just published:
Anne Reinecke Leinsee

Karl is not yet thirty but has already made a name for himself as an artist in Berlin. He is the son of August and Ada Stiegenhauer, the most glamorous couple of the German art scene. But in his parents’ symbiotic relationship there was no room for a child, so he was sent away to boarding school. Now his father has committed suicide, and his mother has a brain tumour. In Karl’s cosmos everything begins to sway, and suddenly comes to a standstill.

The only constant is a little girl, Tanja, who entices him back to life with her childlike carefreeness. Here begins a story as wild as a thunderstorm, as gentle as a breeze.

»But most of all, Reinecke’s debut shows an enchanting restoration of paradise, almost lost. Captivating!«
Björn Hayer / Galore, Dortmund

just published:
Lukas Hartmann A Picture of Lydia

A millionaire heiress and a genius painter: a scandalous belle époque love affair. Lukas Hartmann’s new novel is about the fate of a woman who breaks with the conventions of her time. In the story of Lydia Welti-Escher and Karl Stauffer-Bern, love and art come face to face with money and power at the end of the 19th century.

She is intelligent, fascinated by art – and after the death of her father, the ›railway king‹ Alfred Escher, she is the richest woman in Switzerland. She is married to the son of a powerful politician. She is prepared to put all that at risk out of her love for an artist. Who is Lydia? No one knows her better than Luise, the maid who stays by her side through all of life’s twists and turns. And yet Lydia remains a mystery to her.

just published:
Hansjörg Schneider Child of the Aare

Where does a writer come from? Authentic, touching and not the slightest bit conciliatory, Hansjörg Schneider traces his journey through life. One of Switzerland’s best known and most popular writers looks back – in love, in grief, in anger and tenderness.

»I am a child of the Aare river. It is the most beautiful river in Switzerland, unimposing but a charming sight.« Hansjörg Schneider writes about the Aargau region, the Nothern Swiss landscape that made him who he is today. About the gentle hills and meadows and the bleak, authoritarian atmosphere of his childhood and youth in the post-war years. About his time as a student in Basel up to his start into a life dedicated to literature.

one month after publication:
Bernhard Schlink Olga

Spiegel Bestseller # 1

We are proud and happy to announce that, so far, we have sold foreign rights for the following languages:
French (Gallimard)
Spanish/world (Anagrama)
Italian (Neri Pozza)
Chinese (Thinkingdom)
Dutch (Cossee)
Russian (Azbooka-Atticus)
Turkish (Dogan Egmont)
Hungarian (21. Század)
Greek (Kritiki)
Romanian (Polirom)
Ukrainian (Hemiro)
Serbian (Plato)
Macedonian (Ili-Ili)
Icelandic (Forlagid)

gems from our backlist:
Martin Suter Small World

It’s Martin Suter’s 70th birthday! He was born on the unlikely date of 29 February 1948, so we are celebrating it today.

Martin Suter made his living with advertisement before dedicating himself to writing. His first novel Small World turned him into a widely known author and his books have been published in 35 languages.

Small World is the story of Konrad Lang, whose life is closely intertwined with the affluent Koch family. It’s the story of an elderly man and a long-hidden family secret that resurfaces when Lang’s childhood memories are triggered by his dementia. Small World was first published in 2001 but it is as timely as ever as illnesses typical of old age are ever more present with our growing life expectancy.

But on the occasion of Martin Suter’s 70th birthday we want to end on a celebratory note, his latest project Song Book, a CD and booklet in his native Swiss German dialect, played and recorded together with his friend Stephan Eicher. Please find a recording for Swiss TV SRF here – and Diogenes’ birthday choir singing an adapted song from it here. (Yes, that’s us.)

just published:
Anthony McCarten Jack

Jack Kerouac is a shadow of his former self, drinking himself to death in Florida. The beatnik idol who once cannibalized his friend Neal Cassady’s life to write the cult novel On the Road. One day, out of the blue,  a student of literature knocks on his door. She wants to write down his life story, to be his first biographer. Jack refuses and yet he lets Jan’s admiration seduce him into looking back. A trip from which no one returns unharmed. How much of our life is really our own and how much is only borrowed, emulated?

»Fiction by Oscar candidate Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour).«
Style, Zurich

just published:
Hartmut Lange On the Prorer Wiek and Elsewhere

The Prorer Wiek is a bay on the island of Rugen, where the coastal resort of Binz, famed for its sophistication, lies. That glamorous history makes it an impressive backdrop for five novellas of unexpected encounters, disappointments and emotional crises.

Five other novellas are set in Rome, a very different but no less intense backdrop for life’s ultimate questions. Even the ›eternal city‹ – how invulnerable is it really to transience, the deepest human humiliation?
Ten precipitous novellas of melancholy beauty about what was and what still thrives, about famous pictures, philosophical consolation and the crutches of common sense. But above all about the question: what endures?

Tomi Ungerer ›Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur‹

In December 2017, Tomi Ungerer was promoted to the rank of commander in the French Legion of Honour (›Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur‹) by President Emmanuel Macron. In 2001, he had already been dubbed officer by Minister for the Arts and Culture Jack Lang, and in 1990 knight of the Legion of Honour by President François Mitterrand.

The Legion of Honour is the highest French order of merit, dating back to Napoleon, who established it in 1802.

gems from our backlist:
Andrzej Szczypiorski The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman

We would like to commemorate our author Andrzej Szczypiorski on what would have been his 90th birthday on 3 February.

Born in 1928, he took part in the Warsaw Uprising against German occupation in 1944 – and turned the experience of those years into his famous novel The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman – or Poczatek in its Polish original.

Considered by some to be an allegory on Poland as a whole, The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman tells the story of Irma Seidenman’s incarceration by the Gestapo. The web of relationships between the characters is all the more revealing because of its setting in a society in which old class distinctions are being replaced by people’s ability to adapt to the occupying forces and their inhumane world view.

In a Europe where nationalism is on the rise again and in a world where some want to come first, we think The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman has lost none of the relevance it had when it was first published in 1986.

Andrzej Szczypiorski’s significance also rose after the book’s publication: After 1989, he became a member of Polish parliament and was awarded several prizes for his merits in Polish-German reconciliation. Andrzej Szczypiorski died in 2000, so only two years until the 20th anniversary of his death.

Spiegel 2017 hardcover fiction publisher ranking: Diogenes again in the top spot!

Just like last year, Diogenes is # 1 on the fiction publisher hardcover ranking of the Spiegel bestseller list for the year 2017.

Eight of our titles contributed to this feat, most prominently, Martin Suter's Elefant. The book about the handbag-sized pink pachyderm made it to # 10 of the 2017 fiction hardcover ranking.

Four more titles of which we handle world rights made it on the all-year fiction hardcover ranking: Donna Leon’s Earthly Remains was # 29, Benedict Wells’ On the End of Loneliness # 37 (particularly outstanding after being released in 2016), Ingrid Noll’s Tally-Ho # 57 and Klaus Cäsar Zehrer’s debut The Genius # 85