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Schöffling & Co.
Rights GuideSpring 2018
About us
Over the past 25 years, Schöffling & Co. has published more than 400 titles by over 140 authors. Our list of German fiction includes renowned and established names like Guntram Vesper and Ror Wolf as well as contemporary voices like Mirko Bonné, Anna-Elisabeth Mayer and Silke Scheuermann. Authors in translation include David Albahari, Joshua Cohen, Miljenko Jergovic, Clarice Lispector, Neil Smith and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.
Another important part of our publishing portfolio are our rediscoveries of pivotal modern novels and books with a unique focus on German and European history from the 1920s to World War II and the post-war years – voices that deeply resound in our present.
»Pairing keen sense with unbowed curiosity, Schöffling & Co. continuously retrieves and supports authors for almost a quarter-century now.«The Jury of the Kurt Wolff-Prize
Schöffling & Co.
English sample translations, where available, can be downloaded from our website http://www.schoeffling.de/foreignrights/new where you will find our complete catalogue.
For rights enquiries, please contact:
Schöffling & Co.Anke [email protected]: +49 69 92 07 87 15fax: +49 69 92 07 87 20
Kaiserstr. 7960329 FrankfurtGermanywww.schoeffling.de
Selected titles are represented by:
This Book Travels – Foreign Rights AgencyKathrin [email protected]: +49 163 7292 168www.thisbooktravels.com
Contact
»A deeply moving book about the ambivalence of love and the abysses of human desire that will be hard to put down.« Michael Braun, Der Tagesspiegel
»Mirko Bonné is a true writer of the heart. (…) Like a painter of light, he creates landscapes of the soul, touching and agitating.«Oliver Jungen, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»A search for meaning in the vast sea of possibilities, a dramatic effort to break free from the routines of a missed life – an impressive book.«Markus Schwering, Frankfurter Rundschau
»An excellent novel. (…) So bizarre and intricate, so completely unbelievable, yet so coherent.« Frank Drieschner, DIE ZEIT
Mirko BonnÉborn 1965 in Tegernsee, lives in Hamburg. Besides translations of, among others, Sherwood Anderson, Robert Creeley, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Grace Paley and William Butler Yeats, he has published several novels, volumes of poetry, travel journals and essays. For his work he has received many awards.
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Brighter than the Day(Lichter als der Tag), novel, 2017336pp (72,000 words)
Raimund, Moritz and Floriane have known each other since childhood. Growing up in a village in the north, they meet secretly in a wild garden. One day Inger appears, the daughter of an artist whose parents died in a tragic accident. The four of them form a tight-knit group – until both boys fall in love with Inger, who eventually chooses Moritz. Raimund and the ambitious Floriane also become a couple.
Years later, their paths cross again. After a chance encounter with Inger, Raimund realises the void in his life. Things that once seemed certain are shaken to the core, and the past resurfaces in a tangle of lies, repressed emotions and betrayal.
Mirko Bonné offers a striking analysis of contemporary society and of one individual’s search for identity and a sense of belonging. BRIGHTER THAN THE DAY is also an epic love story, offering a powerful depiction of a man who risks every thing to find a new place for himself in the world.
English and French sample translations available
Longlisted for the German Book Prize
Bulgaria – Atlantis
»Loschütz writes in the tradition of the nouveau roman: the possibilities of literature are combined with the possibilities of lovers. (…) Unconditionally firm and incredibly tender.« Insa Wilke, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»The fascination of Loschütz’ language lies in its capability to enigmatically charge up everyday life without slipping off into mystification. (…) Confusing and beautiful.« Christoph Schröder, ZEIT online
»A melancholic study on dignity, pride and the vulnerability of love.« Thomas Neubacher-Riens, Frankfurter Neue Presse
Gert Loschützborn 1946 in Genthin (Saxony-Anhalt) has been a full-time writer since 1970, also working for the theatre and for radio. He has been awarded numerous awards and stipends. In addition to his highly-praised novels he has published a story collection and books for children. Gert Loschütz lives with his family in Berlin.
A Fine Couple(Ein schönes Paar), novel, 2018250pp (58,000 words)
They make a fine couple: Georg, a young soldier, and Herta, a seamstress at a fashion house who dreams of a future as a model. After a chance encounter turns into love, the two marry in 1942 and after the war settle into an unexceptional life with their small son Philipp in the newly formed East German state.
One day, however, Georg comes into contact with the West German authorities, who try to recruit him as an informant. When a tell-tale letter arrives from the West,
he flees to West Germany, terrified of being arrested. There he finds a job in a textile factory, Herta and Philipp follow him, and the little family begins a new life. But then Georg is accused of stealing money from the company accounts. His marriage to Herta collapses. Herta vanishes completely from the lives of her husband and son for many years, leaving Philipp with nothing but a few postcards – with no return address – to remind him of his mother.
Years later, when Philipp has grown up, he sets out on a journey into the past – a journey that leads him towards a remarkable discovery.
A gripping novel about flight, love and ephemerality, set against the backdrop of East and West Germany.
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Gert Loschützborn 1946 in Genthin (Saxony-Anhalt) has been a full-time writer since 1970, also working for the theatre and for radio. He has been awarded numerous awards and stipends. In addition to his highly-praised novels he has published a story collection and books for children. Gert Loschütz lives with his family in Berlin.
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(Dunkle Gesellschaft. Roman in zehn Regennächten), novel, 2005220pp (44,400 words)
Over ten rainy nights, Thomas, an ex-bargeman who used to be skipper of his own boat, walks the muddy fields of the landlocked German interior and remembers the events that lost him his home, his boat, and his liveli-hood: his apprenticeship in the cold halls of the Royal Naval College in London; the dangers of the mean streets and waterfront of New York in the 1970s, and Poland under martial law; Germany after the reunifica-tion, when for a year or so it seemed that the whole
country drifted rudderless, drawn by the current of history to who knows where. Thomas remembers childhood, his first love, and the warnings of his grandfather: Beware the dark company, a mysterious band of men and women dressed in black who cast a shadow over his story, as he wrestles with the secrets of his soul.
»What makes this novel ultimately satisfying and worthwhile is its glimmering prose, the fascinating and highly changeable life of our protagonist, and the constant rain that ties together every event.«Three Percent, Rochester University
»This novel is breathtaking.« Brigitte
Dark Company. A Novel in Ten Rainy Nights
Full English translation available
Shortlisted for the German Book Prize
India (English World) – Seagull
Foreign editions
»This concise novel offers a keen emotional insight into the lives and inner thoughts of its many characters. (…) AT HEAVEN’S EDGE is a tragic love story, a glorious costume drama and a real-life murder case all rolled into one.« New Books in German
»A class-conscious lesson about greed and insatiability. Mayer portrays a historical local celebrity as a reckless daredevil and financial juggler, a time-less image. (…) She also shows how the collective admiration of the self-made man will turn into hate just as easily.« Daniela Strigl, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Anna-Elisabeth Mayerborn in 1977 in Salzburg, lives in Vienna. She studied Philosophy and Art History and subsequently taught literacy programmes for women immigrants. She continued her studies at the German Literature Institute of Leipzig. Mayer has won many literary awards and her prose was published in periodicals and anthologies.
At Heaven’s Edge(Am Himmel), novel, 2017,204pp (39,600 words)
Inspired by a criminal case that took place in late nine-teenth-century Vienna, Anna-Elisabeth Mayer tells a story about the eternal struggle between rich and poor.
Millionaire Johann von Sothen is a flamboyant charac-ter, a self-made man from humble beginnings who made his riches by selling lottery tickets. From the outside, Sothen looks like a philanthropist, courted by high society and the church. He donates money, is awarded medals, builds a chapel and moves into a stately home
known as »The Heavens«. Almost nobody suspects that his wealth is based on an unscrupulous fraud.
On Sothen’s estate his workers are treated like serfs. Sothen’s miserliness is encouraged by his wife Fanni, herself childless and particularly jealous of Eduard Hüttler, an impoverished hunter who lives out of wedlock with his four children and their mother near Sothen’s home. Fanni exploits Eduard’s desperate situation, harassing him and the workers on the estate and playing them off against each other. Then one day, amid this web of oppression, dependency and protest, shots ring out …
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This title is represented by This Book TravelsKathrin [email protected]
novel, 2017,808pp (225,000 words)
In the eighteenth century, the small community of Zeithain in Saxony witnessed one of the most harrowing dramas in German history. The young Crown Prince Frederick – later Frederick the Great – is suffocating under the strict rule of his father, Frederick William I, nicknamed the Soldier King, who is bringing up his son with an iron fist. In desperation, Frederick begs his friend Hans Hermann von Katte to help him flee abroad. Katte, himself an officer of the king, finds himself torn between friendship
and duty. Eventually, he agrees to help, but when the young prince’s disappear ance is discovered, it is Katte who must pay the price. To set an example, the furious Soldier King has him executed in front of his son.
Nearly three centuries later: Philip Stanhope, a descendant of Katte, sets out to learn more about his distant relative. Who was this Hans Hermann von Katte? Stanhope travels to the places where Katte lived, immersing himself in the pietistic world of Prussia and revealing how powerfully its values and emotions still shape us today.
Michael Roes’ novel is a fascinating historical journey, and a timeless literary exploration of paternal expectation and filial rebellion, resulting in the most dramatic father-son conflict in history.
Michael Roesborn in 1960, lives in Berlin. Years spent living in Yemen, Israel, Algeria and the USA provide the inspiration for many of his books, essays, plays and films. His novels have received numerous awards, and in 2012 he was nominated for the German Book Prize. ZEITHAIN is his twelfth novel.
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»Breathtaking passages and unforgettable episodes. (…) Like a great adventure novel, leading into distant lands.« Jörg Magenau, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»Michael Roes tells about how a historic tragedy was turned into a myth of social ascent, and about what connects us with the past. An impressive work.« Tim Evers, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk
»Roes gives Katte a voice and a face, making him the hero of a story that covers three centuries of history and continues into our present.« Andreas Kilb, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Silke Scheuermannborn in 1973, lives near Frankfurt am Main. She studied Drama and Literature in Frankfurt, Leipzig and Paris. Her poems, short stories and novels have won her a number of scholarships and awards and her work has been trans lated into various languages. She was a member of the Jury of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. In Spring 2018, Silke Scheuermann will hold the prestigious Poetics Lectureship at the University of Frankfurt.
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The Hour Between Dog and Wolf(Die Stunde zwischen Hund und Wolf), novel, 2007174pp (38,800 words)
Two sisters meet again after a long estrangement. Ines, an impulsive artist, needs help, but is met with cold rejection by her sister who wants nothing more to do with Ines’ world – yet is fascinated by it. At the outset of an affair with Ines’s boyfriend, she loses herself in a dubious, delirious state of happiness – which leads her back to her sister in an unexpected way.
THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF is an inti mate novel told from the perspective of its young
female protagonist, whose view of the world is muted as through a glass cover. It portrays the disorientation of a generation that makes demands for itself but cannot handle the everyday details of life. They try to support the illusion of security, while they are in fact saddled with self-deception and doubts. Still, despite this condition, the hope for change remains.
»Scheuermann employs her poetic facility to good effect as she renders the confusion and frustration her generation faces as it attempts to define itself. (...) Non-Germans too are beginning to see the universality in her writing.«Publishing Trends
»Silke Scheuermann has written her way into the top league of young authors. The language is cool, like underwater movement, and its author as intelligent as she is subtle.« signandsight.com
»A most beautiful, sensual and intelligent novel. Silke Scheuermann has found a wonderful voice, cool and poetic, subtly melancholic, her language possesses an amazing power of visualization.« Die Literarische Welt
SWR Bestseller ListGeorge Konell Prize
Full English and Spanish translation available
India (English World) – Seagull Books
paperbacks – S. Fischer, Random House / Goldmannaudio book – Buchfunk
previous editions /rights reverted:Brazil – Record Czech Republic – Kniha ZlínSpain – SiruelaMexico (Castilian Latin America) – sextopisoSweden – Weyler BokförlagThe Netherlands – CosséeRussia – CentrepolygraphBulgaria – AtlantisItaly – Voland
(Kein Platz mehr), novel, 2018176pp (38,000 words)
»The things you collect over the course of a life!« Notes, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, photos, all sorts of bits and bobs. Where do you put it all? With a wonderful gift for exaggeration and a sharp eye, Margit Schreiner depicts the overabundance that confronts us day by day. Bruno has to rent a whole library room to store all his documents. Hans and Maria don’t buy anything new, but nor do they throw anything out. Rudi and Franca live in a spacious yet jam-packed castle on the Lago Maggiore. Clearing out – and tidying up – are the only
remedy, although even this encourages the acquisition of new possessions.
NO ROOM LEFT: An entertaining and thought-provoking novel about the lack of space in our world. Schreiner traces a broad arc, from writers who live like hoarders to problems with rubbish disposal in Italy. Using Japan as an example, she explores the absurd consequences of a lack of space for the whole structure of society. And if you think you can flee to the Himalayas or the Canadian wilderness, you’re very much mistaken – no matter which way you look at it, there’s simply no room left.
»The novel reads so hilariously elegantly, so light-footedly and flexibly, but then you stumble across a sentence that gives you pause, that trips you up, makes you think it can’t be right. That’s Schreiner’s tone, her melody, her cosmos. First the extravagant lightness – and then the slap.« Zsusza Bánk
»I consider this author most excellent.« Marcel Reich-Ranicki
»A sweeping statement on the country and its people, relationships, family, travelling, writing and aging, as only Austrian writers can deliver it.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
Margit Schreinerborn in Linz, Austria, in 1953 is currently living there again after many years in Tokyo, Paris, Rome and Berlin. She has won various scholarships and awards for her writing, most recently the Heinrich Gleißner Prize for her life’s work.
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No Room Left
English sample translation available
This title is represented by This Book TravelsKathrin [email protected]
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Margit Schreiner, The Human Equation (Das menschliche Gleichgewicht)novel, 2015, 240pp (44,400 words)Johann Beer Prize
A couple are longing for a holiday on a remote island far from civilisation. But just before they’re due to leave, young Sarah shows up on their doorstep, bringing her dog Habibi and a tragic past. When Sarah unexpectedly entrusts the narrator with her diary, she is confronted with the fate of Sarah’s German-Israeli family. As the friends stumble into all sorts of difficult situations on the island, they realize how easily anyone can be thrown out of balance. In the end, their stay on the island changes more than just Sarah’s life.
»An innovative and moving novel about the unreliability of memory and the limitations of subjective perception (…) Margit Schreiner’s perceptive writing is reminiscent of A. L. Kennedy and Sarah Hall and will strike a chord with English-language readers.«New Books in German
» A work that is both aesthetically and thematically outstanding, telling of the uncertainties of life and about dealing with existential requirements and needs.« Johann Beer Prize, Jury Statement
Turkey – Yapi Kredi
Margit Schreiner, The Book of Disillusionments (Buch der Enttäuschungen)novel, 2005, 176pp (34,000 words)ORF Bestseller List
What is life? Childhood in which the possibilities seem endless and we embark on a journey of discovery, misunderstood, however, by our parents? Does life begin at thirty or at fifty when we are paying the price for those decisions and turning into whiners?Margit Schreiner’s relentless gaze penetrates far beyond the human existence. With a virtuoso narrative power and succinctness the BOOK OF DISILLUSIONMENTS describes the unstoppable process of disillusionment that characterizes life.
»An air of gentle cynicism hangs over Margit Schreiner’s sentences, like bitter chocolate. Her refinement lies in a pseudo-naivety which goes beyond the surface but shows the normality of the terrible, and vice versa.« Ulrich Weinzierl, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Schreiner’s writing is more brilliant than ever.« Die Literarische Welt
Turkey – Metis
Previous editions/rights revertedIndia (Hindi) – Saar Sansaar paperback – Random House/Goldmann
Guntram Vesperborn in the small East German town of Frohburg in 1941, arrived in West Germany via Berlin in 1957. In 1967 he read at the last major Group 47 conference. Vesper corresponded with numerous authors, including Johannes Bobrowski, Peter Huchel and Peter Rühmkorf. Today he lives and works as a writer in Göttingen. He has published numerous volumes of poetry, stories and radio plays.
(Nördlich der Liebe und südlich des Hasses), collected prose, 2017, with an afterword by Helmut Böttiger 700pp (167,800 words)
Following the extraordinary success of his novel FROHBURG (winner of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize), Guntram Vesper publishes his collected prose.
NORTH OF LOVE AND SOUTH OF HATRED is more than a book about Germany; it is a book about our contemporary age. In stories remembered, reconstructed and imagined, in fragments, short novels and long anecdotes, Vesper writes about the city and the countryside, about living in the suburbs and in villages, about neighbours and relatives, home and abroad, weapons and dreams, idylls and brutality: about German reality and truth.
North of Love and South of Hatred
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»Guntram Vesper’s work is a tremendously significant attempt to break through to the absolute – through storytelling, gathering and repetition.«Wiebke Porombka, Die Zeit
»This new collection confirms how Vesper always draws from his own experiences, while including other fates and lives, thus, making his work a German chronicle.«Bayern 2, Kulturjournal
»Enchanting prose that instantly transfixes the reader with its captivating rhythm, alternating between long and short sentences.«Tomas Gärtner, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten
(Die Sintflut in Sachsen) novel, 2018432pp (108,000 words)
The portrait of a family in post-war East Germany
In Wurzen, a small city near Leipzig, the Wagner family runs a blacksmith’s that forms the centre of family life. This is where young Max grows up. His father and Uncle Fritz work in the smithy, Uncle Walter at the scrapyard, while his mother tells stories.
Max Wagner takes us through the streets, giving us an insight into the political and social conditions in the rural
GDR, into intrigues and plans for the future, and into many intellectual ideas we thought we’d long since overcome.
Bernd Wagner depicts a world still lit by gas, where iron stoves roar and a railway journey is an adventure. Yet this is no idyll, no nostalgic paean to a vanished land. Rather, THE FLOOD IN SAXONY is a panorama of German life after the Second World War, in which two German states emerged and numerous conflicts bubbled beneath the surface.
Bernd Wagnerwas born in 1948 in Wurzen (Saxony). He initially worked as a teacher, but since 1977 has been publishing novels, short stories, children’s books, essays, poems and plays. From 1982 to 1985 he co-edited the illegal literary journal Mikado. In 1985, he was expatriated by the East German authorities from East Berlin to West Berlin, where he still lives today
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(Nichts in Sicht), novel, 2018 [1954]With an afterword by Ursula März
A rediscovered classic in the literature of World War II
It is 1943. A German submarine commander and an American pilot are stranded on a rubber dinghy, alone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Both sit hoping to be rescued, but there is nothing in sight. In a terse, almost clinically exact style NOTHING IN SIGHT presents the memories, dreams, and hallucinations of the two soldiers and distills the brutal essence of what it is to die alone. Much more than a story of war, this short novel is a
hypnotic existentialist parable. Jens Rehn directs our view inward, into the minds of both men as they question the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the possibility of enduring human relationships.
»NICHTS IN SICHT, with its dramatic situation reduced to the barest minimum, succeeds in bringing readers to the moment of complete existential despair, both in the context of the German zeitgeist of the 1950s and beyond, timelessly and universally. Rehn’s is a war story for all time.« University of Chicago Press
»Rebellious, cynical, brilliant« Gottfried Benn, 1955
»One oft he most important documents of the past war. Mercilessly accurate, as if written with a dagger.« Siegfried Lenz, 1955
»It is difficult to imagine a modern war story as philosophically or existentially enthralling as Rehn’s. (...) The closest recent analogue is Terrence Malick’s rendition of The Thin Red Line.« The New York Sun
»There is a Beckettian sensibility to Rehn’s terse prose, a grim recognition of life’s absurdity.« The Sunday Times
Nothing in Sight
Full English translationavailable
Spain (Castilian World) – A. Machado
Previous editions / rights rever-ted:France – Albin MichelUS (English World) – The University of Chicago PressIsrael – BabelItaly – Sperling e KupferRussia – AST-Press
Jens Rehn (1918–1983)was a German navy officer who commanded a submarine during World War II. He was captured by Allied forces in 1943 and held in a British POW camp until 1947. After his return to Germany, he worked for RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) Berlin.
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Gabriele Tergit (1894–1982)writer and journalist, became known for her court reporting and her novels. In November 1933, she emigrated to Palestine, moving to London in 1938. From 1957 to 1981, she was secretary of the PEN Centre for German-language writers abroad.
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(Etwas Seltenes überhaupt), memoir, 2018 [1983]320pp (80,422 words)
The autobiography of a critical Jewish female writer
Gabriele Tergit (1894–1982), the Jewish intellectual, journalist and writer, is certainly among the most remarkable and courageous women of the twentieth century. As the first female court reporter in the 1920s, she was particularly interested in the human stories and motivations behind the actions of the accused. For her, court cases were a mirror of society, and even in apparently insignificant cases she recognised the major problems and issues of her epoch.
An observant social critic with a sharp eye, Gabriele Tergit didn’t shy away from discussing Nazism in her reporting. After barely evading arrest by the SA in 1933, she fled Germany for Palestine and subsequently lived in London as an exile.
Tergit’s extraordinary autobiography SOMETHING ALTOGETHER RARE first appeared in 1983, one year after her death, in a heavily altered edition. It is now available for the first time in a carefully edited new edition.
Something Altogether Rare
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(Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm) novel, 2016, 400pp (79,900 words)
This is the story of the rise and fall of Käsebier, an enter-tainer discovered by a newspaper reporter at a cheap variety show. Trying to make a splash among his col-leagues, he turns him into a megastar. Estate agents and speculators latch onto his sudden fame, the bored ladies of polite society make pilgrimages to his shows, and Käsebier himself is relentlessly promoted.
Käsebier Takes Berlin
Full English, French and Spanish translations available
France – Christian BourgoisSpain (Castilian) – MinusculaUS (English World) – The New York Review of Booksbook club – Büchergilde Gutenbergpaperback – Random House / btb
Foreign editions
»One of the most important books of the Weimar Republic.« DIE ZEIT
»A novel far more multi-faceted, perceptive and turbulent than Keun, Kästner or Fallada, who are always being lauded as mirrors of the Weimar years.«Die Literarische Welt
(Das Buch. Eine Hommage), non-fiction, 2016,144pp (22,400 words)
Includes illustrations by award-winning illustrator Line Hoven
A love letter to the printed word by one of Germany’s most renowned authors
Is 500 years of book culture coming to an end? Is the eBook replacing the printed page as quickly and comple-tely as the car and tractor once replaced the horse and cart? What will become of our reading culture?
Burkhard Spinnen, author and reader, poses the questions we should all be asking. But instead of debating the pros and cons, he delves into the past, remembering what the printed book has meant to him and to us, and considering the ways it has deeply affected our everyday lives. Focusing on all kinds of books – big and small, right and wrong, borrowed and given, lost and found – he writes about collecting books, and how we live with them.
THE BOOK is a perceptive, affectionate and personal homage to the book – to its (and our) future.
Burkhard Spinnenborn in 1956, received a PhD from Münster University and held several lectureships. Until 2014, he was Head of the Jury for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Award at the Festival of German-Language Literature held annually in Klagenfurt, Austria. Burkhard Spinnen has received many awards for his literary work. He lives in Münster with his family.
The Book. An Homage
»A very personal book that entices the reader to stick their nose once more between yellowed pages that smell of paper and dust.« Die Welt
»Spinnen is an amusing and likeable guide through the world of books, some-times nostalgic but never regretful. (…) THE BOOK is accessible and very readable, communicating complex, often academic ideas in a way that feels fresh and conversational.« New Books in German
Full English translations available
France – PiranhaNorway – PaxRepublic of Korea – Sam & ParkersUS (English World) – David R. Godine
Foreign editions
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(Dickicht) poetry, 80pp
The poems of Ulrike Almut Sandig are at once simple and fantastic. They are musical and they tell a story. Her new volume THICK OF IT leads into imaginary territories. The long journey to a magical fantastic south leads vertically down through the globe and, not least, also intersects with »the right way to the common meeting point, to the middle of the world«.
now that I’m gone, everything comes easy.wednesday someone buys eggs, thursday theygo to catch fish. friday there’s a power cut, lateron the dot the alarm is set. oh yes. no one says›sat’day‹, except for me, and I am not there.one day someone misses me, then buys himselfa treat. everything comes easy. each creaturetucked in at night. me apart. but that comes –
(Asymptote Journal, translation by Karen Leeder)
»Graceful and tender is her view of the world.« Ulla Hahn
»This is a moving, humorous and pretty spectacular verbal vanishing act that urgently deserves an audience.« PEN Presents Europe
Ulrike Almut Sandig, Thick of it
Ulrike Almut Sandig born in 1979, lives in Berlin. She studied Religious Studies and Modern Indology and at the Institute for German Literature in Leipzig and was co-editor of the literary magazine EDIT. She is the author of stories, poems, radio pieces and language performances, where she collaborates closely with musicians and composers. Ulrike Almut Sandig has been invited to many international literary festivals, exchanges and residencies. Her poems have been widely anthologized and received, among other awards, the renowned Leonce-and-Lena Prize.
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Full English translation available
India (English World) – Seagull
Foreign editions
(Fragmentierte Gewässer)poetry, 96pp
Ron Winkler’s poetry is, to quote the title of one of his poems, a »directory for landscape tourists«, a description that applies to more or less all of us today, when we are confronted with the natural images of mountains, lakes and forests:
against the matt screen of a lakesomething exists. It could be significant.animals graze on a surface.perhaps they are authentic.something old sinks on the horizon.
Ron Winkler uses the almost faded metaphors borrowed from nature, which have been in our linguistic usage since the age of Romanticism, and which are constantly revised in the social sphere, for a new description of nature. In his view, the sensory experience of nature is always imbued with a media presence, and »nature« becomes a screen on which to project a modern sense of life.
»Ron Winkler is a speech world researcher of the 21st century.« DIE ZEIT
»His poems are rocking our perception of the world and of language in a refreshing manner. At the same time the poems are featuring a humorous, verbally playful enthusiasm for experimentation.« Basel Poetry Prize, Jury Statement
Ron Winklerborn in 1973 in Jena, lives in Berlin. He has published four volumes of poetry as well as a collection of short prose pieces. Furthermore, he edited several collections of poetry. Ron Winkler is considered one of the most important voices in contemporary German poetry.
Fragmented Waters
Mexiko – Posdata (selection)UK (English World) – Shearsman BooksUkraine – Krokbooks
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Eugen Skasa-Weiß, In Full Bloom (Blühendes Leben)fiction, 2018, 160pp (21,000 words)
Eugen Skasa-Weiß is considered a master of the classic journalistic essay in the tradition of Alfred Polgar and Victor Auburtin. His particular love was for plants and animals. LIFE IN FULL BLOOM describes flowers, berries and trees in magical style.
Violets: The gardener is familiar with the true psyche of the violet; the flower of modesty has the cutpurse manners of a bold weed, yet it drops its gaze.
Bindweed: Bindweed’s vampiric talent for looping in metres between wire mesh and neighbouring plants mocks the intelligent human hand.
A special book for lovers of gardens and flowers who appreciate language and style in all their subtlety.
Elsemarie Maletzke, Poisonous Green (Giftiges Grün)crime novel, 2013, 208 pp (40,000 words)
Lina’s uncle supposedly died as a poor man. But then it turns out that he has left a small fortune to the one who can solve a case that threw his life off the rails thirty years before. Three amateur detectives set about looking for the site of the alleged crime at Villa Buchfinkenschlag, a dilapidated house in an overgrown park. Here, Lina meets the former gardener Johann, an opaque character who loves beautiful, poisonous plants …Elsemarie Maletzke plays with the elements of the classical »whodunit«: unreliable witnesses, false suspects, hasty conclusions and – of course – the question of whether the gardener is the murderer.
»A thrilling novel for garden lovers.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
» Maletzke combines her plot with images of gardens that appear as characterful and unique as their gardeners. The various plant species with their different needs are as individual as the human characters.« Südwestpresse
audio book – der Diwan
