Just published and praised by the press: Joey Goebel I Know It’s Going to Happen For You Someday

Ten stories about striving for happiness and trying to find our way out of loneliness. An entire cosmos in a tiny world – atmospheric, laconic, captivating, and featuring numerous headstrong characters you will want to get to know better (but not necessarily live next door to).

A young man awaits his love with two drinks, and she is right on time – on TV. A 12-year-old girl doesn’t want to grow up too fast. And a 40-something compulsive hoarder is brought back to life by a woman who seems even sadder than himself.

Ten interlinked stories about survival. About the pursuit of happiness, against all odds, in small-town Kentucky. Ten ordinary yet unique people – lonely men, women, teenagers – whose lives have not turned out the way they imagined them. Who nevertheless struggle for their own small slice of happiness and who cannot wait to escape their backwater town. They may get a bloody nose, but they do not give up. Because they know it’s going to happen for them someday.

Frighteningly brutal, hilarious and moving, I Know It’s Going to Happen for You Someday is the return of one of the most talented writers of our times.

»And the way, in which Goebel does without any cliché, how his characters search for intimacy, at times irritating but always sincere […] and how they not only fail but also grow, certainly possess something of John Updike.«
Jochen Overbeck / www.spiegel.de 

»Unmistakable, brilliantly narrated and deeply humane: Goebel’s protagonists struggle for their piece of happiness – which life has thus far withheld from them – because I Know It’s Going to Happen For You Someday.«
Dagmar Kaindl, Buchkultur Vienna

»It has been a while since an author last wrote such beautiful prose about the loneliness of people lost in a small town, maybe not since Carson McCullers. Joey Goebel strikes a completely new chord with this novel – still funny, but also sensitive and touching.«
Benedict Wells

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

Enters the Spiegel bestseller list on #11 on publication, praised by the press: Ingrid Noll Good as Gold

»Many of our fellow students look like bankers, neat and tidy, boring, and conventional. Not a trace of opposition, all working hard, and striving for good degrees and lucrative jobs.«

Five young people want to show our throwaway society how to do better: Aunt Emma’s old farmhouse won’t be demolished but turned into an alternative student home. Except for one thing – the necessary renovations cost money. Then a sack of valuable gold coins turns up at Emma’s junk shop. But the treasure does not spell the end of their problems. Instead, it leads them into more trouble, introducing them to the less attractive impulses of the human heart.

A lovingly concerned, ironic, and dark crime story about why some treasures are better left undiscovered, and why not every end justifies the means.

 »… entertainment for every generation.«
Bild, Berlin

»… playfully light and yet thought-provoking, this novel leaves an impression not least by treating fairytale motifs with superior ease.«
Thomas Groß / Mannheimer Morgen

Now published in translation: Tomi Ungerer’s Flix in Korean (in memoriam)

    

Now published in translation: Tomi Ungerer’s The Party in French (in memoriam)

Enters the Spiegel bestseller list on #15 on publication, praised by the press: Daniela Krien Love in Case of Emergency 

Their names are Paula, Judith, Brida, Malika, and Jorinde. They know each other because fate or kinship holds them together. They are as different as they could be and yet their search for happiness unites them. But happiness is fleeting, turns sour and becomes pain, which the five women stand up against with all their might.

The new book by the award-winning (›Nicolas Born Debut Prize‹) outstanding writer is a touching and moving novel about five women, five lives, five fates.

Daniela Krien’s debut Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything has been translated into 15 languages and is being made into a film by director Emily Atef.

Love in Case of Emergency has entered the Spiegel bestseller list on #15 and we are currently preparing the second print run. It was chosen by Books@Berlinale and New Books in German.

»Krien expertly connects fortunes that only seem simple at first glance to create an altogether particularly good book.«
Melke Schnitzler / Brigitte, Hamburg

»Whoever wants to know something about the life of today’s women in a hundred years, will learn it from Daniela Krien’s novel.«
Karin Grossmann / Sächsische Zeitung Dresden

»Maybe that is the artistry, the literary concept of Daniela Krien, the familiar truthfulness of her characters, their touching intimacy.«
Silke Müller / Stern, Hamburg 

»She is a good listener, […] Maybe this is why her novel Love in Case of Emergency is so entertaining.«
Christian Mayer / Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

»This is a book which engages with twenty-first century debates around notions of femininity and feminism, empathising with an array of perspectives on the subject.«
New Books in German, London

»Daniela Krien has found a streetwise tone of voice that works with a simple syntax and uses this element of style effectively. It is her terse sentences that you cannot get out of your head.«
Rainer Moritz (head of the Hamburg House of Literature), MDR Kultur, Halle

»Daniela Krien is an impressive storyteller for the case of emergency called love, which silences many of us. Daniela Krien gives them a strong voice.«
Harald Butz / Hamburger Morgenpost

»Wittily told episodes that bring all five female figures home to the reader.«
Neue Presse, Hannover

»With psychological refinement Daniela Krien recounts the chaos of feelings and the short half-life of modern ways of living.«
Vogue, Munich

Rights sold:
Danish (Arvids)
Dutch (Ambo|Anthos)

An English sample translation will be available by April.

Now published in translation: Tomi Ungerer’s I Am Papa Snap in Italian (in memoriam)

                       

Now published in translation: Tomi Ungerer’s No Kiss for Mother in Simplified Chinese characters (in memoriam)

       

Gems from our backlist: Leon de Winter SuperTex

Our author Leon de Winter turned 65 on 26 February – happy birthday! Diogenes has been his German-speaking home since 1994 and since 2004 his world rights are with us, as well (except for his native Dutch). In a way, this is also our 15- and 25-year anniversary. Cheers!

Leon de Winter began writing as a teenager and since 1976 he has been working in the Netherlands and the USA as an independent author and filmmaker. One of Leon de Winter’s biggest successes was SuperTex, turned into a movie in 2003 by Jan Schütte and published in 9 languages. It is one of his most personal novels, one in which the protagonist Max Breslauer tells the story of his life starting with the question »Who am I really?«. And the question is particularly pressing for Max, which is why he decides to look for the answer on a psychoanalyst’s couch. 

But wait a minute, isn’t there another author called de Winter on Diogenes’ list, is there a link between them? Yes, there is: Solomonica de Winter is his daughter and published her first novel Over the Rainbow in 2014.