In January 2022, Dhakabraka,the Ukrainian folk band, played at the Barbican in London. The atmosphere was joyous, moving, and defiant: the hall was packed, people were singing and waving Ukrainian flags; the air was electric. Then came war. A year later, the Ukrainian flag is still flying high on many buildings around the world and critical authors have been read far and wide, centring the experience of people freeing themselves from imperial narratives.
Sasha Filipenko, who was a speaker at last years’ Munich Security Conference wrote for the Guardian about the differences between the Ukrainian and Belarusian experience in building political independence. In his new novel Kremulator, we witness the interrogation of a man whose dry humour comes straight from his work as Director of the first soviet crematory in Moscow – the FAZloved the dark, deadbeat atmosphere and striking images.
Andrey Kurkov, currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University, where he teaches post-soviet literature, remains one of the most important intellectual voices from Ukraine, and a highly demanded expert on the Russian aggression. This autumn, we are releasing the second volume of his crime series Samson and Nadezhda – initially published in 2020 and set in Kyiv in the late 1910s, its eerily timely, yet inspires hope.
»Poetry always goes! Poems are emotions«said Kurkov about writing during trying times, and self-conscious and empathetic is the debut poetry collection by Swiss Simone Lappert, Long Overdue to Grow Wild, and we loved hearing her reading accompanied by music - we hope you like it too.
Scroll down for more news on sales and events.
Susanne, Jana, Andrej, Suzanne and Josefine
PS: We are happy to welcome Lena Thomma to our team, who will support us as a trainee over the next few months.
Danish rights of The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink sold to Silkefyret
The French edition has also been nominated for the ›Prix Jean Monnet de Littérature européenne 2023‹ which will be awarded during the Festival Littératures européennes Cognac on 18 November 2023.
Rights sold:
Bulgarian (Kryg)
Chinese/CN (Shanghai Translation)
Croatian (Petrine Knjige)
Czech (Euromedia)
Danish (Silkefyret)
Dutch (Cossee)
English/UK (Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion)
English/USA (HarperCollins)
French (Gallimard)
Greek (Kritiki)
Italian (Neri Pozza)
Portuguese/PT (Leya/ASA)
Romanian (Polirom)
Russian (Azbooka-Atticus)
Serbian (Plato)
Spanish/world (Anagrama)
Turkish (Dogan)
Silkefyret also acquired the rights to Bernhard Schlink's short story collection Summer Lies.
Daniela Krien at Berlinale and on the bestseller list
Emily Atef's film adaptation of Daniela Krien's Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything, has been well received, with the novel entering the hardcover Spiegel bestseller list this week, 12 years after it was first published in 2011.
Poetry and Music - Simone Lappert's Long Overdue to Grow Wild on stage
We know Simone Lappert for her recent novel, Jump, a multi-perspective narrative, written in a lush, evocative prose, which has sold 50’000 copies to date and was shortlisted for the ›Swiss Book Prize‹.
She has also been writing and performing poetry for a long time, so her debut collection was indeed overdue, and it is beautifully presented in this interview, accompanied with music by Marena Whitcher.
French rights for Martin Suter's Melody sold to Éditions Phébus
Happy Birthday, Martin Suter!
Melody will be published in German in April 2023 and French rights go to Éditions Phébus.
Further, we are delighted to share that it has been selected for this year's spring edition of New Books in German. This means that funding for an English translation will be available. We will share a link to the NBG review of the title once it goes online - expect more press and updates in the coming weeks.
