seen or heard anything. Then three more bodies are found: two women, an older man and a girl, all of them naked, all of them strangled. There are many twists and turns, plenty of false leads and gripping subplots.

The reader sees Hamburg through Stave’s eyes and learns about his personal life. Stave’s wife has burnt to death in the Operation Gomorrah bombing of 1943. He wakes up searching for her body next to him, until he remembers that she’s dead. And Stave’s son is missing, having volunteered for the Wehrmacht as an idealistic seventeen-year-old.

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Cay Rademacher was born in 1965 and studied Anglo-American history, ancient history, and philosophy in Cologne and Washington. He has been an editor at Geo since 1999, where he participated in establishing the history magazine Geo-Epoche. He served as the magazine’s managing editor until 2006. Rademacher’s most recent books are Drei Tage im September and Die letzte Fahrt der Athenia 1939

(2009). Cay Rademacher lives with his wife and three children in Hamburg. Previous works Mord im Tal der Könige (‘Murder

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

in the Valley of the Kings’, 2001); In Nomine Mortis (2007); Drei Tage im September (‘Three Days in September’, 2009)

CRIME AND THRILLER

The case seems impossible to solve. All appeals to the population, plastering Hamburg with the victims’ photographs, yield no results. During a visit to a Jewish orphanage Stave notices a little girl’s reaction to Maschke. Anouk is one of the few survivors of the Oradour-sur-Glance massacre that took place in Normandy on June 10, 1944. Stave discovers that Maschke’s real name is Herthge. As a member of the Waffen-SS, Herthge participated in the atrocities that annihilated almost the entire village. At the end of the war Herthge took on the identity of a neighbour missing in the war to cover his tracks. Stave puts the pieces of the puzzle together and identifies Maschke/Herthge as the serial killer. The victims were a Jewish family waiting for passage to Palestine. They had recognized Herthge from the massacre, and Herthge had to kill them to keep his cover. The story is gripping, the language forceful, the setting absorbing. Based on a real case, but one which was never solved, Rademacher tells a unique story from a unique perspective – people who have lost the war, their homes, their city and their feeling of self-worth. A spine-tingling portrayal of how the defeated interact with their victors.

Translation rights available from: DuMont Buchverlag GmbH & Co. KG Amsterdamer Str. 192, 50735 Köln, Germany Tel: +49 221 224 1942 Email: habermas@dumont-buchverlag.de Contact: Judith Habermas www.dumont-buchverlag.de

DuMont Buchverlag was founded in 1956. Stressing the link between literature and art, the firm focuses both on these subjects and also, more recently, on general non-fiction. Its authors include John von Düffel, Michel Houellebecq, Helmut Krausser, Martin Kluger, Judith Kuckart, Thomas Kling, Annette Mingels, Haruki Murakami, Charlotte Roche, Edward St. Aubyn, Tilman Rammstedt and Dirk Wittenborn. The art list covers high quality illustrated books dealing with the periods from the Renaissance up until today, monographs on single artists, such as Botticelli, Velazquez, Kokoschka, Max Ernst and Neo Rauch, and overviews on (for instance) contemporary Chinese art, as well as design, photography and art theory.

‘Jan Costin Wagner’s new novel is amongst the best of the crime genre. You will not find a more sympathetic murderer, or a more melancholy policeman. The book is a brilliant study on love, grief and death.’ (Spiegel Online)

‘ Elegantly and boldly narrated across genre boundaries, Er is a captivating story’ (XAVER Stadtmagazin) ‘A little jewel for crime-novelconnoisseurs’ (krimi-couch.de) ‘A brilliant exercise in betrayal, honour, illusion, mistrust, lust and shame’ (Stern)

‘This is a small but almost perfect novel about one of the biggest themes of world literature: jealousy and betrayal.’ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)

Linus Reichlin

(He)

‘Jan Costin Wagner writes the best Scandinavian crime novels of the moment.’ (Berliner Morgenpost)

‘Magical. Better than Mankell.’ (The Times)

Jan Costin Wagner

Das Licht in einem dunklen Haus (Light in a Dark House)

Galiani Berlin, February 2011, 288 pp. ISBN: 978 3 86971 036 5

Galiani Berlin, July 2011, 352 pp. ISBN: 978 3 86971 016 7

The camera never lies

Payback time

He satisfyingly combines crime and literary fiction. What drives

The Winter of the Lions, the third in Wagner’s crime series set

the action is not so much the desire to know as the need to cope – or to stop attempting to cope.

in Finland and featuring Detective Kimmo Joentaa, was recently praised by the Financial Times for its ‘spare, stark outlining of motives and events’, and described as ‘snow-noir of the highest order’.

The novel has two narrative strands, which remain separate until its last chapters. The first begins with two middle-aged men, Sean and Angus, receiving the dying wish of old Alasdair in the Stornoway hospital on the Hebridean island of Lewis. His wish is that they go to Germany and tell his daughter “not to do it. The photo. Tell her not to do it, for the love of her father”. What this photo is will not be revealed to the reader until the narrative strands intertwine; nor will the source of Angus’ deadening sense of guilt. All we know is that it is somehow connected to this photo, which is somehow connected to the Lewis men’s annual cull of guga birds on a nearby island. The other strand follows Hannes Jensen, a former policeman who is the protagonist of Reichlin’s two previous novels.

A satisfying page-turner full of suspense.

Linus Reichlin lives in Berlin. His first two Jensen novels Die Sehnsucht der Atome (2008) and Der Assistent der Sterne (2009) remained in the KrimiWelt charts for months. Linus Reichlin was awarded the German Crime Prize in 2009. In 2010 the magazine Bild der Wissenschaft awarded Der Assistent der Sterne the title Science Book of the Year. www.linusreichlin.de Previous works: Die Sehnsucht der Atome (2008); Der Assistent der Sterne (2009)

Although the narrative moves towards moments where truth is revealed and explained, its motive force remains the characters’ attempts to deal with guilt, betrayal and jealousy.

In Light in a Dark House a woman is found in a coma at the roadside on Joentaa’s patch, and dies later in hospital. Who was she, and how exactly does her murder link up with several killings around the small town of Karjasaari? Joentaa is working once again with Westerberg of the Helsinki police and his keen new sidekick Seppo. It all goes back to a gang rape witnessed in 1985 by a halfcomprehending twelve-year-old schoolboy, whose diary entries of the time are interleaved in the novel with the police investigations of 2010. Now the men and youths who took part in the rape are being picked off in turn by a ruthlessly determined killer. Meanwhile the new woman in Kimmo Joentaa’s life, the mysterious prostitute Larissa, has disappeared, keeping in touch only through occasional laconic email messages.

Translation rights available from: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de Contact: Iris Brandt www.kiwi-verlag.de

Translation rights sold to: Spain (Ediciones Pardos Ibérica), Denmark (Forlaget Roskilde) and The Netherlands (Maarten Muntinga).

Translation rights available from: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de Contact: Iris Brandt www.kiwi-verlag.de

Application for assistance with translation costs: Switzerland (see page 48)

For more information on Galiani Berlin and Kiepenheuer & Witsch, see page 8.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Jan Costin Wagner was born in 1972 and now lives as a freelance writer and musician near Frankfurt am Main and in Finland. His novels have been awarded numerous prizes, including the German Crime Fiction Prize and the Marlowe Prize, and have been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. They have been translated into fourteen languages. The novel Das Schweigen was filmed for the cinema in 2010. www.jan-costin-wagner.de Previous works: Im Winter der Löwen (The Winter of the Lions, 2009); Das Schweigen (Silence, 2007); Schattentag (2005); Eismond (Ice Moon, 2003); Nachtfahrt (2002) A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

CRIME AND THRILLER

Simon Urban

Plan D (Plan D)

Schöffling & Co., July 2011, 552 pp. ISBN: 978 3 895 61195 7

A long good-bye A modern-day Raymond Chandler, Urban’s remarkable genre-busting detective novel is set in Berlin in October 2011 – but with a difference. In Plan D, the East German republic still exists. Martin Wegener is a GDR detective investigating the death of a man found hanging from a gas pipeline in the forest. All the initial clues point to the Stasi, less powerful than before the ‘Revitalisation’ in the early 1990s. With important economic consultations between East and West coming up, a West German police officer is called in to assist after the news is leaked to a magazine. The two men start their investigations, more hindered than helped by the Stasi, uncovering a terrorist organisation and a conspiracy to introduce a ‘third way’ in the GDR – the Plan D of the title.

Meanwhile, Wegener yearns for his ex-girlfriend, now embarking on a career in East Berlin, and has imaginary conversations with his former boss, a stubborn non-conformist who disappeared without trace a few years ago. The plot twists and turns beautifully, with more deaths and plenty of tension between the East and West German detectives.

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Simon Urban was born in Hagen, West Germany, in 1975. After studying German literature in Münster and training at the renowned copywriter school Texterschmiede Hamburg, he studied creative writing at Germany’s top address, the Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig. His short stories have earned him numerous prizes. Simon Urban lives in Hamburg and Techau (East Holstein). He currently works as a copywriter for the leading creative agency Jung von Matt. ‘ A novel that sits comfortably alongside Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum in its political and literary intensity.’ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

CRIME AND THRILLER

In one brilliantly written scene, Wegener stumbles around the labyrinthine underground ‘Molotov’ bar, looking for his workmates but growing increasingly confused and emotional. The place is a den of iniquity that serves rhubarb organic lemonade – the flavour that’s always sold out at the shops – with a shot of vodka, and scallops and chestnut puree and bacon and chutney and the best brand of East German wine, and offers darkrooms and boudoirs and bathtubs and willing waitresses, all in the name of a corrupt socialism on its last legs. The whole novel is beautifully and imaginatively written. The protagonist Wegener is an impressively painted character, an aging cynic on the surface who is actually powered by love and idealism. But what makes the book so very special is the exuberantly portrayed vision of East Berlin under a collapsing socialist system – pockets of luxury for visitors and functionaries, surrounded by grime and decay and decorated with laughable political slogans. Urban raises questions about German history and about the integrity of our political systems, combining them with a real page-turner of a plot.

Translation rights sold to: Czech Republic (Odeon/Euromedia) (pre-empt) Translation rights available from: Schöffling & Co. Kaiserstraße 79, D-60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Tel: +49 69 92 07 87 16 Email: kathrin.scheel@schoeffling.de Contact: Kathrin Scheel www.schoeffling.de/content/rightsguide/ ‘PLAN D develops an ironic panorama of society in an outstanding spy thriller.’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) ‘Breathtaking and fast-paced, nimble yet with a sardonic touch.’ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)

Schöffling & Co. has a simple credo: the focus is on the authors. It has gained the reputation of being a ‘publishing house that plays a significant role in the shaping of Germany’s literary future’ (SPIEGEL online). Founded in November 1993, Schöffling & Co. has since emerged as one of Germany’s most innovative independent literary publishing houses with a tightly-woven international network. An atmosphere of mutual confidence and esteem and an unceasing commitment to its authors and their works provide the basis for a fruitful literary relationship. New German voices are recognised and published alongside established and famous names, while authors in translation include Sadie Jones, Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Egan, Peter Behrens, Nir Baram or Miljenko Jergovic.

Heinrich Steinfest

Die Haischwimmerin (Swimming with Sharks)

Piper Verlag, September 2011, 351 pp. ISBN: 978 3 492 05407 2

Dan Toller introduces readers to the absurd and wonderful world of Austrian crime writer Heinrich Steinfest. His latest novel, Die Haischwimmerin (‘Swimming with Sharks’), is out now. Swimming with Sharks begins with a romance between two young Austrian students in Rome; but it

soon emerges that things are not quite what they seem in the surreal world of Steinfest. Ivo suffers from selective disability: a blindness which occurs in the afternoon. He uses these periods of sensual darkness in his pursuit of Lilli, and when the condition suddenly evaporates it almost ends the relationship. Despite Lilli’s no-nonsense Austrian sensibilities, it’s clear that she’s not an average student either. Her lap-of-the-gods approach to birth control soon sees the couple pregnant and heading for a rural backwater in Germany’s Deep South, where Lilli has conveniently inherited a house from a longlost aunt. A convoluted series of events leaves Ivo confronting a teenage suicide attempt, while Lilli loses the baby in an accident. Lilli returns to her studies in Vienna and leaves Ivo to stay where fate has landed him, eventually pursuing a vocation to become a tree surgeon. Years later, Ivo’s affinity with all things arboreal leads him into a bizarre adventure in deepest Siberia, searching for a mythical Larch with mysterious medicinal properties. A mad professor, a young guide who dresses like an obscure Belgian cartoon character, a run-in with the local mob, and a chase through the Siberian forests leave the reader in no doubt that any semblance of realism was left in Rome. Further confirmation arrives in the corpulent form of Kallimachos, a mountain of flesh that hosts an indestructible Greek detective – regarded as a living god by a local tribe.

Heinrich Steinfest was born in 1961. Albury, Australia; Vienna, Austria and Stuttgart, Germany – these are the stations in the life of this illustrious and celebrated cult author, whose books have sold more than 400,000 copies. He has received the German Crime Fiction Award several times and was awarded the Heimito von Doderer Prize. His book Ein dickes Fell (‘Thick-skinned’) was longlisted for the German Book Award. Translation rights available from: Piper Verlag GmbH Georgenstraße 4, 80799 München, Germany Tel: +49 89 381 801 26 Email: sven.diedrich@piper.de Contact: Sven Diedrich www.piper.de

Two thirds of the way through the novel the murder mystery that tenuously puts it in the crime fiction category finally emerges. Ivo is led to Toad’s Bread, a secret underground city built by the Soviets in preparation for nuclear holocaust. The city has been taken over by a motley collection of criminals; a kind of cult held together by the narcotic properties of their staple food – the toadstool. Lilli reappears, now a fully-grown detective. She is there to investigate a spate of killings linked to the mysterious Larch trees. Our heroes soon locate not only these trees – which turn out to be the source of a health-giving substance that has triggered the whole misadventure – but also the killer. The ease with which Lilli and Ivo unravel the book’s somewhat shaky central mystery makes it clear that the author is shamelessly hijacking the conventions of the formulaic crime novel for his own ulterior motives. Steinfest revels in the overblown camp of his comic book influences; the real star of the show is Lilli, a souped-up Hepburn whose superhero power is her pure Austrian unflappability, somehow reinforced by the gravity of her massively damaged nose. The outlandish locations and scenarios are pure James Bond, and cold war spy thriller is repeatedly disrobed in its absurdity. Clever self-deprecation and wry, tongue-in-cheek commentary from the characters are employed to keep the reader onside. His books are often described as crime with a philosophical twist, and while they do pose existential questions they are more Terry Pratchett than Jostein Gaarder. At times these extended detours into the author’s skewed reality can seem self-indulgent, but as you get used to his rhythm, you realise that these amiable asides anchor his otherwise incredible tales in something more tangible. The balance is delicate, and at times awkward, but Steinfest’s refusal to take his storytelling too seriously, his moments of startling insight and the rich subtlety of his prose have earned him a dedicated, almost cult, following and a slew of literary prizes. ‘ Heinrich Steinfest is a master of whimsical images and excursions into day-to-day philosophy.’ (Der Spiegel)

Die Feine Nase der Lilli Steinbeck

(Lilli Steinbeck’s Remarkable Nose, 2009) In the first of the two-book series, a kidnapping draws Steinfest’s larger-than-life Austrian detective into a bizarre game played by shadowy powerbrokers. Outlandish scenarios, from attacks by Batman lookalikes in Athens, through mortar fire in Yemen, to a showdown with crack troops on a remote island, force the reader to surrender themselves to the whims of this master storyteller.

‘A little miracle’ (Le Monde )

Mariaschwarz (Mariaschwarz, 2010)

The delicate symbiosis between a barman and his regulars is a beautiful thing, and its disruption must surely spell trouble. When the only guest at a hotel in an Austrian backwater is rescued from drowning by his barman, it destroys this careful equilibrium. A madcap tale of kidnapping, sea monsters, and an obscene set of novelty figures with unspecified magical powers ensues. Dark forces with mysterious aims are never quite unmasked, leaving the reader with the feeling that they’ve been led on another of Steinfest’s darkly comic and convoluted, yet strangely enlightening, wild goose chases.

CRIME AND THRILLER

Initiatives in Translation Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize

the previous year. Entries may include novels, novellas, short stories, plays, poetry, biographies, essays, and correspondence. A five-member jury selects the winning translation. The prize winner receives the award at a ceremony in Chicago hosted by the German Consul General of Chicago and the Goethe-Institut Chicago. Former recipients include Peter Constantine, Susan Bernofsky, Michael Henry Heim, Breon Mitchell, Anthea Bell, Krishna Winston, Michael Hofmann, and John E. Woods. This year, Jean M. Snook received the prize for her translation of Gert Jonke’s Der ferne Klang (‘The Distant Sound’, Dalkey Archive Press).

This annual prize, established in Chicago in 1996, honours an exceptional literary translation of a German work published in the United States in English. The prize is funded by the German government and the winner receives $10,000. The Wolffs were outstanding and innovative publishers in Germany in the 1920s. After emigrating to New York in 1941 they founded Pantheon Books, a publishing house devoted mainly to German and European literature in translation. In 1961 the couple joined Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and became co-publishers with their own imprint, Helen and Kurt Wolff Books. Upon her husband’s death in 1963, Helen Wolff continued working with authors on the Wolff list, expanding it to include Karl Jaspers, Walter Benjamin, Uwe Johnson, Günter Grass, Max Frisch and many others. Her work earned her an Inter Nationes Award, the Goethe Medal, and honorary doctorates from three universities. In 1994 she received the Friedrich Gundolf Prize from the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (the German Academy for Language and Literature) for her promotion of German culture in the USA, and for making German literature accessible to American readers.

For further information, contact Werner Ott: ott@chicago.goethe.org

The Grace and Frederick Gutekunst Prize for Young Translators

By the end of January, publishers submit six copies of a translation published and distributed during

Translator Jean M. Snook

In late 2010, the Goethe-Institut New York received a generous gift made in the memory of Frederick Gutekunst, professor of German for more than thirty years at Hunter College in New York, and his wife Grace. The Gutekunst Prize for Young Translators has now been established with the aim of identifying outstanding young translators and assisting them in establishing contact with the US translation and publishing communities. The annual Gutekunst competition is open to all US-based college students and translators who will be under the age of thirty-five at the time of the judges’ decision, and have not published a book-length translation. Translations of an approximately fifteen-page excerpt from a German-language literary work chosen by the Goethe-Institut New York are submitted to a jury of three experts in German literature and translation. The winner receives an invitation to the Helen and Kurt Wolff Symposium, held

News and informaTion

The successful publication of German-language books in English translation depends in no small part upon the diligence and expertise of their literary translators. And as New Books in German celebrates its thirtieth issue, we review three exciting US- and UK-based initiatives that offer support of tremendous value not only to established translators but also to those aspiring to the profession.

Translator Kári Driscoll

annually in June at the GoetheInstitut Chicago. The $2,500 prize is awarded during the symposium where the winning translation is formally presented before being published on the website of the Goethe-Institut and, in agreement with the German publisher of the work, used by the German Book Office in negotiations with US publishers. The winner of the first Gutekunst Prize, Kári Driscoll, is now under contract to translate Martin Mosebach’s Was davor geschah (Hanser Verlag, 2010), a successful start to their promotion of the next generation of German translators.

is on interaction and exchange: a translation competition is held to select the six participants, and the successful candidates attend a translation workshop with leading translator Shaun Whiteside. A dedicated web forum allows the participants to share their queries and draft translations with each other before and after the workshop, pooling useful resources for translation and offering advice and tips on their draft translations. Each translator works particularly closely with one other, who advises on the final translation. Samples of around 2,500 words are downloadable from the NBG website and the full 4,000-word samples can be requested directly from NBG. The Autumn 2011 Emerging Translators Programme has prepared translations of the following novels, all downloadable from the NBG website: Kathrin Gerlof, Lokale Erschütterung

(translated by Charlotte Smith) Peter Henisch,

For further information, contact Edna McCown: mccown@newyork.goethe.org

Großes Finale für Novak

(translated by Lara Elder) Angelika Klüssendorf, Das Mädchen

(translated by Deborah Langton) Jo Lendle, Alles Land (translated by Imogen Taylor)

New Books in German

Emerging Translators Programme Launched in 2011, the New Books in German Emerging Translators Programme runs twice a year. NBG commissions a group of up-and-coming translators to produce sample translations from the best new books in German. The programme aims to promote the careers of emerging translators, providing experience, advice and contacts, as well as to produce top-class sample translations that will increase the chances of international rights sales. The focus

Christoph Poschenrieder, Der Spiegelkasten

(translated by Donna Ochs) Cay Rademacher, Der Trummermörder

(translated by Sheridan Marshall) For further information, contact Charlotte Ryland: nbg@london.goethe.org Compiled by Edna McCown (Goethe Institut New York), Christiane Tacke (Goethe Institut Chicago), Brittany Hazelwood (GBO-New York) and Charlotte Ryland

Stefan Tobler, founder of innovative new publisher And Other Stories, talks to NBG

In the intervening years it’s been great to see that things are changing. There’s an increasing openness to international literature in the Anglophone world, thanks in no small part to translators. So after a long gestation period involving public meetings and reading groups, spreadsheets and business plans, our first books are out. A really crucial step came in the autumn of 2010, when we heard that Arts Council England was awarding us National Lottery funding to start up. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s funding of a Portuguese reading group has also allowed us to put up web pages with generous sample translations and information on a number of books, opening up our reading group discussions to those who wish to read the extracts in English. Such funding, though, is not enough even to cover basic costs. From the start we have appealed for subscribers to support us and help us bring out these books. It’s been heart-warming to see that before our first books had been seen or read, well over 100 people had already subscribed. As a little sign of our gratitude, we give all our subscribers specially numbered copies and a mention in the next books that we print.

The Programme Initially, the aim was to run the publisher as a collective. In order for the publisher to have a recognisable profile, the workable

practice seems to be that a few core people run the project, with a lot of support from others who contribute in all sorts of different ways. And Other Stories is a notfor-profit, which means that any profits (when – if! – they come) will go back into the company, in particular so that we can continue to pay translators properly. That aim is helped a great deal by support from translation grants, and the Goethe-Institut generously supported the translation of our German title, Clemens Meyer’s All the Lights.

The Books All the Lights and Juan Pablo Villalobos’ novel Down the Rabbit Hole were our first books

to appear, launched with the authors reading at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August. A novel by our ‘home’ author Deborah Levy, Swimming Home, comes out in October. And Other Stories prefers to find its books through recommendations from readers and translators than from agents. There are a lot of people who know so much about literature from different parts of the world. So we’re open to suggestions that fit in with the contemporary literary fiction that we publish. We also run reading groups, where a bunch of readers can read one of a few select, as yet untranslated titles. Our recent Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, French and German reading groups have all brought incredible books to light. After our first Spanish reading group, Down the Rabbit Hole was suggested by the translator Rosalind Harvey, while an Argentine student in the London group said that the

And Other Stories was born of frustration, really. Along with several other translators and publishing people, I felt that many amazing books weren’t being published in the UK because they were perceived as too risky for larger houses with significant overheads. About three years ago I started mooting the idea of a publisher with grassroots support to friends and colleagues.

publisher Entropia and their novel Open Door by Iosi Havilio (our November title) were attracting a lot of attention in Argentina. A number of people suggested the German author Clemens Meyer, and I was so glad that they did. He has done that rare thing: taken tough, raw experience and turned it into breathtaking, world-class literature.

Stefan Tobler

of people, is a pure delight, and is very moving about marriage and family relationships. It will come out next year, currently under the working title ‘The Art of Walking’.

The Translators As Sophie Lewis, our editor, and I are both literary translators, we’re in the lucky position of knowing many great translators. We look for the translator who is best able to translate the book and is passionate about it. In Clemens Meyer’s case that was clearly Katy Derbyshire.

There are plenty of interesting younger writers that we aim to look at, as well as some giants of recent German literature that are due a revival in the UK: Wolfgang Hilbig and Hubert Fichte, for example, or Peter Handke. Christoph Simon’s novel, Spaziergänger Zbinden (Bilger),

The Future

was reviewed in the Spring 2011 issue of New Books in German, and was also part of NBG’s first Emerging Translators Programme (see page 22).

The Swiss writer Christoph Simon’s novel of an eccentric old man who cannot shut up or stop walking around his city, meeting all kinds

All the Lights By Clemens Meyer Translated by Katy Derbyshire A man bets all he has on a horserace to pay for an expensive operation for his dog. A young refugee wants to box her way straight off the boat to the top of the sport. Old friends talk all night after meeting up by chance. She imagines a future together. Stories about people who have lost out in life and in love, and about their hopes for one really big win, the chance to make something of their lives. In silent apartments, desolate warehouses, prisons and by the river, Meyer strikes the tone of our harsh times, and finds the grace notes, the bright lights shining in the dark. ‘When I was reading Clemens’s first book, Als wir träumten, I was so impressed that it made me miss my stop on the tram. And since then I’ve been dying to translate him, because he writes really well about things that matter.’ – Katy Derbyshire, translator of All the Lights

The Back Story

Katy Derbyshire

ARTICLES and interviews

Recently Published and Forthcoming Titles in English The Winter of the Lions

The Appointment

Jan Costin Wagner

Herta Müller

Translated by Anthea Bell Harvill Secker

Translated by Philip Boehm Portobello Books

‘Melancholy detective Kimmo Joentaa is on the hunt for a deranged killer following the murder of two guests on Finland’s most famous talk show. Written with Wagner’s trademark psychological insight, The Winter of the Lions is a masterful work of Scandinavian crime fiction.’ – Briony Everroad, Harvill Secker

‘I’ve been summoned, Thursday, ten sharp.’ So begins one day in the life of a young clothing-factory worker during Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime. She has been questioned before, but this time she knows it will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the linings of men’s suits bound for Italy. ‘Marry me’, the notes say, with her name and address. Anything to get out of the country. As she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts stray to her friend Lilli, shot while trying to flee to Hungary; to her grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them; to Major Albu, her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet kiss on her fingers; and to Paul, her lover and the one person she can trust. In her distraction, she misses her stop and finds herself on an unfamiliar street. And what she discovers there suddenly puts her fear of the appointment into chilling perspective.

‘Snow-noir of the highest order’ – The Financial Times

Guilt Ferdinand von Schirach Translated by Carol Brown Janeway Chatto & Windus A new, haunting collection of stories based on real cases, and told from a defence lawyer’s perspective. In ‘Funfair’, a young defence attorney, still wet behind the ears and breaking in a new suit and attaché case, wins his first big case only to lose his innocence in the process. The popular crowd at an all-boys’ boarding school wages a vicious attack against an outsider schoolmate, but end up accidentally killing the boy’s beloved teacher in ‘The Illuminati’. Attempting to hurdle through a midlife crisis, a housewife staves off depression with the rush she derives from the act of stealing in ‘Desire’. And in ‘Snow’, an old man whose home is used as a way station for a heroin ring agrees to protect the identity of the lead drug runner, who nonetheless receives his come-uppance. Fourteen stories calling into question the nature of guilt and the toll it takes − or fails to take − on ordinary people, and infused with Ferdinand von Schirach’s hallmark cool solemnity and sympathy, Guilt is a stunning follow-up to his heralded debut.

The Accidental Captives

Bone-spare and intense, The Appointment is a pitiless rendering of the terrors of a crushing regime. ‘A brooding, fog-shrouded allegory of life under the long oppression of the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.’ − New York Times

Three Lives Oliver Matuschek Translated by Allan Blunden Pushkin Press ‘Drawing on a wealth of new sources, this definitive biography sheds light on the troubled life of the world-famous Austrian author. Including the sort of personal detail conspicuously absent from Zweig’s memoir, Three Lives gives us a glimpse into the private world of a master of psychological insight.’ – Melissa Ulfane, Pushkin Press

Carolyn Gossage Translated by Britta Grell and Stephan Lahrem I.B. Tauris ‘This is the fascinating and moving true story of seven Canadian women who found themselves stranded in Hitler’s Berlin in 1941. Their ship had been sunk by a Nazi raider in the Atlantic. As ‘enemy aliens’ the women were not immediately repatriated, as their US comrades had been, and instead began a lengthy journey across Germany, via Leibenau internment camp. However, due to a bureaucratic mix up, this small group of women found themselves alone in Berlin, stranded in the heart of Hitler’s Germany. These ‘accidental captives’ had no way home: abandoned, destitute and without permanent lodgings, the story of these seven strangers and their survival is one of the most remarkable stories of life behind enemy lines during World War II. Drawing on first-hand accounts and interviews, Carolyn Gossage pieces together the extraordinary story of the year they spent together in wartime Germany.’ – Joanna Godfrey, I.B.Tauris

News and information

Maybe This Time Alois Hotschnig Translated by Tess Lewis Peirene Press ‘I love Kafka and here we have a Kafkaesque sense of alienation – not to mention narrative experiments galore! Outwardly normal events slip into drama before they tip into horror. These oblique tales exert a fascinating hold over the reader.’ – Meike Ziervogel, Peirene Press

The Method

Alissa Walser

Juli Zeh

Translated by Jamie Bulloch MacLehose Press

Translated by Sally-Ann Spencer Harvill Secker

Reviewed by NBG on its publication in Germany, Mesmerized is a story of power and passion in late 18th century Vienna.

‘The Method is set in a dystopian state where individual health is considered the jurisdiction of the government. When Mia Holl’s brother commits suicide after being falsely accused of a terrible crime, her faith in ‘The Method’, the dictatorship’s means of watching over its citizens, is shaken. She soon finds herself classed as a dangerous subject and must argue her own case as well as her brother’s. The Method is a beautifully crafted novel, written with Juli Zeh’s trademark wit and intelligence.

On a cold January day, flamboyant practitioner Mesmer is summoned to the house of the Court Secretary and entreated to restore the eyesight of his daughter, a piano genius. In his colourful, chaotic private hospital, amongst other patients with varying hysterical disorders, he gradually wins her trust and submits her to a series of controversial treatments based on animal magnetism, the “laying on of hands”. Soon he is able to restore her sense of darkness and light, and his methods appear to be successful. Besieged by new patients, he is certain that fame and imperial recognition lie ahead, but as Maria’s eyesight returns, her musical talent appears to diminish and Mesmer is branded a charlatan. ‘Mesmerized is a lyrical novel full of atmosphere and sensuality in which Walser has brought Mesmer, a controversial figure who trod the narrow path between science and magic, vividly to life.’ – Katharina Bielenberg, MacLehose Press. ‘Alissa Walser has a fine sense of the subtle tensions and gulfs between the sexes’ – Berliner Zeitung

Mesmerized

Besides being a compelling read, The Method poses some crucial questions in our changing world: to what extent can the state curtail the rights of the individual? To what extent does the individual have a right to resist? This is a very important novel.’ – Geoff Mulligan, Harvill Secker

My Mother’s Lover Urs Widmer

We Are Doing Fine

Translated by Donal McLaughlin Seagull Books

Arno Geiger

‘It’s Switzerland in the 1920s when the two lovers first meet. She is young, beautiful, and rich. In contrast, he can barely support himself and is interested only in music. By the end of their lives, he is a famous conductor and the richest man in the country, but she is penniless. And most important of all, no one knows of her love for him; it is a secret he took to his grave. Here begins Urs Widmer’s novel My Mother’s Lover.

Translated by Maria Poglitsch Bauer Ariadne Press ‘We read to explore the unknown, but also to recognize ourselves in others. Arno Geiger’s We Are Doing Fine offers both pleasures. This fourth novel (which won the very first German Book Prize in 2005) from the Austrian author tracks events in the lives of three generations of a Viennese family as viewed through the eyes of Philipp, who has just inherited his late grandmother’s villa. While cleaning – no, gutting – the house and ridding it of most reminders of its former occupants, the grandson is forced to think about his family more than is to his liking… In a brilliantly sparse and precise language, Geiger mixes crucial incidents of Austrian history with both everyday and tragic occurrences in the family’s private lives.’– Jorun Johns, Ariadne Press

Lyric Novella Annemarie Schwarzenbach Translated by Lucy Renner Jones Seagull Books ‘Annemarie Schwarzenbach – journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, and traveler – has become a European cult figure for bohemian free spirits since the rediscovery of her works in the late 1980s. Lyric Novella is her story of a young man’s obsession with a Berlin variété actress. Despite having his future career mapped out for him in the diplomatic service, the young man begins to question all his family values under Sibylle’s spell. Schwarzenbach’s clear, psychologically acute prose makes this novella an evocative narrative, with many intriguing parallels to her own life. In fact, she admitted after publication that her hero was in fact a young woman, not a man, leaving little doubt that Lyric Novella is a literary tale of lesbian love during socially and politically turbulent times.’ – Naveen Kishore, Seagull Books

Based on a real-life affair, My Mother’s Lover is the story of a lifelong and unspoken love for a man – recorded by the woman’s son, who begins this novel on the day his mother’s lover dies. Set against the backdrop of the Depression and World War II, it is a story of sacrifice and betrayal, passionate devotion, and inevitable suffering. Yet in Widmer’s hands, it is always entertaining and surprisingly comic – a unique kind of fairy tale.’ – Naveen Kishore, Seagull Books

The Tongue Set Free Elias Canetti Translated by Joachim Neugroschel Granta Books ‘I’m absolutely delighted to be publishing these stunning new editions of Elias Canetti’s three-part autobiography. Canetti was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, and a larger-thanlife figure on the literary scene. He was a Nobel Prize winner, a contemporary of Karl Kraus and Isaac Babel, and the lover of Iris Murdoch. We hope that these new editions will bring his astonishing life and extraordinary writing to a whole new generation of readers.’ – Bella Lacey, Granta Books ‘A tremendous story of determination and triumph ... Canetti led his life without compromise, fear, or guilt, and if one now encounters his early years for the first time the experience is nearly like discovering, without warning, a complex and satisfying work of art.’ – New Yorker The second and third volumes of Canetti’s autobiography, The Torch in My Ear and The Play of the Eyes, are also published by Granta.

News and information

NBG celebrates three novels published this year in German that have already found a home in English: Daniela Krien’s debut novel is forthcoming with MacLehose Press, Inka Parei’s new book will be published by Seagull Books, and Eugen Ruge’s debut will be published in the US by Graywolf Press.

Daniela Krien

Inka Parei

Eugen Ruge

Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen

Die Kältezentrale

In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts

(Someday we will tell each other everything)

(The Cold Room)

Schöffling & Co., August 2011, 216 pp. ISBN: 978 3 895 61107 0

Graf Verlag/ Ullstein Buchverlage, September 2011 240 pp. ISBN: 978 3 862 20019 1

(In Times of Fading Light)

Rowohlt Verlag , September 2011 432 pp. ISBN: 978 3 498 05786 2

Summer loving

Nuclear fallout

A life lived for the working class

Krien’s beguiling love story is racy yet controlled. An authentic voice, she describes perfectly the shame, confusion and growing maturity of sixteen-year-old Maria.

East Berlin provides the bleak landscape for this intriguing novel. The anonymous narrator’s exwife is in hospital with cancer, and the doctors can only treat her if the cause can be identified. Was it radiation? The narrator can help but only by going back to what happened over the course of a few days at his former workplace – traumatic events which have had a defining influence on his life and are likely to be the reason why he feels so isolated.

Ruge’s assured debut novel covers four generations of an East German family and centres around the ninetieth birthday party of a life-long Party hardliner and functionary – on 1 October 1989. Everyone knows what is going on, but no one is allowed to mention ‘certain events’.

Daniela Krien grew up in a small village in Saxony. She studied culture and media and then founded a documentary film production company with her husband. Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen is her first novel. Translation rights sold to: UK (World English/Maclehose Press), Italy (Rizzoli), France (Flammarion), Spain (Salamandra), Brasil (Record), Netherlands (Ambo Anthos), Israel (Achuzat Bayit), Poland (Sonia Draga) Translation rights available from: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH pia.goetz@ullstein-buchverlage.de

News and information

Inka Parei was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1967, and now lives in Berlin. Her first novel Die Schattenboxerin has been translated into thirteen languages. Parei has been awarded several prizes, including the Hans Erich Nossack Prize and the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Previous works: Was Dunkelheit war (‘What Darkness was’, 2005); Die Schattenboxerin (The Shadowboxing Woman, 1999) Translation rights available from: Schöffling & Co. Email: kathrin.scheel@schoeffling.de

The twists and turns of the plot are skilfully interwoven, the dialogue crisp, and the constant switching between generations and characters is handled with a sure touch. The Fading Light is a moving family saga with deft touches of humour, of special interest for its panorama of East German life and ideas through the late twentieth century.

Themes of confusion and identity, change and conformity jostle with one another to reflect with skill the narrator’s inner turmoil.

Moving in with her boyfriend’s family, Maria helps out and becomes accepted but has no clear sense of direction. When forty-year-old Thorsten Henner appears – hard-drinking and rugged, from an old family scarred by history – she initially sees him as a menace. But she soon finds herself making excuses to spend more and more time with him. Henner’s love is manifested by both animal violence and unexpected sensitivity, and the two create a plausible domesticity. Distinctive style, universal theme.

Eugen Ruge was born in the Urals and studied mathematics in Berlin. Before leaving the GDR for the West in 1988 he was a writer, contributing to documentaries made at the state-owned DEFA Studios. Since 1989 he has been writing and translating for theatres and broadcasters, and periodically teaches at the Berlin University of the Arts. Translation rights sold to: World English (Graywolf Press), Spain (Anagrama), Italy (Mondadori), France (Éditions), First (F), The Netherlands (De Geus), Greece (FI) Translation rights available from: Rowohlt Verlag GmbH Email: carolin.mungard@rowohlt.de

Identity is slippery at the best of times. We think we know who we are, but are often swayed unawares by internal and external forces. And even when aware, we easily convince ourselves that we chose to be influenced, that we are in control. The Austrian writer Alois Hotschnig has explored the treacherous ground between deception and self-deception in several novels and one play. His haunting collection of short stories, Maybe This Time, just published in English translation by Peirene Press, probes even more deeply the intricacies of delusion. He anatomizes the distortions and contortions of the psyche struggling to assert itself for good or ill. And when he turns his surgical gaze on the outer world, he reveals the mystery inherent in mundane situations, evident to those willing to look closely enough. The intense psychological dramas in his stories are all the more chilling for the narrators’ seeming normality and the calm, matter-offact tone in which they relate odd or disturbing situations. The placid surfaces of Hotschnig’s stories are ruffled only by an occasional ripple and the currents that seethe beneath his crystalline prose are no less turbulent for only gradually becoming apparent. What Hotschnig’s characters see is less disturbing than the way they perceive and internalise what they observe. In one story a man watches his neighbours as they lie on deckchairs outside their lake house all day long, day after day. His puzzled interest, spurred by their refusal to acknowledge him, turns to morbid fascination. Soon, just watching his neighbours is not enough. He takes notes on their unvarying routine and photographs them during the day so he can study them at night. He surrenders every waking hour, and even his sense of self, to the motionless couple. He is horrified by his obsession, but his attempt to pull back is comically thwarted. In another story, a man on his way

to visit an old friend is waylaid by the friend’s neighbour. This strange woman not only seems to know him well, but has a collection of dolls which depict him at various ages. She says little and leaves him alone with these tokens of his earlier selves. He becomes addicted to these encounters since they open to him levels of self-awareness that were previously inaccessible. A sense of threat or hidden dread suffuses even the more outwardly normal stories. In ‘Two Ways of Leaving’ a former lover is summoned with some agitation by the woman he left years earlier for reasons he could explain neither to her nor to himself. When he arrives at her flat, it is prepared for an intimate dinner, but she is gone. As he wanders through her flat, his sense of estrangement from his former as well as his present self grows. In The New York Review of Books and the TLS, the novelist, critic and translator Tim Parks has noted the rise in Europe of a featureless international fiction at the expense of distinctive national variants. It is becoming harder to find ‘the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives.’ Instead, according to Parks, a growing number of European writers, in their desire for a larger audience, are consciously or unconsciously tailoring their narrative modes and styles to be easily translated into English. National traditions and cultural complexities, as well as particular linguistic qualities, are smoothed over in the pursuit of some bland global appeal. Hotschnig is one writer who stands well outside any such trend. From his first works he has been and remains a distinctively Austrian writer, intimately and actively engaged in his country’s cultural and political complexities and luxuriating in its language.

In his play, Absolution, a son may or may not have committed suicide in protest against his father’s abuse of schoolchildren when he was a teacher. The community looked the other way then and now the father is running for public office. There can be no absolution without recognition, but of course, this being a Hotschnig play, the absolution will be double-edged at best. In his second novel, Ludwig’s Room, a village in Carinthia is bound by an unspoken agreement not to expose the guilt of several members in the community who had been involved in running a nearby forced labour camp. This knowledge and the complicity it provokes poison the community for generations, and their refusal to call their neighbours and relatives to account makes them share in the collective responsibility. In this novel, guilt is neither inherited nor collective, but responsibility is. The stories in Maybe This Time can be read as a psychological counterpart to the denial or suppression of the past. Individual identities constructed within a community that has built its collective identity on an illusion – that of being Hitler’s first victim, say – are bound to be more than usually fragile or prone to psychosis. Many of Hotschnig’s characters suffer such deformation: the man living through his almost comatose neighbours, or the one who can only access his own past through the bizarre intervention of a witch-like figure, or the family that feeds on a myth of a benevolent but always absent uncle, or the chameleon-like protagonist in the collection’s final story whose identity is entirely dependent on how his neighbours see him. Yet these stories can also be read independently of any specific cultural or historical context. They are fascinating allegories of the self negotiating its way through the confusions of contemporary life. And, no less importantly, they are darkly, grimly amusing.

Lies and Ambiguities: Alois Hotschnig’s Fiction Maybe This Time is the second of

Alois Hotschnig’s works to appear in English. It will offer readers familiar with his novel Leonardo’s Hands (University of Nebraska Press, 1999) a greater sense of his range and versatility, and will introduce new readers to a unique, captivating voice in Germanlanguage literature. Tess Lewis is a translator from German and French and an Advisory Editor of The Hudson Review. In 2009, she was awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship and a PEN Translation Fund Grant for her translation of Alois Hotschnig’s story collection, Maybe This Time (Peirene Press). Her most recent translation is Splithead by Julya Rabinowich for Portobello Books. Tess Lewis also writes essays on European literature for numerous literary journals including The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, World Literature Today, The American Scholar, and Bookforum.

Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht

by Alois Hotschnig

AUTHOR FOCUS

Rethink. Renew. Frankfurt Book Fair 2011 Graphic Novels from Germany can be found on all German collective stands at international book fairs. The term graphic novel was coined by Will Eisner, who used it to describe his groundbreaking comic book A Contract with God in the 1980s. His previous work included writing and illustrating the superhero series ‘The Spirit’. This new graphic novel was neither a heroic story nor the beginning of a series. For Eisner, the new concept was not about denigrating his earlier work, but an attempt to define a new artistic form. A graphic novel is first and foremost a self-contained work, using a format frequently closer to that of a book than to comics or serials. In contrast to comics, graphic novels also tend to be taken seriously in the literary press. The media’s attention was initially drawn to works such as Maus by Art Spiegelman, or Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Original German titles then began to appear, igniting booksellers’ interest. Far-reaching campaigns by publishers have also contributed a great deal to the success of the graphic novel. One example is www.graphic-novel.info, targeted at both readers and sellers. News, events and press reviews are posted, as well as discussion pieces on the theme of the graphic novel. The same publishers jointly produce the flyer ‘What is a Graphic Novel?’, which first appeared in 2008. It

contains an informative comic strip, and introduces a selection of graphic novels from participating publishers. The flyer is distributed free, and the reception was so positive that four subsequent updates and reprints followed. In this way, graphic novels found their place in the book trade, and were not just confined to specialised comic book shops. And graphic novels, in turn, attracted new, younger customers to book shops. This development has broadened perspectives for emerging German author-illustrators, so that in addition to graphic novels from France and the USA under licence in Germany, there have long been successful home-grown examples. Recent German graphic novels have in turn been licensed successfully on the international market. There is a broad spectrum of content. Popular genres and themes include autobiographical stories such as Heute ist der letzte Tag vom Rest deines Lebens (‘Today is the Last Day of

the Rest of Your Life’) by Ulli Lust, history as in Castro by Reinhard Kleist, coming-of-age stories such as Alien by Aisha Franz, and cultural history, as in Baby’s in Black – The Story of Astrid Kirchherr and Stuart Sutcliffe by

Arne Bellstorf. These are stand-out graphic novels, distinguished by their stylistic range. The emerging German scene is refreshingly experimental, but never at the expense of readability. The expanding readership for these books extends beyond Germanspeaking countries, and graphic novels from Germany are also well received internationally. They are capable of winning over new readers, whose heads might not be turned by classic comic books. By Jutta Harms www.graphic-novel.info

Reinhard Kleist’s graphic novel Castro

Article

Publishers of graphic novels: www.avant-verlag.de www.carlsen.de www.editionmoderne.ch www.edition52.de www.reprodukt.com

Frankfurt Academy: Network with the best at top-quality events The Frankfurt Academy, the new international conference brand of the Frankfurt Book Fair, is ‘The Mind Network’. This year, for the first time, the Fair’s best congresses and special events – such as the International Rights Directors Meeting RDM, or the Frankfurt Book Fair’s Professional Programme ‘Best Practice / New Ideas’ – are coming together under the umbrella of the Academy. It is targeted at rights professionals, editors and publishers, amongst others. ‘We have launched the Frankfurt Academy because trade visitors to the Book Fair are changing the way they work,’ explains Holger Volland, Vice President Conferences & Creative Industries. ‘Now, not only will they have access to a wide range of top-quality, targeted events, but they will also be able to network with top-level professionals from 150 countries and to expand their knowledge base.’

Brazil, Apps and Tablet Publishing For the past twenty-five years, rights managers from all over the world have been coming together at the International Rights Directors Meeting RDM, to discuss relevant changes and developments in their business. This year the long-standing specialist meeting will have two themes: Brazil and the issue of digital apps provide the joint focus for 2011. ‘Brazil will be the Guest of Honour at Frankfurt in 2013. The country represents a fascinating future market, in which publishers in very different areas are currently experiencing enormous growth,’ says Bärbel Becker, the organiser of the RDM at the Frankfurt Book Fair. She added, ‘Over the course of the event we will shed some light on how the Brazilian market is developing, and what its distinctive features are.’ But the RDM will not only impart important basic knowledge. ‘We

are addressing new topics here as well, which may not play a large role in the day-to-day work of rights managers at the moment, but will do so in the future,’ Becker remarks. Such as apps, for example. ‘I fully support a discussion on mobile apps,’ says David Bowers of Oxford University Press, New York, who will chair the RDM this year. ‘It is a very popular topic these days with big implications for the global publishing business.’ The RDM will take place on Tuesday, 11th October, from 14:00-17:00 in Room Europa (Hall 4.0). A networking reception will follow the discussion.

Graphic Novels – a success story

New media

The Professional Programme ‘Best Practice / New Ideas,’ which the Book Fair runs in conjunction with mediacampus frankfurt, is dedicated to current issues and innovative developments. ‘Tablet publishing’ is currently being hyped by publishers worldwide – but is this euphoria really justified? What have the experiences of this been so far, and what will the next wave of technology bring? Attendees can find out at the seminar ‘Tablet of Contents: Take a look inside tablet publishing,’ taking place on Wednesday 12th October at 15:30 in the Entente Room (Hall 4.C). An overview of all the events in the professional programme can be found at: www.book-fair. com/professional_programme Contact Frankfurt Academy Holger Volland Vice President Creative Industries Phone: +49 (0) 69 210 2 - 166 Email: volland@book-fair.com www.book-fair.com/academy

Editors in a brave new digital world

Buzz and Business at the Frankfurt Book Fair A second round for Frankfurt SPARKS ‘We are the fair for content,’ declared Juergen Boos recently, describing the Frankfurt Book Fair’s new image. With the market for digital content growing rapidly, the remit of the industry’s largest international trade fair is also expanding: ‘Content serves as the raw material, not only for the book industry, but also for other creative industries like film and games. Without content, these new technologies have no use.’ Frankfurt SPARKS, the Frankfurt Book Fair’s digital initiative, established its innovative exhibition and conference formats in 2010, with the goal of bringing in players from the technology industry, but also decision-makers from film and games, to network with the publishing industry and work on future business models together. Frankfurt StoryDrive and Frankfurt Hot Spots, the two big SPARKS projects, will have new topical focuses and more services added this year. Frankfurt StoryDrive is the first organised meeting point for professionals from the publishing, film and games industries. ‘The motto for Frankfurt StoryDrive 2011 is Storytelling & Storyselling,’ says project leader Britta Friedrich. ‘The two-day conference and the adjacent trading centre will focus on cross-media and transmedia forms of storytelling, along with rights and co-production models that extend beyond industry boundaries.’ Other hot topics are cloud computing, gamification and enhanced e-books. StoryDrive’s programme delivers practical knowledge: new for this year are four master-classes led by

Contact Professional Programme ‘Best Practice / New Ideas’ Iris Klose Phone: +49 (0) 69 2102-236 Email: programme@book-fair.com www.book-fair.com/professional_ programme

Frankfurt StoryDrive

top-level speakers. These intensive workshops are a valuable addition to the conference programme and, together with the services in the StoryDrive Business Centre, will provide the necessary tools to do business successfully across industry boundaries. The Frankfurt Hot Spots are six thematically-focused presentation platforms, reflecting current issues in the media and publishing businesses – including social media, mobile content and e-learning. ‘The Hot Spots are our showcase for innovation,’ says project manager Michael Kirchner. ‘Providers of digital content and marketing platforms will be presenting here, along with pioneers in the area of new technologies.’ Each Hot Spot has a stage and lounge area, in addition to exhibition spaces. StoryDrive will take place on 12 and 13 October 2011, 9am-6.45pm, in the Open Space Area www.storydrivefrankfurt.com Contact: Britta Friedrich +49 (0) 69 2102 145 friedrich@book-fair.com Frankfurt Hot Spots 2011 Hot Spot Kids & Comics (Hall 3.0), Hot Spot Publishing Services (Hall 4.0), Hot Spot Education (Hall 4.2), Hot Spot Professional & Scientific Information (Hall 4.2), Hot Spot Digital Relations (Hall 6.1) and Hot Spot Mobile & Devices (Hall 8). More information available at: www.frankfurtsparks.com Contact: Michael Kirchner +49 (0) 69 2102-131 kirchner@book-fair.com

What changes has this digital age brought to the editor’s job description? What new challenges must today’s editors rise to? The editors’ meeting: ‘Editors in a brave new world – The role of editors, and how they need to adapt in these fast-changing digital times,’ will provide answers to these questions. ‘The production of media-neutral data is undergoing a sea change in most publishing houses,’ explains Dorothee Seeliger, Editorial Director at Gräfe & Unzer, and one of the three seminar speakers. ‘For an editor, this increasingly means working in other PC programmes and playing a significant part in the preparation of media-neutral data. Editors have to ‘tag’ data, which means giving it a key code, so it can easily be found in the big wide digital world.’

The brave new digital world – it’s been a long time since this was purely a utopian vision. New digitalisation processes are fostering new ways of thinking; new technologies are creating new markets – but only when there is good content to work with in the first place. ‘New technologies alone are worthless: they require content. Content serves as the raw material, not only for the book industry, but also for other creative industries such as film and games. And the book industry is sitting on a wealth of content,’ says Juergen Boos, Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair. For 2011, the Book Fair is therefore bringing content sales even more firmly to the foreground, and dedicates to it all of Hall 6.0. This will contain an enlarged Literary Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg) and a new business centre for representatives from the film, game and book industries, the StoryDrive Business Centre. Together with the Rights Directors Meeting, the world’s largest meeting for rights managers, these are the places the Book Fair offers where questions will become answers – and new content will be born.

The seminar takes place on Friday 14th October, in rooms Symmetry 2 + 3 in Hall 8.1 of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Alan Samson, Publishing Director at Orion Books, and David Palmer, Publisher at Wiley, will, in addition to Dorothee Seeliger, talk about their experiences and discuss these with participants. A networking reception will follow the discussion. ‘Editors in a brave new world – The role of editors, and how they need to adapt in these fastchanging digital times’ Seminar, Discussion and Networking Reception (language: English) © Alexander Heimann

Contact Rights Directors Meeting Bärbel Becker Phone: +49 (0) 69 2102-258 Email: rightsmeeting@book-fair.com www.book-fair.com/rights-meeting

Discussions in the LitAg

Editors: important guides in the decision-making process However, it isn’t just the marketing, but the evaluation of content that plays an increasingly large role in this context. Does this novel really have what it takes to become a film? Or should it be made into a game instead? Is an app really the most suitable format for this text? Editors are important guides in this decision-making process, working like diamond experts. They choose the content, evaluate and amend it, classify it, and give their recommendations as to which media and which format is best suited to which content.

Friday 14th October, 11.00 -12.00 Location: Symmetry 2 + 3, Hall 8.1 Chair: Ed Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief Publishing Perspectives / USA Registration: Dorothea Grimberg, grimberg@book-fair.com

Translated by Ruth Martin

ARTICLE

Jo Lendle

Alles Land (The All Land)

Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, September 2011, 384 pp. ISBN: 978 3 421 04525 6

Against all the odds The All Land is a beautifully written, meticulously

researched, and gripping fictionalised account of the life of polar explorer, Alfred Wegener, who died on expedition to Greenland in 1930 while attempting to prove that one can survive a winter in ‘the loneliest place on earth’. In 1880, Alfred is born to a minister and his wife in Berlin, where they run an orphanage. He grows up to be smart, if a bit hot-headed and driven. After completing his meteorological studies, he seeks the meteorologist Köppen’s advice in Hamburg and takes off on his first solo expedition to Greenland. He barely survives the grim conditions. He returns to go to Marburg to study, and three years later, he also returns to see Köppen – and his daughter Else. They get engaged shortly after, but the wedding is postponed, as Alfred insists on going on another expedition to Greenland. Alfred returns eventually, and in 1913, he marries Else.

He is drafted when Else is nine months’ pregnant, and when he returns, his wife and baby are strangers to him, and the war has taken its toll. Alfred turns more and more to his studies. He presents his theory of the formation

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Fiction

Jo Lendle was born in 1968. His first studies were in cultural pedagogy and animation culturelle, followed by time at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. Lendle edited the literary magazine Edit and has been a visiting professor and lecturer at several universities. He was awarded the Leipzig Promotion Prize for Literature in 1997. Today he heads the DuMont publishing house. Previous works: Mein letzter Versuch, die Welt zu retten (2009); Die Kosmonautin (2008); Unter Mardern (1999)

‘Lendle lends his language an airy lightness and a hidden melancholy.’ (Tagesspiegel)

and drift of the continents, his idea of an ‘Ur-Continent’ that he calls ‘All Land’ – but he is laughed at by the whole scientific community (it will take thirty years after his death in 1930 until his theory is acknowledged). Eventually, as he approaches his fiftieth birthday, he decides to go on another expedition to Greenland, promising Else it will be his last. Looking back on and summing up his life, he ultimately presents himself as the ambiguous character that he is. Trying so hard to be a family man, but ultimately failing, he not only devoted his life to science, but was also repeatedly drawn to the digressive paths and phenomena related to his fields of research. An eternal sceptic, he is doomed never to be truly happy with his life and accomplishments. Lendle is a gifted writer, whose prose is rich in imagery, whose descriptions are tender and precise. From the beginning of this poetic novel, he slips into the boy Alfred’s mind and describes the world through his eyes, a world in which mundane things are fascinating, and in which one can lose oneself.

Translation rights available from: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Neumarkter Straße 28, 81673 München, Germany Tel: + 49 89 4136 3313 Email: Gesche.Wendebourg@ randomhouse.de Contact: Gesche Wendebourg www. randomhouse.de ‘Jo Lendle has written a delicate, romantic debut. We readers, occasionally looking up at the stars, applaud the author as he achieves that distant aim of writing this novel, which, in spite of its remote, spectacular and radically romantic destination, manages to travel lightly. Truly breathtaking.’ (Die Welt on Cosmonautin)

Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt was founded in 1831 and has published works by many leading writers, scholars and architects, as well as politicians and journalists from Germany and Europe, either in book form or within the pages of one of its journals. The DVA books’ section alone feature works by twelve Nobel prizewinners, four German Federal Presidents and thirteen German Chancellors. Today DVA’s reputation for publishing quality literature is based on its editions of work by poets such as Paul Celan, Sarah Kirsch, Doris Runge, Ulla Hahn and C.W. Aigner; by novelists such as Joyce Carol Oates, Carlos Fuentes, Sibylle Lewitscharoff and Thomas Rosenboom; and of André Gide’s diaries and Marcel Reich-Ranicki’s essays.

Kathrin Gerlof

Lokale Erschütterung (Localised Tremor)

Aufbau Verlag, September 2011, 384 pp. ISBN: 978 3 351 03357 6

A book of Daniel Gerlof’s novel of love, infidelity and motherhood throbs with emotional tension and suspense. Localised Tremor keeps readers guessing until the final chapter and demands to be discussed.

Veronika and Hanns are an unhappily married couple in their mid-forties, living in Berlin. Their sex life is unfulfilling and they have forgotten how to talk to one another. Hanns is an unemployed journalist and the onus has fallen on Veronika to generate enough income to support them both. We see her under pressure pitching to clients, while Hanns flounders in their apartment or wanders around the city. He periodically meets with a much younger friend called Daniel towards whom he feels a conflicting array of emotions and whose mannerisms remind him of someone else he knows. The reasons for Veronika’s profound unhappiness and Hanns’s relentless anger are revealed in their experiences of stillbirth, miscarriage and infertility. References to their stillborn son, also called Daniel, become as barbed weapons in their destructive conversational exchanges. There are also oblique references to another son of Veronika’s, born before her relationship with Hanns, whose existence remains a closely guarded secret. The reader is continually tantalised by the

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Kathrin Gerlof was born in 1962 and now lives in Berlin. She studied journalism before working as an editor for a variety of newspapers. She is now a freelance journalist, film-maker and author. Her debut novel Teuermanns Schweigen was published in 2008 and was acclaimed by buchkultur.de for its addictive ideas. Previous Works: Alle Zeit (‘All the Time’, 2009; see NBG 26); Treumanns Schweigen (‘Treumann’s Silence‘, 2008)

half-revelations contained in Veronika’s interior monologue and the possibility that this son is now trying to forge contact with his mother through some rather threatening letters. Veronika eventually seeks a hysterectomy and a conversation with her gynaecologist leads her finally to admit to the existence of her first son, all knowledge of whom she has concealed for nearly thirty years. Hanns accepts a job offer in a town some distance away, and when the couple begin to live separately both are ‘unfaithful’: Hanns begins to associate with the local hardline rightwing group and Veronika has an affair. Reunited, Veronika tells Hanns about her living child. Their suspicions focus on Hanns’s friend Daniel and the climax of the novel consists of the confrontation between Hanns and his putative step-son. In a shocking dénouement, Daniel dies when a night out with Hanns ends in assault by one of the town’s skinheads. We never learn whether Daniel is in fact Veronika’s son. Through dialogue, interior monologue and third person narration, as well as the convincingly complex characterisation throughout the novel, Gerlof has pulled off a compelling portrayal of some of the contemporary challenges of marriage. A gripping read. Translation rights available from: Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG Prinzenstraße 85, 10969 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 28394 123 Email: ihmels@aufbau-verlag.de Contact: Inka Ihmels www.aufbau-verlag.de Praise for Gerlof’s previous novels: ‘A very fine debut, full of allusions and thrumming with mystery.’(Die Welt) ‘What a bewildering and moving book, both lovely and sad.’ (taz)

Aufbau Verlag was founded in 1945 and became the leading cultural and literary publishing house in East Germany. Besides focusing on German and international classics, exile, resistance and East German writing (Hans Fallada, Lion Feuchtwanger, Anna Seghers, Arnold Zweig, Victor Klemperer), Aufbau has a strong list of contemporary world literature. Recent major successes include Werner Bräunig’s Rummelplatz, and novels by Fred Vargas, Donna Cross, Eliot Pattison, Deon Meyer, Hong Ying, Guillaume Musso, Robert Schneider, Giles Foden and Polina Daschkowa. The lovingly produced children’s list includes works by Heinz Janisch, Aljoscha Blau, Martin Karau, Isabel Pin, Michael Sowa and Rotraut Susanne Berner. Aufbau is an imprint of Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG.

Fiction

Angelika Klüssendorf

Das Mädchen (The Girl)

Kiepenheuer & Witsch, August 2011, 192 pp. ISBN: 978 3 462 04284 9

Children of darkness Klüssendorf’s portrayal of the hardship endured by a sister and her younger brother during their brutalised and brutalising childhood and adolescence is unflinching. The strength of ‘The Girl’ is found precisely there – in her capacity to endure her ordeal, to find escape hatches for herself that are absolutely necessary to her literal survival. Human waste rains down from an apartment window onto the street below. An unnamed twelve-year-old and her five-year-old brother, Alex, have been locked in by their mother with only a bucket as a toilet, and the girl is dealing with it as best she can. Then she puts on her mother’s underwear and dances on the table for the construction workers opposite; she tries to force her brother to join her, slapping him when he protests. This grim beginning is followed by an equally grim portrait of family life. The mother is alcoholic and unstable and takes pleasure in sadistically terrorizing her children and abusing them physically. Alex is increasingly plagued by neuroses that clearly derive from the punishment meted out to him by his mother, and sometimes his sister, and while the girl

Angelika Klüssendorf was born in 1958 in Ahrensburg, and now lives in Berlin. She was awarded the Roswitha Prize of Bad Gandersheim in 2004.

Previous works: Alle leben so (2003); Aus allen Himmeln (2004); Amateure (2009)

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Fiction

Longlisted for the German Book Prize 2011

is too young to appreciate fully the psychological stress her young brother is under, she does see that something is wrong with him. Something is wrong with her, too, as the reader soon discovers in her choice of ‘games’ and ‘play’. Her favourite game is to stand at the side of a busy main road, then dash in front of cars to test their ability to brake in time. At some point she involves Alex in this game, with the result that he is hit by a car and breaks his collarbone. The girl’s self-destructive behaviour finally lands her in a home. Accustomed to being shunned at school, she is surprised to find that her outrageous behaviour and volatile temper gain her a mixture of respect and fear. The last scene depicts her lying in a field, watching a flight of geese overhead, flying with them in her mind. The Girl contains a number of disturbing scenes that

are written in such a way that the reader, too, becomes anxious and fearful, particularly when the mother is involved, but the author also opens the door to glimpses of the woman the girl might one day become, if able to rise above her upbringing.

Translation rights available from: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG Bahnhofsvorplatz 1, 50667 Köln, Germany Tel: +49 221 376 85 22 Email: ibrandt@kiwi-verlag.de Contact: Iris Brandt www.kiwi-verlag.de ‘Angelika Klüssendorf, the cool champion amongst the masters of society prose, analyses more precisely than John Updike and more pointedly than Ingeborg Bachmann. Terrible, but terrific.’ (Die Zeit on Aus allen Himmeln)

Kiepenheuer & Witsch was founded in 1949 in Cologne by Gustav Kiepenheuer and Joseph Caspar Witsch. The press’s early authors included Joseph Roth, Heinrich Böll and Erich Maria Remarque. Today Kiepenheuer & Witsch continues to publish leading contemporary German, Austrian and Swiss writers, as well as international authors in translation. Its list includes among many others the book prize winner Kathrin Schmidt, Frank Schätzing, Uwe Timm, David Foster Wallace and J.D. Salinger. Its non-fiction subjects cover sociology, psychology, history and biography. Kiepenheuer & Witsch is part of the Holtzbrinck Group.

Christoph Poschenrieder

Der Spiegelkasten (The Mirror Box)

Diogenes, September 2011, 224 pp. ISBN: 978 3 257 06788 0

Seeing in a glass darkly In this gripping and well-told novel, Poschenrieder takes a fresh approach to the Great War which will have wide appeal. Concise and moving, The Mirror Box moves seamlessly between the horrors of trench warfare and modern-day Munich, as the young narrator becomes increasingly immersed in photos, letters and reports about the war left behind by his great-uncle, Ismar Manneberg, a German-Jewish officer.

The great-nephew is a likeable but odd character. He is employed by a mysterious organisation – a shield for the CIA, he believes – to write English-language dossiers on media coverage ‘of interest to the US government’. He is aware of the ludicrous nature of his role: the information he is employed to report on is already provided by the newspapers. Then his employer decides to go digital, and his days of gleefully poring over the newspapers with inkstained fingers are a thing of the past. Increasingly dejected, he ponders the negative effects of digital technology and remembers the box of old papers and photos from his great-uncle. Looking through them, he finds a mysterious photograph of the ‘mirror box’.

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Christoph Poschenrieder was born near Boston in 1964 and currently lives in Munich. He studied philosophy in Munich and wrote his thesis on Schopenhauer. He also attended the Journalism School of Columbia University, New York. He has been working as a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker since 1993. Die Welt ist im Kopf was his first novel. Previous works Die Welt ist im Kopf (‘The World in

the Head’, 2010; see NBG 27)

He discovers online forums for similar Great War enthusiasts and ends up entering into a dialogue with WarGirl18, who seems to know a few things about the mysterious mirror box and the doctor who created it, Karamchand. At first, the narrator is unsure whether to trust her but he opens up and agrees to meet her after she tells him she has some letters sent by his great-uncle. Interspersed with his attempts to find out more about the mirror box are the passages about Ismar in the trenches. He pretends to have a fiancée, and writes a letter to this imaginary woman. A reply comes back. Shocked but touched, he enters into a correspondence with the mysterious recipient. Around the same time he begins to visit Karamchand, who nursed him back to health after being wounded in the field, and becomes increasingly intrigued by the ‘mirror box’ treatment the doctor is working on. All this enables him to keep a grip on his senses amidst the chaos of trench warfare. As this original and touching novel progresses, the tales of the present-day narrator and Ismar run increasingly parallel until they reach an intriguing, even chilling, conclusion. Translation rights available from: Diogenes Verlag AG Zürich Sprecherstrasse 8 CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland Tel: +41 44 2548554 Email: bau@diogenes.ch Contact: Susanne Bauknecht www.diogenes.ch Praise for Die Welt ist im Kopf: ‘ A fantastical, stormy novel, clever and witty.’ (Buchkultur)

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.

‘ One of the most remarkable debuts this spring’ (Deutschlandradio Kultur) ‘ An atmospheric book full of subtle wit’ (Die Welt)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Fiction

Monika Helfer

Oskar und Lilli (Oskar and Lilli)

Deuticke Verlag, July 2011, 256 pp. ISBN: 978 3 552 06168 2

Child’s play Oskar and Lilli is a book about children, told with the

simplicity of a children’s book; but it is not a book for children. Told from the point of view of Oskar (seven) and Lilli (nine), Helfer’s novel poignantly addresses the uglier aspects of the adult world to which brother and sister are exposed without either explanation or protection.

The day the children wake up to find their mother asleep on the kitchen table with a strange man (they have never known their father), Lilli persuades Oskar to leave home with her. Social services arrange foster homes. Lilli is sent to the dull but nice Rut; Oskar ends up in a vegetarian, anti-television, energy-saving household consisting of two teachers, a baby and a grandmother, Erika. Bored by the teachers and their baby, Oskar spends more and more time with Erika; he helps her as she grows steadily more ill (she has Parkinson’s), and when she dies, she leaves him all her money. When a second baby is on the way, Oskar is sent to a new foster home, a guesthouse called the Dove, where he is looked after by the landlady, the waitress, Puppa, and the lorry driver, Bruno. Lilli, meanwhile, finds it hard to settle down in school, and takes refuge in a kind of friendship

Fiction

Throughout Oskar and Lilli, fairytale-like elements coexist with the unattractive and often grotesque details of everyday life. Helfer pictures events through the children’s innocent eyes; the discrepancy between what they see and what the reader knows makes for a certain humour, but also serves to heighten the sordid details. This is a subtle, understated book written in simple, short sentences – cleverly crafted and well-written. The references to fairy-tale motifs scattered throughout the novel show that Helfer knows exactly what she is doing, and the near timelessness of the subject matter makes it suitable for readers anywhere.

Monika Helfer was born in 1947 in Vorarlberg, Austria, where she still works and lives with her family. She has written novels, short stories and children’s books. Her many awards include the Robert Musil Grant (1996) and the Austrian Prize for Literature (1997).

Translation rights available from: Deuticke Verlag Prinz-Eugen-Straße 30, A-1040 Wien, Austria Tel: +43 1 505 766112 Email: annette.lechner@zsolnay.at Contact: Annette Lechner www.zsolnay.at

Previous works:

Praise for Bevor ich schlafen kann:

Wenn der Bräutigam kommt (‘When the bridegroom comes’, 1998), Bestien im Frühling (‘Beasts in Spring’, 1999), Mein Mörder (‘My Murderer’, 1999); Bevor ich schlafen kann (‘Before I can

sleep’, 2010)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 48)

with Betti, the fattest girl in her class, and Betti’s heroinaddict sister. Towards the end, Oskar and Lilli go together to visit their mother, who is now in psychiatric care. Later Rut confides in Oskar’s ex-foster-mother that she is getting married and can no longer cope with Lilli. Brother and sister leave the party and set off into the night with Bruno in his lorry. The novel had begun with the children’s faces lit up by a policeman’s torch; it ends with their faces lit up by the moon.

‘ A fantastic mother-daughter dialogue, and a must-read’ (Brigitte) ‘ Who can narrate the oddness of relationships in our society like Monika Helfer can – so laconic and so precise?’ (Literatur und Kritik) ‘ A novel that is at once moving and unsettling.’ (Die Furche)

Deuticke Verlag, along with Paul Zsolnay Verlag, has been part of Carl Hanser Verlag in Munich since 2004. Deuticke was founded in 1878 in Vienna. Initially the firm focused on non-fiction (including Sigmund Freud’s book on dreams in 1900 and much later, in 2001, the international bestseller Blackbook on Brand Companies). In recent years Deuticke has established itself as a publisher of fiction by internationally renowned and contemporary authors, among them Iris Murdoch and Lily Brett, and Austrian writers such as Paulus Hochgatterer, Daniel Glattauer and Michael Köhlmeier.

Peter Henisch

Grosses Finale für Novak (Novak’s Grand Finale)

Residenz Verlag, August 2011, 304 pp. ISBN: 978 3 701 71547 3

As the curtain falls A man in late middle age who has been browbeaten over the years by his wife has an epiphany and kills her so he can listen to La Traviata in peace. With Henisch’s deft handling, the plot itself is like an opera, gradually increasing in intensity before culminating in the kind of tragedy that is more common on the stage than in real life. While in hospital, Novak is given opera music to listen to by an Indonesian nurse, Manuela. He has never listened to opera before, but gradually becomes smitten with both the music and the nurse. On leaving hospital, Novak loses his job and struggles with the sudden loss of structure in his life. His wife, Herta, notices a change in her husband and is enraged by his new love. She travels to the hospital where Manuela works and complains that she ‘befriended’ her husband.

Novak and Herta finally separate. He attends a live opera and believes he sees Manuela in the audience. At the end of the performance, he approaches the woman he believes is Manuela, but she does not recognise him. Bitterly

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

Peter Henisch was born in Vienna in 1943. At university he studied German, philosophy, history and psychology and later co-founded the left-wing literary magazine Wespennest. Since 1971 he has been living and writing in Vienna. He has received numerous prizes for his works, and his 2005 and 2007 novels Die schwangere Madonna and Eine sehr kleine Frau were longlisted for the German Book Prize. Previous works: Eine sehr kleine Frau (‘A very little woman’, 2007); Die schwangere Madonna (‘The pregnant Madonna’, 2005); Schwarzer Peter (‘Black Peter’,

2000)

disappointed, Novak goes into a kind of catatonic state. Herta takes him back home with her, and he resigns himself to his lot. But when he learns how his wife caused Manuela to lose her job, Novak is incensed and refuses to accompany her on a trip abroad. On the day she leaves, Novak settles down to listen to La Traviata through speakers rather than headphones for the first time ever. However, Herta’s flight does not leave, and she returns home to find him. She pulls the stereo plug out of the wall just as he is listening to a duet he loves, and he shoots her with a gun he keeps in case of burglars. The book ends with Novak climbing up to a watchtower in the forest with the gun and his CDs. Henisch depicts scenes of modern-day small town life in the West with sympathy and humour. His characters and themes will appeal to a wide readership – downtrodden husband who suppresses his emotions, if he is aware of them at all, for decades; overbearing, malicious wife; small-town racism and unquestioning acceptance of changes brought about by modernity; love and the meaning of life. Witty, ironic, sad, pertinent.

Translation rights available from: Residenz Verlag. Gutenbergstr. 12, 3100 St. Pölten, Austria Tel: +43 2742 802 1411 Email: r.anderle@residenzverlag.at Contact: Renate Anderle www.residenzverlag.at ‘ Henisch is a literary godsend. His novels open the doors between politics and fantasy, between earnestness and eccentricity.’ (Die Zeit)

Residenz Verlag was founded in 1956 in Salzburg, initially concentrating on fine art and non-fiction titles. During the 1960s a fiction list was added, and leading Austrian authors including H.C. Artmann, Thomas Bernhard, Barbara Frischmuth and Peter Handke published their first work here. German and Swiss writers were gradually included and followed, in the 1980s, by international authors in translation. The non-fiction list includes books on contemporary history as well as monographs of nineteenth and twentieth century artists and books on music, theatre and architecture. Since 2001, in its Nilpferd imprint, it has also been publishing literary and artistic picture books and fiction for young readers.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 48)

Fiction

Emily Ruete was born in Zanzibar in 1844 as Sayyida (which she translated as ‘Princess’) Salme bint Saïd ibn Sultan, daughter of the Sultan of Oman and Zanzibar. After an eventful childhood and young adulthood in various residences around the island, detailed in her memoirs, she moved in her early twenties to a house in the town, next door to German trader Heinrich Ruete. The pair fell in love; the princess became pregnant and fled to Aden, where she was joined some months later by Heinrich, who had stayed on in Zanzibar – unchallenged – to wind up his business affairs. She was baptised and married on the same day, immediately setting sail for Europe. Landing in Marseille, they eventually continued by train to Heinrich’s home town of Hamburg,

Stylised cover image of Ruete, 1907 English-language version

Article

Emily Ruete

a journey on which their first-born child died. After Heinrich’s own death in a tram accident in 1870, Emily Ruete, mother to three young children, made the difficult decision to stay on in Germany. In financial straits and desperate to claim what she perceived was her rightful inheritance, the coming years saw her embroiled in Bismarck’s aspirations for East Africa. ‘The story of her life is as instructive as history and as fascinating as fiction,’ wrote Oscar Wilde in his 1888 review of the memoirs in Woman’s World. Wilde’s words were prophetic – Emily Ruete’s story has inspired both these treatments in the intervening years. The ‘elopement’ seemed the stuff of fairy tales (witness the countless versions in late-nineteenth-century illustrated magazines with their requisite set of familiar characters) and romance novels (the latest from 2010), all quick to evoke shades of The Abduction from the Seraglio and the Arabian Nights. And Ruete herself was characteristically – and significantly – prosaic here: ‘Our friendship, which gradually evolved into a deep love, was soon known about the city and my brother Majid also learned of it – I never experienced hostility from him on this account, let alone the imprisonment that has been the subject of some tall tales.’ But some early reviewers and the second English translator were quick to acknowledge the practical, social, and historical value of the memoirs. The latter is probably the foremost interpretation today, where its

usefulness for highlighting ‘what is/was going on in Africa’ has given way to its perceived illumination of an obsession of our times, the ‘inner life’ of Muslim women. We move, to take just a few examples, from Wilde’s primary observation that Ruete’s book ‘protests against the idea that Oriental women are degraded or oppressed’, through French historian and literary critic Arvède Barine’s 1889 indignation that the pages ‘are written with the conviction that they will shake up our ideas’, to Fedwa Malti-Douglas’ 1996 verdict that the narrative is by no means tied to its time, but has ‘the ability to insert itself into many of the contemporary debates on the Muslim world both in the East and the West.’

Memoiren einer arabischen Prinzessin, 4th edition, 1886

the last few years (in many cases by publishers with little knowledge of the original, but prizing the perceived ‘documentary value’ of the text), so that to date we have to negotiate their foibles – the older clunky and sometimes inaccurate, and the younger with some substantial cuts and a rather more sensational framing of the contents. Arguably neither captures the energy and seemingly stylised simplicity of the original. An ‘academic’ version also exists in E. van Donzel’s somewhat heftily-priced An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds (Brill, 1993), perhaps best read in the numerous libraries it has made its home. His is, to date, the only work to include a translation of Ruete’s later texts, in particular her ‘Letters Home’ which chart her less than positive experiences in an often prejudiced German society.

Frank and open about her attitudes, Ruete’s narrative contains much more than the title of its new German version, ‘Life in the Sultan’s Palace’, would suggest, not all of it palatable for the modern reader: a passionate denunciation of the perfidy of the English government; a sense of confusion at being used and abused by great powers in the scramble for Africa; more controversially, advice for German would-be colonists; and most controversially of all, a defence of slavery. The slavery angle has rightly taken its place in postcolonial and other recent revisitings of her work: directly in a 2009 ‘intervention’ by the artist Jokinen, setting the opposing figure of a former slave against an exhibition on Ruete’s life; and by juxtaposition and interweaving with the life story of slave-trader Tippu Tip in Hans Christoph Buch’s novel Sansibar Blues (Eichborn, 2008) and Christiane Bird’s historical exploration The Sultan’s Shadow (Random House, 2010). Two English-language versions of Ruete’s memoirs are readily accessible, an 1888 anonymous translation, published by Ward and Downey (London) and D. Appleton (New York), and a 1907 version translated by Lionel Strachey, and originally published by Doubleday, Page & Co. (New York). Both have sparked a flurry of reprintings in

As the memoirs move into an age of print-on-demand and Kindle (a ‘Victorian erotica’ version is currently on the market), they continue to be retold in new formats and media. 2007 saw a documentary film, and there is talk of an opera. ‘So let my book make its way out into the world,’ wrote Ruete in the conclusion to her preface, ‘and win just as many friends for itself as I have been fortunate enough to find wherever I have gone.’ Did she imagine quite how far – and how long – it would roam?

‘Nine years ago I formed the notion of recording some episodes from my life for my children, who had previously known nothing of my background other than that I was an Arab and hailed from Zanzibar…’ – so opens Emily Ruete’s Memoiren einer arabischen Prinzessin (‘Memoirs of an Arabian Princess’), generally acknowledged as the earliest surviving, published autobiography of an Arab woman. First appearing in 1886 with Berlin publishers H. Rosenberg, and later with Friedrich Luckhardt, it ran to four editions that same year. 2011 marks the book’s 125th anniversary. Though not a new German book, it is one that has been increasingly re-evoked, reprinted and ‘retold’, and seems destined for a long and colourful afterlife.

‘ What transformations I’d been through over the years…’: Memoirs of an Arabian Princess turns 25, by Kate Roy

Kate Roy is a Leverhulme Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool and a John Dryden Translation Prize recipient for 2011. She is currently working on the various incarnations of Emily Ruete’s life story, old and new.

Agnes Hammer

Nacht, komm! (Night, Come!)

script5, an imprint of Loewe Verlag GmbH, September 2011, 288 pp. ISBN: 978 3 839 00125 7

The girl who played with fire This gritty thriller successfully combines the genres of teen and crime fiction, set against the backdrop of a football World Cup. Reminiscent of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, the protagonist Lissy is unusual, not to say dysfunctional, and much of the interest of the story lies in her development as a character. Sentenced to community service in an old people’s home for shoplifting and assault, Lissy makes friends with Nele, and through her gets to know Daniel, Nele’s on-off boyfriend. Lissy is strongly attracted to Daniel, and he apparently to her, and they become sexually involved. After an argument over Daniel, Lissy shoves Nele against a locker, scratching her arm on Nele’s bracelet. The next evening, Nele is found dead by the rubbish bins outside the home.

The police’s suspicions quickly fall on Lissy: she has been in and out of trouble throughout her childhood and traces of her DNA are found on the bracelet. And she can’t provide an alibi: on the night of the murder, Lissy’s homeless father collapsed in the street, and instead of going straight to the hospital to be with him, Lissy went off looking for Daniel. Unable to find him at their agreed meeting place, Lissy spent Agnes Hammer grew up with five siblings in Westerwald in Germany, before moving to Cologne to study German literature and philosophy. Today she works at an institute teaching young adults from difficult social backgrounds. Since 2005 she has also worked as an anti-aggression trainer. Hammer was awarded the prestigious ‘Kranichsteiner’ scholarship for the exceptional Herz, klopf!, published by script5. She also received the ‘Kurd-Laßwitz’ scholarship this year. Previous works: Dorfbeben (‘Village Rumours’, 2010; see NBG 28), Herz, klopf! (2009), Bewegliche Ziele (2008) Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

the night wandering around the city on her own. One policeman in particular seems convinced of Lissy’s guilt; he also happens to be a close friend of Daniel’s father, and fails to investigate other possible suspects properly, including Daniel himself. He even lets slip to Daniel that there is a potential witness to the crime in the form of a one-eyed homeless woman. Before they can question her again, however, she is found unconscious, poisoned by antifreeze that has been mixed into a bottle of lemonade. Lissy decides to investigate Nele’s death for herself and discovers uncomfortable truths about Nele and Daniel, before solving the mystery of Nele’s death in a tense and unexpected conclusion to the story. This is an extremely readable novel, and its dialogue is particularly well-crafted. It is also very thought-provoking: from its depiction of the prejudices at work in police investigations to Lissy’s interaction with her father. He is one of a group of alcoholic homeless people who passersby would usually go out of their way to avoid, but who also – as this tale shows – have families, pasts, and their own stories to tell. Translation rights available from: Loewe Verlag GmbH Buehlstrasse 4, 95463 Bindlach, Germany Tel: +49 9208 51 283 Email: e.kneissl@loewe-verlag.de Contact: Eva Kneissl www.loewe-verlag.de/rights Praise for Dorfbeben: ‘Hammer’s characters sparkle with life, convincing even in their craziest performances!’ (Titel-Magazin) ‘Agnes Hammer narrates with oppressive intensity.’ (Börsenblatt)

Loewe Verlag was founded in 1863 by Friedrich Loewe in Leipzig. It is one of the oldest and most important children’s books publishers in Germany. In the early twentieth century, Loewe published fairy tales, children’s classics and picture books. Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter (1903) and other great classics were first published by the firm. Today Loewe publishes a broad range of titles, from picture books to high quality children’s fiction, and non-fiction for both children and young adults. Authors include Cornelia Funke and Kai Meyer.

‘Dorfbeben is a tense thriller and at the same time a love story. It’s a journey into the past and a piece about betrayal and civil courage.’ (Die Rheinpfalz)

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS’

‘ The book’s message is clear: Don’t take everything seriously, enjoy life!’ (Lizzynet)

A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website

‘Wonderfully humorous vacation reading for boys and girls’ (Die Presse)

Frank Schmeißer

Kirsten Reinhardt

Schurken überall!

Fennymores Reise oder: Wie man Dackel im Salzmantel macht

(Villains Everywhere!)

Ravensburger, August 2011, 224 pp. ISBN: 978 3 473 36835 9

‘The Amazing Three and a Half’ Eleven-year-old Sebastian keeps a secret diary which details his adventures as The Brain, leader of a group of superheroes. His gang includes Barbara (Action-Bärbel), who is hyperactive and refuses to take her medication, Martin (The Chameleon) who is so unnoticeable as to be completely invisible, and Martin’s invisible friend Dieter, who is only allowed half a vote at meetings due to his imaginary status and his cowardice. In the tradition of Roald Dahl, Sebastian records the heroic activities of ‘The Amazing Three and a Half’, as they defend their beloved class teacher, Ms Daffodil, from the plots of Mr Knarz, the Physics teacher, and the children in his class who are without exception both stupid and mean. Every page brings on new hilarity and crackpot schemes as The Three and a Half set in motion a series of daring plans, each more outrageous and ill-considered than the previous, including the spray-painting of the class hamster and a brave attempt to climb the ropes of the gymnasium dressed in a giraffe costume.

This fast-paced and utterly original novel will delight younger readers with its highly visual portrayal of fantastical villains and a gang of heroic outcasts.

Translation rights available from: Ravensburger Buchverlag Otto Maier GmbH Email: Florence.christ@ravensburger.de Contact: Florence Christ www.foreignrights-ravensburger.com Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

(Fennymore’s Travels or How To Make Dachshund in Salt Crust)

Carlsen Verlag, October 2011, 144 pp. ISBN: 978 3 551 55582 3

Dealing with death In this very impressive debut novel – tipped as a nominee for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, the most renowned German prize for children’s literature – eleven-year-old Fennymore has been living alone, with only his bicycle for company, ever since his parents disappeared three years ago. The bicycle thinks it is a horse, and Fennymore helps his aunt hunt dachshunds, to make her favourite dish: dachshund in salt crust. When his aunt dies of dachshund poisoning, Fennymore rescues a box of prized possessions from her flat and his bicycle takes him to meet a strange gentleman called Hubertus, aka Death. A few years before, Hubertus became tired of his work and struck a Faustian bargain with the local mayor, Doctor Clockgood. In exchange for being allowed to work only in the local retirement home, he had to take two souls whose time hadn’t yet come: Fennymore’s parents. Young readers will be absolutely engrossed by this charming and witty piece of classic storytelling, as Fennymore tries to outwit Clockgood and find out why he wanted his parents, who were inventors, dead in the first place.

Frank Schmeißer was born in 1968 in Hilden in North Rhine-Westphalia. After successfully completing his training as a bookseller, he worked for a year in a bookshop in Rome. He currently lives in Cologne and writes scripts for a variety of television programmes. Schurken überall! is his first children’s book.

Kirsten Reinhardt was born in 1977 in a picturesque little village near Lueneburg. Now she lives and works in Berlin. Her manuscript of Fennymore’s

Ravensburger Buchverlag was founded in 1883 by Otto Maier. He was impressed by the new educational ideas of his time and tried to implement them in his books and games. His aim to produce only the best is still the dictum of the firm, which survived the two World Wars and has grown into an international company. It is considered one of Germany’s leading publishing houses and this year celebrates its 125th anniversary.

Carlsen Verlag was founded in 1953. After the success of the PETZI series in German daily papers Forlaget Carlsen/ Denmark was prompted to establish a German subsidiary, trading under the name of CARLSEN Verlag. The Pixi booklets, launched in 1954, proved to be a hugely successful venture. Since then CARLSEN has published more than 1,300 titles with a total print-run of more than 250 million copies.

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS’

Travels or: How To Make Dog in Salt Crust was awarded the Oldenburger

Kinder- und Jugendbuchpreis in 2009. Kirsten Reinhardt loves reading comics, and has never eaten a dog in her life.

Translation rights available from: Carlsen Verlag GmbH Tel: +49 40 39804 269 Email: steiner.daniela@carlsen.de Contact: Daniela Steiner www.carlsen.de/rights Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

‘Kathrin Schrocke tells a deeply touching love story. Most importantly, she has opened up a new world to young people.’ (General-Anzeiger) ‘An extraordinary love story, told with empathy and wit.’ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung)

Kathrin Schrocke

Andrea Weibel

Freak City

Freya und das Geheimnis der Großmutter

(Freak City)

Bibliographisches Institut / Sauerländer, January 2010 208 pp. ISBN: 978 3 7947 7081 4

(The Secret of the Silbernagels)

Verlag Jungbrunnen, July 2011, 198 pp. ISBN: 978 3 7026 5834 2

Giving love a chance

‘The other side of the stream’

Told in the first person by fifteen-year-old Mika with lively spontaneity and disarming humour, Freak City is a sensitive and convincing portrait of teenage life – from the torments experienced by adolescent boys in their obsession with sex to the difficulties of relating to their parents.

This is a terrific debut novel from an author with not only an expert eye for intriguing historical detail but also a rare gift for strong plot and vivid characters.

While raising questions about superstition, science, religion and ethics, this is a low-key but deeply involving story that promises to be a stand-out success.

Translation rights available from: Bibliographisches Institut GmbH Tel: +49 621 3901199 Email: antje.moelle@bi-media.de Contact: Antje Moelle www.sauerlaender.de Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

Kathrin Schrocke was born in 1975 in Augsburg. She studied German and psychology in Bamberg. Schrocke has received numerous prizes and nominations for her work including the Nettetaler Youth Book Prize (2010), the nomination for the German Youth Literature Prize (2011) and for the Hansjörg-Martin Prize for the best German Youth Thriller (2010). She lives in Berlin and is the author of numerous stories and plays, as well as novels for children and young adults. www.kathrin-schrocke.de/ Previous works: Dorfprinzessinnen (‘Village Princesses’, 2009) For more information on Sauerländer Verlag please contact NBG

Alongside the agonies of teenage emotions in the course of their developing friendship, this captivating book is also a perceptive insight into the isolation experienced by the deaf.

Inconsolable after being dumped by his girlfriend, Mika retreats for hours to the solitude of his bedroom. His best mates lure him into town to distract him, where they see an attractive young girl step out into the road without looking, causing a huge lorry to screech to a halt and miss her by a whisker. Soon after, Mika follows his ex to a house called ‘Freak City’, where he overhears her in the bar sniggering about him to her friends. Retreating to another room, he sees the girl who had nearly got run over, playing billiards. Without a word she hands him a cue. An older woman joins them, and starts making hand gestures to the girl, who responds in the same way. Mika realises she is deaf.

Freya Silbernagel, an orphan, lives high up in the Alps until she is sent down to the valley for school. The schoolmaster is ignorant and tyrannical, as are the relatives she lodges with; her uncle is a religious bigot and her aunt sneers at the other villagers, especially the tenant farmers on the wrong side of the stream. Freya befriends the son of one of these families and learns that some of them preserve old pagan beliefs. A midnight revel in the forest introduces her to some of their mysteries. Freya, however, has a family mystery of her own to investigate. There are no supernatural foes, but the enemies Freya contends with are the more convincing: a cow’s infected udder becomes a major plot point, sickness and childbirth in the pre-modern age are described as terrifying and dangerous, and human folly and evil are shown for what they are.

Translation rights available from: Verlag Jungbrunnen Tel: +43 1 512 12 99 74 Email: Moosleitner@jungbrunnen.co.at Contact: Martina Moosleitner www.jungbrunnen.co.at Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 48)

Andrea Weibel was born in Switzerland in 1966. She grew up in the canton Zug and trained as a teacher. Thereafter she studied history in Zurich and started to write articles for a newspaper. After her final degree she worked first as a journalist, then for the Swiss Historical Encyclopedia. She lives with her partner in Bern. Jungbrunnen was established in 1923 with the aim of providing good literature to children and young people who had little access to books. The publisher’s emphasis still rests on quality, both of text and image, and on taking their young audience seriously. Many Jungbrunnen books have become classics and are already delighting a third generation of children, not least Mira Lobe’s Die Omama im Apfelbaum, which has been translated into twenty-one languages.

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS’

Preview

Der Fall Collini Ferdinand von Schirach

This autumn brings three very different novels by established authors to our bookshelves, bound to feed the review pages and blogs for months: an epic novel by a renowned Iranian-German writer, a first novel by a bestselling author of short stories, and a new taboo-breaking book by one of Germany’s most controversial young authors. Dein Name Navid Kermani Hanser Verlag Renowned writer Navid Kermani is the author of an extraordinary novel out this autumn. Five years in gestation, Dein Name (‘Your Name’) is nothing short of an epic: 1232 pages of reflection on life itself – and on death. Kermani absorbs his family’s present and past, with his grandfather’s emigration from the Middle East to Germany at the novel’s core, and thereby weaves the European present and the Iranian past into an intricate tapestry of tales and voices. Born in Germany to Iranian parents, Kermani is one of Germany’s foremost thinkers in the field of religious and cultural affairs, and a writer of immense agility and range. He writes regularly for the main German broadsheets, as well as publishing essays, non-fiction books and books for children.

Charlotte Roche Piper Verlag Charlotte Roche’s debut novel was a huge international bestseller – the controversial novel Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands) that shocked and delighted millions of readers with its open and graphic tale of female sexuality. In her new novel, Roche turns to the ‘taboo’ of marital sex, peeling back the layers of convention and repression to examine gender roles, a more ‘mature’ sexuality, and what happens when a chance event turns your world upside down.

The Bachmann Prize 2011

Bachmann Prize 2011

Antonia Baum

news and informaTion

Launched in 2005, the German Book Prize is the equivalent of the Man Booker Prize, seeking the best novel written in German in each publishing year. It is awarded at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. Three of the six winning titles have already been translated into English: Arno Geiger’s We Are Doing Fine (Ariadne Press 2010), Katharina Hacker’s The Have-Nots (Europa Editions 2008) and Julia Franck’s The Blind Side of the Heart (Harvill 2009). This year’s longlist was announced in mid-August and includes: Blumenberg by Sibylle Lewitscharoff (see review page 9), Angelika Klüssendorf’s Das Mädchen (see review page 32), Navid Kermani, Dein Name (see above), Vorabend by Peter Kurzeck (reviewed in issue 29) and the lead title from our spring issue, Adams Erbe by Astrid Rosenfeld.

The German Book Prize 2011

This year saw the 35th Festival of German-Language Literature, which takes place annually in Klagenfurt, Austria and involves several days of readings and intense discussion. All of the competing extracts can be read in English translation at bachmannpreis.eu/en.

Michel Božikovi´c

Ferdinand von Schirach has already made waves in the book world with his collections of short stories that arise from his experiences as a Criminal Defence Lawyer (Crime and Guilt, published in the UK by Chatto & Windus). These stories are perfectly formed pieces that combine suspense with reflection – on, as the titles suggest, judgement, guilt and responsibility – and hit humorous notes, too. So Schirach’s first foray into the longer form, with his novel Der Fall Collini (‘The Collini Case’), is much anticipated. Here, a young lawyer is obliged to defend a man who does not wish to be defended, who admits murder but refuses to give a motive, and begs the question: ‘What makes someone who has lived a guilt-free life suddenly turn to murder?’

Schoßgebete

Kermani’s book The Terror of God is published this year in the UK by Polity Press.

This year, Austrian author Maja Haderlap was awarded the Bachmann Prize for an extract from her novel Engel des Vergessens (Wallstein, 2011). The shortlist included Michel Božikovi´c, Antonia Baum and Linus Reichlin, all reviewed in this issue (pp. 2, 5 and 19). Maja Haderlap, winner of the

Piper Verlag

Angelika Klüssendorf

Edinburgh International Book Festival This year, Edinburgh International Book Festival again earned its reputation as one of Britain’s leading international literature festivals. Alongside authors from Mexico, Poland, Israel, Sweden and Pakistan, a total of seven authors from Austria, Germany and Switzerland gave readings and took part in discussions during the two-week long festival.

Clemens Meyer Meyer took to the stage with his translator Katy Derbyshire and British author Stuart Evers, who also wrote the introduction to Meyer’s stories – just out in English (see page 23). In a fascinating and often hilarious discussion, brilliantly chaired by Stuart Kelly, the rain thundered down onto the marquee roof as the conversation took in the question of influence and the status of the short story – and two new terms were coined: ‘Dirty Surrealism’ and ‘appointed’ [the opposite of disappointed].

Jenny Erpenbeck After Erpenbeck’s great performance at Jewish Book Week in London earlier this year, she returned to the UK to talk about her latest novel Visitation. She was interviewed on stage by British author Michel Faber, who considers Erpenbeck to be ‘one of the finest, most exciting authors alive’ (The Guardian).

discussion of his novel and of the questions that it raises were as thoughtful, reflective and compelling as the novel itself.

Nicol Ljubi´c

All the Lights

Judith Schalansky Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands takes readers on a magical tour through the world’s most farflung islands and archipelagos. She discussed this extraordinary book with Alastair Bruce, whose debut novel traces a man’s journey back from exile on an isolated island. Schalansky’s new novel, Der Hals der Giraffe (‘The Giraffe’s Neck’), is just out with Suhrkamp.

Nicol Ljubić Reviewed in NBG Spring 2010, German-Croation author Ljubić’s Stillness of the Sea was published in English this year. He appeared in front of a full house to discuss writing after and about war with Penny Simpson, a British author whose novel is set in Croatia after the Balkan conflicts. Ljubić’s

Julya Rabinowich Rabinowich came to Edinburgh to talk about her debut novel Splithead, an enchanting story of emigration and exile from Russia to Austria. The same journey that the author herself took as a child, Rabinowich has injected parts of her own life story with energy, reflection and a fairy-tale aura.

Clemens Meyer signs copies of

Urs Widmer Prize-winning Swiss author Widmer was in Edinburgh to talk about his novel My Mother’s Lover, just out in English. Widmer and his translator Donal McLaughlin were joined on stage by British author Helen Walsh. Judith Hermann Renowned Berlin author Judith Hermann came to Edinburgh to talk about her new novel-inshort-stories, Alice – out this autumn in English. If you missed her in August, Hermann will also be at Cheltenham Festival in October (see below).

Cheltenham Literature Festival Judith Hermann

Crime writer Costin Wagner sets his chilling tales in Finland. His third book in English translation, The Winter of the Lions, came out this year, and his new novel is just out in German (see page 19). He is joined on stage by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid. Friday 14 October 9pm Imperial Square

Acclaimed short story writer Judith Hermann now has three collections out in English, starting with the seminal Summerhouse, Later, and most recently with Alice. She appears at Cheltenham with British author Polly Sampson. Sunday 16 October 12 noon Imperial Square

Jan Costin Wagner

news and informaTion

Werner Heisenberg, Elisabeth Heisenberg, Edited by Anna Maria Hirsch-Heisenberg

“ Meine liebe Li!” Der Briefwechsel 1937-1946 (“My dear Li!” Correspondence 1937-1946) Residenz Verlag, September 2011, 352 pp. ISBN: 978 3 701 73247 0

‘Honesty will stand above all’ Published partly as a result of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, a play which re-opened the discussion about Werner Heisenberg’s role in World War II, and partly in an attempt to bring closure to the controversy surrounding his wartime activities, My Dear Li! is an extremely important document for historians, biographers, and physicists alike. The book comprises the correspondence between the Nobel Prizewinning German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his wife Elisabeth during the years 1937 to 1946, introduced by their eldest daughter, Anna Maria Hirsch. The letters are largely left to speak for themselves, apart from those from 1945, where the corresponding chapter includes Werner’s diary entries for the last fourteen days before his arrest at the end of the War.

Three important strands run through the letters. First, they are a testimony to the period in terms both of what is said and of what could not be said for fear of the censor. They portray the stark realities of everyday life with all its difficulties throughout the wartime period. Second, the letters help to clarify a number of the questions that have arisen in connection with Werner Heisenberg. Why did he not leave to go to America when he had the opportunity? The

The Heisenbergs in 1937

Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 48)

NON-Fiction

Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) was one of the most prominent figures in Theoretical Physics and Quantum Mechanics. In 1932 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the formulation of his Uncertainty Principle. He stayed in Germany between 1933 and 1945, which led to much animosity against him. From 1939 onwards he worked on the development of nuclear power plants, was detained in England in 1945 and released a year later to help to develop an institute for Physics in Göttingen. From 1958-1970 he was head of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. Anna Maria Heisenberg, the eldest daughter of Werner and Elisabeth Heisenberg, was born in 1938. She studied Music and Psychology and worked as a teacher in Bonn. She lives

letters make it clear that he felt duty-bound to continue to support the development of science in his country beyond the end of the war, which he was convinced Germany would lose, and to work thereafter in the interests of the New Europe. At the same time, he was not happy with his work on the uranium project, which he saw as meaningless; however, the project allowed him to prevent himself and his colleagues from being sent to the Front. He perhaps underestimated the dangers of this route and always focused on the peaceful exploitation of atomic energy after the war, rather than the realities of creating the atom bomb for Germany. Always on his guard to appear loyal, his letters reveal his growing exhaustion and his longing to be at one with nature. Elisabeth’s responses are thus always of great comfort to him. This leads to the third strand running through the letters, namely the strengthening of the relationship of the couple and how they manage to help each other through the stormy period. Meticulously edited, the letters provide precious, rich and vivid images of the lives of Werner and Elisabeth Heisenberg.

near Munich. In 2003 she published letters sent to her parents up to 1945, entitled “Liebe Eltern! Briefe aus kritischer Zeit 1918-1945”. Translation rights available from: Residenz Verlag Gutenbergstr. 12, 3100 St.Pölten, Austria Tel: +43 2742 802 1411 Email: r.anderle@residenzverlag.at Contact: Renate Anderle www.residenzverlag.at

Jürgen Gottschlich

Der Bibeljäger. Die abenteuerliche Suche nach der Urfassung des Neuen Testaments (The Bible Hunter)

Ch. Links Verlag, September 2010, 220 pp. ISBN: 978 3 861 53 594 2

Found in a desert land The Bible Hunter offers a fascinating account of the history of the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest surviving

bound books in the world and the oldest copy of the New Testament in existence. Gottschlich describes the manuscript’s long and complex history, from its origins in the fourth century CE, to its present home in the British Library where the complete text has been digitalised.

In 1844, palaeographer and academic Constantin von Tischendorf, driven by an obsession with the origins of the Bible, discovered the Codex Sinaiticus in the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai Desert. Of the 129 sheets of parchment which he correctly identified as belonging to a Greek Bible manuscript which pre-dated the Vatican’s, he managed to remove forty-three and published a transcription and commentary two years later. Unable to convince the monks to release any further sheets from the manuscript, Tischendorf eventually arranged to visit the monastery in 1859 under the patronage of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. In order to retain the Tsar’s protection of the monastery, the monks permitted the manuscript to be loaned and it was taken to St Petersburg. It remained there until 1933 when it was bought by the British Library for Jürgen Gottschlich was born in 1954. He studied philosophy and journalism in Berlin. In 1979 he co-founded the taz newspaper, where he worked as a journalist until 1993. He continued as deputy editorin-chief before moving on to become the editor-in-chief of the Wochenpost weekly in 1994. Since 1998 he has worked as a correspondent for a variety of newspapers in Istanbul. Previous works: Türkei: Ein Land jenseits der Klischees (‘Turkey: A Land beyond

Clichés’, 2008)

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

£100,000, which was raised by public subscription. It is alleged that Tischendorf may well have deceived the monks in his pursuit of the truth and preservation of the manuscript, and Gottschlich makes a convincing case for this interpretation of events. The ten chapters of the book – part-travelogue, parthistorical study and critique – interweave several narrative strands: the author’s own visit to the Sinai; Tischendorf’s life and career; the history of the Bible and the Church; the history and life of the monks in the Monastery of St Catherine; the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus and attempts to procure it; and the story of the manuscript to the present day. Gottschlich’s open-minded approach to the monks and their life and liturgy contrasts sharply with the colonialist and patronising tone used by Tischendorf. This compelling study is the first of its kind to focus on the history of the Codex Sinaiticus, and is impressive in the breadth of its focus. It raises important questions about the nature of scholarship, and about the complex issue of how – and in particular where – the treasures of Antiquity are best preserved and displayed. Translation rights available from: Ch. Links Verlag Schönhauser Allee 36, Kulturbrauerei Haus S, 10435 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 44 02 32 23 Email: redaktion@christoph-links-verlag.de Contact: Johanna Links www.christoph-links-verlag.de ‘An adventurous journey through 2,000 years of cultural history.’ (Stern) ‘The “adventurous search for the original version of the new testament” itself becomes an extremely worthwhile and instructive reading adventure.’ (Deutsche Welle)

Ch. Links Verlag was one of the first independent publishing houses to be launched after the abolition of censorship in the German Democratic Republic in the autumn of 1989. The list concentrated on the history of Stalinism and communism in the GDR, before expanding to cover such nonfiction areas as the Federal Republic of Germany, the history of German colonialism and the legacy of National Socialism. It now includes international history and politics. ‘With great care, Jürgen Gottschlich explains a story for believers and non-believers alike, which takes us deep into the culture shock of the 19th century.’ (InfoRadio)

NON-Fiction

Thomas Großbölting and Rüdiger Schmidt

Der Tod des Diktators. Ereignis und Erinnerung im 20. Jahrhundert (The Death of the Dictator: History and Memory in the Twentieth Century) Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, March 2011, 20 pp. ISBN: 978 3 525 30009 1

How the mighty are fallen Each of the fifteen contributions in this landmark collection of essays contains illuminating insights into a particular culture and society, focusing on the historical and political significance of the symbolic and physical deaths of dictators around the globe.

The contributors analyse not only the historical and biographical details surrounding the rule of these authoritarian leaders, their assent to power and their political and bodily demise, but also the myths and cults of personality that developed around them. The authors demonstrate that these myths were, in many ways, as important for the maintenance of dictatorial power as were the violent treatment of opponents and the fear engendered in the rest of the population. The essays consider the ways in which these myths are sustained after the physical death of the dictator and how they continue to serve the political interests of the successor regime. Particular highlights of the book are those moments when the authors give an insight into the man behind the dictatorial mask.

Stretching from Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (but with an emphasis on the twentieth century), each essay reads as an individual case study in the mechanisms of power that both sustain and lead to the downfall of dictatorial regimes and the men who lead them. Accumulatively, these fascinating descriptions of authoritarian (or even totalitarian) rule highlight the fragile nature of power, even in those regimes where the dictator appears to have an iron grip on society and politics. Several of the essays highlight the many ‘deaths’ of the dictator: the symbolic death resulting from their removal from power as well as their physical death, often long after dictatorial rule has ended. From the usurping of Lenin’s political authority during his protracted period of ill health, to the embalming of Ho Chi Minh against his express wishes, the essays in this collection suggest that political power relies to a large extent on the construction of symbolic power.

Bringing together a wide range of different contexts which point towards many parallels in the deaths and afterlives of dictators, The Death of the Dictator will appeal to a wide readership. Many of the contributions are likely to be of particular interest to British and American readers wanting to find out more about their own nation’s involvement in the maintenance or toppling of dictatorial rule.

Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48)

NON-Fiction

Previous works: Thomas Großbölting, Roger Engelmann and Hermann Wentker, Kommunismus in der Krise. Die Entstalinisierung 1956 und die Folgen

Rüdiger Schmidt is a research assistant in the History Department of the University of Münster.

(‘Communism in Crisis’, 2008)

Thomas Großbölting is a professor of Modern History at the University of Münster.

Translation rights available from: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG Theaterstr. 13, 37073 Göttingen, Germany Tel: +49 551 50 84 275 Email: m.wolf@v-r.de Contact: Margarita Wolf http://www.v-r.de/

One of the oldest independent publishers still in existence, the Göttingen firm Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht has been publishing academic literature since 1735, and now issues over 250 new titles a year. The classical core of the list consists of academic works in the fields of theology and religion, history, medieval studies, philosophy and philology. Equally important is the firm’s developing range of practical, do-it-yourself titles – on personal development, psychological counselling, spiritual community work and much else – which are both useful and highly readable.

Michael Martens

Heldensuche. Die Geschichte des Soldaten, der nicht töten wollte (The Hunt for a Hero. The story of the soldier who would not kill) Paul Zsolnay Verlag, July 2011, 400 pp. ISBN: 978 3 552 05531 5

The making of a legend Conjuring up the peculiar atmosphere of contemporary Serbia in this multi-faceted and intriguing book, Martens invites the reader to become a kind of detective at the scene of a crime. Josef Schulz was part of the German forces which occupied Yugoslavia in 1941 and one of the first casualties of partisan action that year. A day or so after his death, a number of young men were executed as a reprisal by German troops in the Serbian town of Smederevska Palanka. This shooting gave rise to the legend that one of the firing squad refused to take part, was immediately faced with the choice to kill or be killed, and chose the latter path. This noble action was attributed to Schulz, who became a cult figure in Yugoslavia more or less straight after the end of the war and equally, in the 1960s and 1970s, attracted the attention of the German press. The cult in Yugoslavia went so far as to spawn a film, various memorials (or at least the inclusion of Schulz’s name on partisan memorials) and, as late as 2009, a plan to name a major thoroughfare in the aforementioned town after the man.

Michael Martens was born in Hamburg in 1973. From 2002 to 2009 he worked as a correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Belgrade. Since then he has reported for the paper from Istanbul. ‘The search for what took happened on 20 July 1941 in Smederevska Palanka and what Josef Schulz had to do with it is a captivating story; the uncoventional protagonist and richly detailed writing style does not let you go until the mystery has been solved.’ (Deutsche Welle)

Why should such a legend develop and survive for so long? On the German side, the post-war desire to find and put on a pedestal someone who had refused to go along with Nazi barbarism is easy to understand; in Yugoslavia, the identification of an enemy soldier with the national cause gave the state legitimacy. At the same time, Nazi war crimes investigators have been especially concerned to discover the truth, as the legend of Schulz seemed to support a fallacious argument invariably put forward by defendants in war crimes trials: that the alternative to obeying orders was death. Interestingly, a real event did perhaps help to give birth to the story: the execution of the partisan Ivan Muker, a German-speaking communist who had moved to Serbia in 1940, and who was therefore almost as much an outsider as Schulz. The Hunt for a Hero has much of importance to say about

the worlds of politics and the media, not to mention human gullibility. The case itself may relate to ‘a far-off country of which we know little’, but the themes, in particular the question of how legends and ‘folk tales’ arise, are of universal interest.

Translation rights available from: Paul Zsolnay Verlag Prinz-Eugen-Straße 30, A-1040 Wien, Austria Tel: +43 1 505 766112 E-mail: annette.lechner@zsolnay.at Contact: Annette Lechner www.zsolnay.at

Application for assistance with translation costs: Austria (see page 48)

NON-Fiction

Brigitte Reimann

Like her heroines, Brigitte Reimann (1933-1973) was impetuous and vocal, addressing issues and feelings otherwise repressed in the GDR. She believed passionately in socialism, yet never joined the party, remained with her second husband, writer Siegfried Pitschmann, yet pursued a series of affairs. Sometimes clashing with the system, ultimately it needed her talent and unlike Pitschmann she was consistently published. Like Elisabeth, she followed the state’s call for artists to leave their ivory towers and engage with the workers, moved to the new town of Hoyerswerda to work parttime at a nearby industrial plant and run writing classes there. As a result she wrote Ankunft im Alltag, a socialist coming-ofage novel which spawned a whole genre. In 1960 her brother left for the West and she began writing Die Geschwister. Her final masterwork Franziska Linkerhand explores many of the same themes but the prose is more mature, expansive and Proustian, interspersed with flashbacks, the tone more hard-hitting. It was the last novel she wrote before dying of cancer and is now available uncensored. Brigitte Reimann was a free spirit, a role model for independent women and an inspiration to all, selling widely in both Germanys. Like her novels, her diaries, published in two volumes, make exciting reading, by turns racy, passionate, bold, bitter – but above all life-affirming. Translation rights sold to: Spain (Bartleby Editores S.L.. Madrid) Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 48) Translation rights available from: Publisher: Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG Address: Prinzenstraße 85, 10969 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 28394 123 Email: ihmels@aufbau-verlag.de Contact: Inka Ihmels www.aufbau-verlag.de For information about Aufbau Verlag, see page 31

A FORGOTTEN GEM

Die Geschwister (My Brother and I)

Aufbau Verlag, 1963; new edition 1995 192 pp. ISBN: 978 3 746 61530 1

A heartfelt view of life in East Germany by one of the socialist state’s most talented writers: Steph Morris introduces Brigitte Reimann’s Die Geschwister. ‘I will never forgive you for this,’ Uli says to his sister Elisabeth. What she has done to him is only revealed later; first the narrative circles back. Elisabeth is the one who has been hurt: her beloved brother has announced he is leaving for the West in two days. Die Geschwister (literally ‘the siblings’) is the story of a beautiful relationship and the forces which threaten it, when human emotion and ideology collide. It is 1960 and the border between East and West Germany has already been closed, with West Berlin the only loophole. For Elisabeth the GDR still represents the chance to build a more just society – despite frustrations with the system. And it is home. For Uli there seems no room for manoeuvre. Uli is an engineer; Elisabeth an artist. As part of a scheme for bringing art to the people and the people to art, she works part-time at a Kombinat, a collective industrial plant, where she has a studio and runs painting classes for the workers. She still has run-ins with the system, clashing with an older painter she sees as unfairly favoured by the party, commissioning his hideous daubs at the workers’ expense. When he then denounces her to the Stasi she is forced to defend herself, a challenge the outspoken Elisabeth rises to. Brother and sister have returned home for the Easter weekend, to the house where they grew up, played together, Hansel and Gretel, made their first forays into dating, vetting each others’ choices. Now they go drinking, walk round town, lounge around in their pyjamas using their childhood nicknames. They have an older brother but he has fled to the West already. Elisabeth and her mother meet him in West Berlin. Elisabeth accuses him of taking his East German training to cash in on West German pay; he accuses her of peddling the party line. The argument is highly authentic and reflects thousands of discussions which took place in those years. When their mother cannot stand it any longer, she tells Elisabeth to wait at the checkpoint for her. The sense of otherness and disorientation Elisabeth feels walking through the West Berlin streets is acute. Elisabeth, the painter, has an eye for light and colour, capturing images; Brigitte Reimann, the writer, a feel for every possible sense and sensation, for smells, weather, mood, and above all emotions. Elisabeth is engaged to Joachim, a loyal party member and believer in the system. They are opposites who attract, Joachim a dependable type that the impulsive Elisabeth can rely on. And the party can depend on him too. Or can it? All three are caught in an intractable dilemma when Elisabeth, getting nowhere in her attempts to convince Uli to stay, fetches Joachim to help. And this is what Uli will never forgive his sister; normally if Joachim heard someone was planning to leave the country it would be his duty to inform the authorities. Instead Joachim agrees to try persuasion. When, exhausted, Elisabeth tells Uli just to leave – and not to bother keeping in touch - Uli replies that he can’t; tomorrow he will be on the list of suspected defectors, he’ll be stopped at the border. She assures him that he won’t, thereby compromising Joachim. But by now the two men have bonded. Uli is reading a book on cybernetics and Joachim suggests they meet to discuss the topic some time over a drink. Some time? Uli has seen the light; he will stay. This has been viewed as a contrived ending, bent to conform to state ideology and ensure the book was published. Yet – aside from the fact that few writers anywhere evade ideological bias and many make compromises to get into print – for dramatic purposes this outcome is perfect. Instead of leaving, Uli remains, but the damage has been done; the rift between the siblings is now emotional, not geographical. He will never forgive her for betraying him; she will never forgive him for wanting to leave her. And the narrative shoe-horning exemplifies the book’s subject, the clash between human needs and political expediency. The tension is palpable, and hardly stops the book from being a good read. If the text sometimes appears torn between conflicting feelings and beliefs, then so was its author, and so was society. With Die Geschwister Brigitte Reimann captured the mood of a generation and became a cult figure in an increasingly turgid culture thanks to the honesty and energy of her prose and her lifestyle. When the book was published, in 1963, the prominent GDR architect Hermann Henselmann wrote to her to say ‘your descriptions reflect our life together so closely, you have now become a member of our family and we are waiting eagerly to see what you write next.’ For us, now, her writing remains one of the few frank literary evocations of what it really felt like to live in that era. Steph Morris is a writer and translator living in Berlin and London. www.steph-morris.com

‘Ulrike Almut Sandig and Judith Zander, both under 35, grew up in rural East Germany. While they never slip into misguided nostalgia, many of their poems contain echos of a time and place in the past. Sandig frequently draws the reader into a specific scene or moment, providing a clearly contoured portrait, occasionally closing with a twist. Zander has a fondness for strict forms and an ear for metre, stringing together abstract images to assemble a coherent snapshot. Their work rewards multiple readings by revealing new layers of surprising power.’ – Bradley Schmidt, translator

Three poems by Ulrike Almut Sandig

two open windows, wind waves between us.

we kiss each other often on our wet faces. we lock up tightly the tear that travels horizontally along the middle of each of our own bodies. we sew ourselves to each other. we sew ourselves together. we make ourselves, you, a silent creature.

in summer the elderly sit their feet drawn close and hold their suitcases tight. they contain: savings in plastic wrap, mother’s gold jewellery, three photos, two letters, the passport. only the elderly sit in the dark on tables when wind winds up, and count the seconds between thunder and lightning and the elderly sit and don’t say a word

Three Poems by Judith Zander vanishing point

or dawn

from the burning scissor-steps racing peels out tetrapod fly to the edges of breath and facing concrete the curbs sway against our eyes a red repoussé between your lighter-fingers something grows warm like fox fur fast as you can baby under my thin tongue rattles the other half of the slogan casually your neck dries up the rain-light

my hand is a dead fish in the morning it drifts on your chest sideways the night made a heron take wing

Bradley Schmidt was born in South Dakota and grew up in rural Kansas. He studied literature, philosophy and theology as well as translation in the US and Germany. He now works as a freelance translator and as a lecturer at the University of Leipzig.

my eyes two swinging canoes in the short waves of daylight a dead fish lies on your chest like an alp like a fish out of water you gasp twitch back from the brothers the one is called sleep they paddle with strokes in unison they tie sparkling strings for everyone drop for drop into the river my hand is a dead fish in the morning silver the scales in the rushes uncaught it swashes on your chest on the bank the rushes bide their time

it doesn’t come when you call we imagined the weather would hold up the rain lets itself daily with its sedan carried the earth to earth in its gracious entirety but then there were cords that like

everything is done, everything is in its place. all the boxes unpacked CDs and books ordered. Everything is here. we sit opposite each other an apple, two cups water that tastes like wine to us. beams of light stand around us dust twists slowly we don’t see it.

along the middle of each of our own bodies

Ulrike Almut Sandig was born in 1979 in East Germany and now lives in Leipzig, having studied at the renowned Leipzig Institute for German Literature. She has published several volumes of poetry and one prose work, Flamingos (reviewed in NBG Spring 2010). Sandig has received many awards for her poetry, including the prestigious Leonce and Lena Prize.

the jaw’s harp touched the core they proclaimed something and what played at night in the window crack we added to our dreams heavenly children it cools us when we sweat

an apple, two cups

Both authors of well-regarded fiction, Ulrike Almut Sandig and Judith Zander are also accomplished poets. Here, NBG prints exclusive new translations.

Judith Zander was shortlisted for the 2010 German Book Prize for her debut novel Dinge, die wir heute sagten (‘Things we said today’). She was born in East Germany in 1980 and now lives in Berlin, where she writes and translates. She has received numerous prizes for her poetry. All translations by Bradley Schmidt. Ulrike Almut Sandig’s poems taken from: Ulrike Almut Sandig: Dickicht. Gedichte © Schöffling & Co. Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2011 and Streumen. Gedichte © Connewitzer Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig, 2007 Judith Zander’s poems taken from: Judith Zander: oder tau. Gedichte © 2011 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich/Germany

poetry

Information for Editors n The

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

n Different

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 With

n For

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

n Our

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

n At

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.

guest members are invited to join the committee each time, and include publishers, literary agents, booksellers and translators. this, our 30th issue, we have founded a new U.S.-based jury. The American jury consists of a literary scout, a literary critic and an editor, as well as the GBO New York and the Goethe-Instituts of New York and Chicago.

n Our

only guiding principle when selecting the books is quality: we are looking for outstanding works and voices, works which should have a chance even in the tricky British and American market and internationally.

n Books

featured in New Books in German and bought by an English-language publisher are guaranteed a grant. See full information below.

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.

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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

If you are interested in publishing a title not featured in New Books in German, please contact your local Goethe-Institut directly. The form to be filled out for these applications is available at the following webpage, which has much useful information in English: www.goethe.de/uun/ang/ueb/uea/bew/enindex.htm Contact person in London: Elisabeth Pyroth, Goethe-Insitut London Tel: +44 20 7596 4020 elisabeth.pyroth@london.goethe.org Contact person in North America: Werner Ott, Goethe-Institut Chicago Tel: +1 312-263-0472 ott@chicago.goethe.org Contact person in the Goethe-Institut Head Office: Andreas Schmohl, Goethe-Institut Munich Tel: +49 89 15921-852 schmohl@goethe.de

Issue 30 – The Editorial Committee Editorial Committee for this issue: Claudia Amthor-Croft, Goethe-Institut; Anthea Bell, Translator; Ben Harris, NBG Editorial Consultant; Franziska Heimgartner, Embassy of Switzerland; Tanja Howarth, Tanja Howarth Literary Agency; Richard Lea, The Guardian; Andreas Langenbacher, Pro Helvetia; Steph Morris, Translator; Susanne Ott-Bissels, London Library; Elisabeth Pyroth, Goethe-Institut; Vanessa Norhausen, NBG Editorial Assistant; Jonathan Ruppin, Foyles Bookshop; Charlotte Ryland, NBG Editor; Barbara Schwepcke, Haus Publishing; Waltraud Strommer, Austrian Cultural Forum; Shaun Whiteside, British Centre for Literary Translation

Editorial Committee in the USA: Brigitte Doellgast, Goethe-Institut New York; Brittany Hazelwood, German Book Office; Edna McCown, Goethe-Institut New York; Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review; Sal Robinson, Harcourt; Bettina Schrewe, Bettina Schrewe Literary Scouting Agency; Riky Stock, German Book Office; Christiane Tacke, Goethe-Insitut Chicago

Associate in the USA: Riky Stock Director German Book Office New York 72 Spring Street, 11th Floor New York, NY 10012

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

Financial and moral support for New Books in German is provided by the Foreign Ministries of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, Pro Helvetia (Arts Council of Switzerland), the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Goethe-Institut in Munich and London, the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels. Steering Committee for New Books in German: Claudia Amthor-Croft (Goethe-Institut); Barbara Becker (Frankfurt Book Fair); Ben Harris (NBG Editorial Consultant); Franziska Heimgartner (Embassy of Switzerland); Tanja Howarth (Tanja Howarth Literary Agency); Florian Seitz (German Embassy); Peter Mikl (Austrian Cultural Forum); Charlotte Ryland (NBG Editor); Elisabeth Pyroth (GoetheInstitut); Waltraud Strommer (Austrian Cultural Forum); Shaun Whiteside (British Centre for Literary Translation)

Editorial Consultant: Ben Harris For information on the background to New Books in German, or if you have questions on distribution or would like to be added to the mailing list, please contact the editor.

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 Antonia Baum Larissa Boehning Michel Božikovi´c Sherko Fatah Katrin Gerlof Jürgen Gottschlich Thomas Großbölting & Rüdiger Schmidt Agnes Hammer Christoph Hein Werner & Elisabeth Heisenberg Monika Helfer Peter Henisch Angelika Klüssendorf Daniela Krien Michael Kumpfmüller Jo Lendle Sibylle Lewitscharoff Michael Martens Albert Ostermaier Inka Parei Christoph Poschenrieder Cay Rademacher Linus Reichlin Kirsten Reinhardt Ursula Timea Rossel Eugen Ruge Max Scharnigg Frank Schmeißer Kathrin Schrocke Peter Stamm Heinrich Steinfest Ilija Trojanow Simon Urban Jan Costin Wagner Andrea Weibel n

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