›Best Novel of the Year Award‹ for Christoph Poschenrieder’s The Invisible Novel

Christoph Poschenrieder’s latest book The Invisible Novel has been awarded the prize for the ›Best Novel of the Year‹ 2019 by the Munich daily newspaper Abendzeitung. The 46th award ceremony took place on 4 February in Munich. Please find photos of the ceremony here.

The book has received more reviews, most recently by the prestigious daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – here’s a quote from Martin Halter's article: »As the ghostwriter of a literary figure who was capable of everything, Poschenrieder (who only started writing in his mid-forties) is in top form.« 

Daniela Krien’s Love in Case of Emergency to be published in 19 languages.

With Hungarian rights sold to Maxim and Serbian rights sold to Booka, Love in Case of Emergency is going to be published in 19 languages. 

Foreign rights sold:
Catalan (Bromera)
Chinese/CN (Beijing October Literature & Art)
Danish (Arvids)
Dutch (Ambo|Anthos)
English/UK (MacLehose Press)
English/US (HarperVia)
Finnish (Lurra)
French (Albin Michel)
Hebrew (Keter)
Hungarian (Maxim)
Italian (Corbaccio)
Lithuanian (Gelmes)
Norwegian (Forlaget Press)
Romanian (Humanitas)
Serbian (Booka)
Slovenian (Mladinska Knjiga)
Spanish (Grijalbo)
Thai (Library House)

Tatjana Hauptmann receives Golden Diogenes Owl and has an exhibition on the occasion of her 70th birthday

Tatjana Hauptmann, illustrator of picture books such as A Day in the Life of Petronella Pig or How the Mole Nearly Won the Lottery, turned 70 on 1 February 2020 – Happy Birthday! On this occasion, newspapers praised her work, among them Andreas Platthaus in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, specifically about Petronella Pig: »This book is astoundingly imaginative.«

One week before, Tatjana Hauptmann had another reason to celebrate, when Diogenes publisher Philipp Keel awarded her the Golden Diogenes Owl pin for selling more than one million Diogenes copies of her books. Here's another round number: Her books have been published in 20 languages.

Another occasion will also call for a celebration: The Wilhelm Busch Museum of Caricature and Drawing in Hannover will show her oeuvre in a special exhibition from July to October 2020. More information here.

Now published: Sasha Filipenko, Red Crosses

One fights against forgetting, the other would like nothing more than that. 

She is suffering from Alzheimer’s, losing more and more memories. But once you meet this old lady, you’ll never forget her.

Alexander is a young man whose life has been brutally torn in two. Tatiana Alexeyevna is over ninety and getting more forgetful by the day. The old lady tells her new neighbour her life story, encompassing the entire Russian 20th century and all its horrors. And she tells him: »God is afraid of me. There are too many uncomfortable questions coming His way.«

Bit by bit, the two recognize their own broken hearts in each other and forge an unlikely friendship, a pact against forgetting. A great Russian novel in only 280 pages – from Stalin’s terror to the present day.

Foreign rights sold:
Croatian (Bozicevic)
Czech (Pistorius)
Dutch (Meridiaan)
English/world (Europa Editions)
French (Éditions des Syrtes)
Hungarian (Európa)
Italian (Edizioni e/o)
Polish (Agora)
Russian original publisher: Vremya

»Sasha Filipenko is one of those young writers who immediately gained a reputation for being a serious author. If you want to get inside the head of modern, young Russia, read Filipenko.«
Svetlana Alexievich (Nobel Prize winner 2015)

»An important, necessary book. Both for Russia, which suffers from historic amnesia, and Europe which is also running the risk of losing its historic memory.«
Dmitry Glukhovsky (Russian author)

»A tour de force. A book full of sound and fury, but also greatness and gentleness.«
Astrid de Larminat / Le Figaro littéraire, Paris

»The author expertly interlaces the fictitious story with the original documents and transposes history into the present.«
Lerke von Saalfeld / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt

»First, this book is very sophisticatedly constructed. Second, it tells an outrageous story.«
Peer Teuwsen / Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag, Zurich 

Please let us know if you would like to see the full English manuscript.

Just published in translation: Travelling to Tripiti by H.U. Steger

Chinese edition by Beibeixiong (Beijing)

Foreign rights sold:

Chinese/simplified characters (Beibeixiong)
Japanese (Dowakan Shuppan)

Just published in translation: Temptation by János Székely

English edition by Pushkin Press (UK)

Foreign rights sold:
English/UK (Pushkin Press)
English/US (New York Review Books)
French (Gallimard)

Just published in translation: The Underground Sketchbook by Tomi Ungerer

English edition by Fantagraphics Books (USA)

Foreign rights sold:
English/US (Fantagraphics Books)
French (Les Cahiers Dessinés)

Chris Kraus’ Cold Blood nominated for ›Prix Nerval-Goethe‹

The French edition of Chris Kraus’ Cold Blood (La fabrique des salauds, published by Belfond) has been nominated for the ›Prix Nerval-Goethe‹. This prize for French translations of German works is chosen by the Goethe-Institut Paris, the Richard Stury Foundation, the DGLFLF (Délégation Générale à la Langue Française et aux Langues de France) and the Sorbonne. It comes with an honorarium of EUR 8'000. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

As you will remember, the French edition of Cold Blood was also nominated for three other prizes in 2019 (Prix Femina Étranger, Prix du meilleur Livre Étranger, Palmarès Livres Hebdo des Libraires), so this is the fourth nomination – not to mention the rave reviews and the high ranks on the datalib bestseller list. 

Simone Lappert’s Jump to be published in Italian and Georgian

Foreign rights sold:
Georgian (Academic Press)
Italian (Ugo Guanda)

Here’s more press on the book:

»Lappert recounts wonderfully vivid stories about the different characters, but deliberately leaves the conundrum of Manu and her jump unresolved.«
Charles Linsmeyer / Swiss Revue, Bern

»This is one of those books that can be read in one sitting.«
Christina Graf / Radio 1, Zurich

Ingrid Noll’s With Love, Karl #10 on the Spiegel bestseller list

Ingrid Noll’s latest book With Love, Karl entered the Spiegel bestseller list at #10 upon publication at the end of January and has remained on the list until now.

Here are the latest press quotes on this book of short stories:

»The author unfolds her outrageous tales with a sly wink.«
Karin Grossmann / Sächsische Zeitung, Dresden

»With sardonic wit and without batting an eye, the grande dame of German crime writing has her women – let down by men – resort to murder.«
Welf Grombacher / Nürnberger Nachrichten, Nürnberg

»It goes without saying, of course, that the texts bear witness to her ability to narrate grippingly.«
Thomas Groß / Mannheimer Morgen, Mannheim

Now published: Daniela Krien, Muldental

A country has collapsed – what happens to the people who once lived there? Every radical change has its victims, even a peaceful revolution. Daniela Krien bears witness to the fate of a generation by telling stories of people whose lives lost their equilibrium at a historical turning point. She writes about deep despair and loss of orientation. Yet these miniature novels go beyond individual fates; they sketch out a portrait of the people of today.

A book about keeping one’s head above water despite it all, about going on despite it all, about surviving and coping despite it all. Bestselling author Daniela Krien’s short story collection, including a previously unpublished story and a foreword by the writer.

Foreign rights sold:
Finnish (Lurra)

»It’s down to the beauty and clarity of Krien’s language that she has created something in which many people recognize themselves.«
Maren Keller / Der Spiegel, Hamburg

»They [the stories] are valid through their general human truth.«
Alexander Kosenina / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Now published: Hartmut Lange, The Courtyard

»Love is not an opportunity for freedom; it happens out of necessity,« thinks a woman who realizes her husband has left her. Darkly luminous yet crystal clear sentences like this one have made Hartmut Lange’s prose famous.

Four novellas, complemented by an autobiographical piece, with which Hartmut Lange tells us about the formative experiences for his life and his writing: Christmas 1944 in Naßwerder, the horrors of forced evacuation, the death of his father and later his brother.

One of the last great masters of the novella writes about the magical power of gathering shadows.

Sneak Peek into Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries and Notebooks

»Happiness, for me, is a matter of imagination – at the happiest moments, lying in bed with a cup of coffee and the Sunday papers, perhaps, I can think myself into gloom and despair in a matter of seconds. The corollary of this is what I really wanted to note: that existence is a matter of the unconscious elimination of negative and pessimistic thinking. I mean, to survive at all. And this applies to everyone. We are all suicides under the skin, and under the surface of our lives.« Cahier 23, 1 October 1954

This is a first taste of Her Diaries and Notebooks by Patricia Highsmith, to be published in 2021. If you’d like to know more about who’s behind the project, don’t miss the interview with the author’s last editor Anna von Planta, our colleague to this very day (in German, here).

Foreign rights sold:
Catalan (Navona)
English/North America (Liveright / Norton)
English/UK (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
French (Calmann-Lévy)
Italian (La Nave di Teseo)
Portuguese/Brazil (Intrínseca)
Spanish/world (Anagrama)