30k copies sold, #20 on the Spiegel bestseller list

We have just received a first offer for English rights for Joachim B. Schmidt's Kalmann – right after selling Icelandic rights. The book is set in Iceland, and the author lives in Reykjavík with his family and is both an Icelandic and Swiss citizen. No wonder that two Icelandic publishers were keen to publish Kalmann. We are happy that Forlagið will now be his publisher in his home country. 

Furthermore, much-feared German critic Denis Scheck did an interview with Joachim B. Schmidt and praised his novel Kalmann on German public TV ARD. Scheck argues: »Kalmann is one of the most impressive figures that I’ve come across in literature lately.« As a consequence, Kalmann has just made it to #20 of the Spiegel bestseller list – and we've just cracked the mark of 30'000 copies sold.

More press continues to come in, quite a feat four months after publication and with most of the readings cancelled:
»Gripping, funny, emphatic, and cleverly constructed.«
Die Presse am Sonntag / Vienna

»Unusual things from the edge of the world.«
Kleine Zeitung / Graz

Foreign rights sold:
Arabic (Al-Arabi)
Icelandic (Forlagið)
Spanish (Gatopardo)

 

Best-selling books of 2020: our titles rank at the top in Germany, Switzerland and Austria

On the German all-year bestseller chart for 2020 compiled by the news magazine Spiegel, two Diogenes titles feature among the top 25 in fiction and hardcover: Colours of Farewell (Bernhard Schlink, #14) and Trace Elements (Donna Leon, #21). In the field of non-fiction, Living, Writing, Breathing (Doris Dörrie, #28) even made it onto the list for the second time in a row, after ranking #21 in 2019.

Diogenes' books struck a special chord with Swiss readers in 2020: Among the 20 most sold hardcover titles, there are five by Diogenes, namely Hunkeler in the Wilderness (Hansjörg Schneider), Trace Elements (Donna Leon), Halfbeard (Charles Lewinsky), Colours of Farewell (Bernhard Schlink) and Connoisseur (Martin Walker, world rights not handled by us).

In Austria, Trace Elements is #8 among the most sold hardcovers of 2020.

Now published in translation: Love in Case of Emergency by Daniela Krien in Norwegian

Norwegian edition by Forlaget Press

»Here is an author who knows how to tell a story. She draws precise portraits of women and creates exceptionally good milieu portrayals«
Guri Hjeltnes / VG, Oslo

»More of this, thanks!«
Cathrine Krøger / Dagbladet, Oslo

 

Now published in translation: Earthly Remains by Donna Leon in Polish

Polish edition by Noir sur Blanc

More quotes on the occasion of Patricia Highsmith's centenary

»Highsmith is the crime writers’ crime writer.«
Andrew Martin / Financial Times, London

»In the best stories, there is a clarity in terms of composition and a unity in tone that reminds you of Edgar Allan Poe, staged with a backdrop that evokes Edward Hopper.«
Tiziano Gianotti / La Repubblica, Rome

»Ripley has always been a source of inspiration for cinema, which is what makes him alive, shining and omnipresent to this day.«
Nadia Terranova / La Stampa, Torino

»The grande dame of the thriller turns 100 and is more up to date than ever. Her creatures patrol the moral low life of our nature, committing their cruelest crimes.«
Laura Ventura / La Nación, Buenos Aires

»In her fiction, a world without moral limits, and where a certain resignation before the scarce occurrence of the moral good reigns, she is too much like today's world.«
Daniel Gigena / Página 12, Buenos Aires

»She was the narrator who changed the mystery novel, who made it flirt with other genres, who included fantastic intrigues and who created a fascinating character: Tom Ripley.«
El Observador / Montevideo

British press heaps praise on Olga 

»And in Schlink’s macro look at Germany’s past, it’s the small acts – of kindness and humility – that linger.«    Francesca Carington / The Sunday Telegraph, London

»Schlink’s lucid, no-frills prose lends his novel immediacy, and at times potency, and gives us a character to root for.«
Malcolm Forbes /  The Herald, Glasgow

»This is not a straightforward elegy — and throughout the book, death is not an absolute end. Instead, Schlink frames the novel as a search for meaning, which dances in Olga between a multitude of timeframes and territories.«
Natalie Whittle / Financial Times, London
 

Essay on Daniela Krien's Love in Case of Emergency in English

Jamie Bulloch, Daniela Krien's translator into English, wrote an essay on why he thinks Love in Case of Emergency is a perfect example of a book that travels into other languages on New Books in German.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt on a Swiss coin – and more after his 100th birthday

Swissmint launched a commemorative coin for Friedrich Dürrenmatt in January on the occasion of his centenary. The coin is worth 20 Swiss Francs (slightly less than 20 Euros) and is made of silver. The biggest regular Swiss coin is worth 5 Swiss Francs.

More press poured in on the occasion of his 100th birthday:

»Dürrenmatt's novels and comedies are world literature, and didactic pieces about life and the impenetrability of psychology.«
Anna Mertens / Norddeutsche Rundschau, Flensburg

»With new viruses; earthquakes; droughts; with a strike against humanity’s unreasonable expectatations. Dürrenmatt was a stenographer of this catastrophe before it even occured.«
Volker Weidermann / Der Spiegel, Hamburg

»The pandemic and global warming now plaguing us prove him right. Today, when Switzerland celebrate ›their‹ Dürrenmatt as a world author, they are also getting his critical view of Switzerland.«
Peter Utz / Republik, Zurich

»Guilt and atonement, criminal acts and collective complicity, collaboration and the "follow-my-leader" mentality - these were Friedrich Dürrenmatt's eternal themes.«
Deutsche Welle, Bonn

»Dürrenmatt's parables, by contrast, are still fascinating even after repeated readings.«
Helmut L. Müller / Salzburger Nachrichten, Salzburg

Raw Material by Jörg Fauser – a modern classic that could hardly be more current

Favourite quote: »At any rate, when you looked around you suspected that the sane ones were probably all sitting in the asylum and discussing the Battle of Austerlitz, Picasso’s cubist phase or the development of the post-nuclear world, while the rest of humanity was gaping at television advertisements and getting all excited about the sixth number in the lottery or the Russian invasion.« Raw Material, Jörg Fauser (translated by Jamie Bulloch)

Claudia says: »If we replace ›the Russian invasion‹ in this quote by ›the next pandemic wave‹, I think Raw Material still captures the feeling that I woke up with during most of 2020: ›Some sanity this way, please!­‹ And yet, and yet: If literature is the place where you can experience things you never did before nor ever will, Raw Material certainly is a book full of surprises.«

Deutsche Welle praises Jörg Fauser like this: »He wrote faster, harder, more precise than all the others.« Moreover, they nominated him among their list of ›100 good books‹.

Rights currently sold:
Catalan (LaBreu)
English/world (Profile Books)
Italian (L'Orma)
Turkish (Sel)

Raw Material was originally published in 1984.
 

 

ICMA Award for The World on a Plate

The World on a Plate by Doris Dörrie, illustrated by Zenji Funabashi, was crowned with an ›Award of Excellence‹ in the category Book Illustration at the 11th International Creative Media Awards (ICMA). 

In a normal year, the award ceremony would have taken place in London, however, this had to be cancelled this year.