Fiction
Stefan Kiesbye’s short dark novel Next door lived a girl (Seeling 2009/Heyne Verlag 2010) was one of the great discoveries of German fiction in 2009. It's the summer of 1979. The kids are no longer kids, and their parents never seem to have grown up. The air is filled with a mixture of longing, sex, and violence. Everyone feels it, everyone succumbs to it. Moritz is one of the Badgers, a gang of twelve and thirteen-year-olds living in an industrial suburb of a northern German town. Their enemies are the Foxes, older boys who drive their mopeds to the local ice-cream parlor and on the weekend get drunk in a shack behind the soccer field.
One night, though, the boys discover a girl, who was held captive by her now deceased mother. Since they can't get help from the neighbours, the Badgers decide to care for the girl, Birke, themselves. They house the neglected and mute child in an old bunker and steal food and clothing from their families.
Yet Moritz is in love with Anna, and she is Oliver Stiemeyer's girlfriend. Oliver is one of the leaders of the Foxes, and Moritz has to keep his forbidden love secret. When the Foxes kidnap Birke with Anna's help, Moritz and his friends make plans for her rescue. The Badgers know that they won't be able to free the girl without violence, and in the end, Oliver is dead and Moritz has to leave his town for good. Next door lived a girl was six months on the Top-Ten-list of crime fiction.
„Sensational debut novel!“ Die Literarische Welt
Sold to: Germany (Heyne Verlag/Paperback), US (Low Fidelity Press), Netherlands (Arbeiderspers)
English translation available
Roman Graf’s novel Herr Blanc (Mr. Blanc, 218 p.) was one of the most acclaimed debut novels in Germany in 2009. This comic, yet melancholy novel is the story of Anton Blanc, a man who has few breaks in life, save a small endowment from his father to study at the famous Cambridge University. His father then promptly deserts the family and is never heard of again. Anton enjoys the best years of his life in Cambridge. He meets Heike, a budding artist with a glowing future. They're perfect for one another but Anton isn't ready to marry and settle in England. After all, his mother's waiting for him.
Years later he receives a letter informing him Heike has died. She's left him something, but he has to go and pick it up in Poland, Krakow. It's Anton Blanc's first trip since Cambridge. His whole life passes before his eyes, a life of missed opportunities, a life without Heike. But Roman Graf doesn't ridicule his hero, he has a soft spot for his quirky, stubborn, tragi-comedian, and his masterful and elegant style spins a tender parable of human existence.
Roman Graf was born in Winterthur/Switzerland in 1978. He is forester and studied Journalism at the School for Applied Linguistics in Zürich and studied Creative Writing at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. He was Artist-in-Residence in the Villa Decius (Krakow/Poland) and in the Edith-Stein-Haus (Wrocław/Poland). For his debut novel Herr Blanc, published by Limmat Verlag, he was awarded several Prizes, one of them the Mara-Cassens-Preis 2009 and received enthusiastic reviews.
“An astonishing author and an astonishing novel” Süddeutsche Zeitung
“A literary delicacy” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Even today Romy Schneider’s death still has not been solved. Now, thirty years after the most glamourous German filmstar of the 20th century passed away, Olaf Kraemer has written the novel of her last night, a chronicle of a death foretold: One Night’s End (Blumenbar Verlag, 2009, 188p.). In atmospherically thick prose Kraemer tells us the dramatic tale of the life of one of this great artist: the tale of her desperate affairs, of her deep love for her son and the heartrending grief she felt when he died young, and of her difficult relationship to her mother, Magda Schneider, who was a famous actress in Nazi Germany. On the eve of her death she confronts her mother with this dark chapter in her family’s history.
Born in 1959, Olaf Kraemer worked for over a decade as an author, journalist and documentary filmmaker in the United States. High Time – his biography of the photo model Uschi Obermaier – has sold 70,000 copies since its publication in 2007. One Night’s End is his first novel.
Ariel Magnus, winner of two prestigious literary prizes, is considered the shooting star of Argentinian fiction. Un chino en bicicleta (“A Chinese man on a bicycle”), Norma Editorial, is an utterly comic novel, that introduces the reader to the miraculous world of Chinese piracy, to Absurdistan in Buenos Aires. It’s one of the funniest romantic comedies of its time. The whole town is looking for a mysterious arsonist called “el Fosforito” (the little match), who is said always to escape the scene of the crime by bicycle – after all, he is Chinese. When Li is finally caught, he takes a hostage: Ramiro, the narrator of this novel. He carries him off to Buenos Aires’ Chinatown, and the two become friends. Ramiro is more and more enchanted by his kidnappers and their surroundings, where he does not understand a word, but is having the greatest sex of his life. Move over magic realism. Magic capitalism is on the up. The novel was awarded the Premio La otra orilla. For fans of Woody Allen and Michael Chabon.
Sold to: Germany (Kiwi), Israel (Hakkibutz Hameuchad), Croatia (Fraktura), Romania (Trei), Brazil (Bertrand), Italy (Grán Vía)
English sample translation available
In spring 2009, Christian Bourgois launched the French translation of Guillermo Fadanelli’s novel Lodo (“Mudd”) with an overwhelming success at the Salon du livre.
What happens when a gorgeous twenty-year-old girl, who has just committed a crime, seeks protection by an aging professor who is teaching philosophy? He throws his morals over board and starts on his ultimate road trip. One night Eduarda, a chick from the supermarket around the corner, knocks on Benito Torrentera’s door and makes herself comfortable. The professor, single and turning fifty soon, receives her with great pleasure, however she only sells her body. She has robbed the local supermarket and accidentally killed someone. Now it’s up to Torrentera to protect her from the law. Soon he turns just as odious as his corrupt brother. He manipulates Eduarda’s identity and takes her to the north of Mexico. But there are male competitors all along the way. In spite of the deal made between the criminal couple, the philosopher, who tells his story retrospectively from prison, becomes violently jealous and finally murders two men. But fate has another surprise in store for him. A sarcastic comment on self justice and corruption – made by a disillusioned moralist and a ‘dying animal’.
“If there is one novel we shall not forget of this year’s rentrée littéraire, it’s this wonderful novel Mudd by Guillermo Fadanelli.” Les Inrockuptibles
Sold to: France (Bourgois), Germany (Matthes&Seitz Berlin, Italy (Marco Tropea), Israel (Armchair)
Mariano Hamilton makes one of the most charismatic cities of the world – Buenos Aires the scenery for its first crime series. The forty-year-old hero of this marvellous detective novel Cercano Oeste (“Near West”), Planeta 2009, Roque Centurión, is a melancholic drunkhead and not especially achieving. The women he happens to meet though seem to feel naturally drawn to him - without his interfering, which sometimes makes things more complicated for him.
One night he receives a call: he is told to wait at a meeting point where he is supposed to get a new case. Roque has been without work for such a long time, he was forced to quit his apartment and now has to sleep in his office. He is given orders to find a young student named Carla, who has disappeared a few months ago. Centurión is making little progress. While his self-sacrificing and beautiful assistant María keeps business running, he keeps searching for a cue. Until coincidentally he discovers a conspiracy leading him into the higher circles of argentinian upper class, where military actions are bound to perverse methods of torture. His case is becoming more and more cruel and thrilling.
The second volume of his Buenos Aires crime series will be published by Planeta in 2010.
Sold to: Argentina (Planeta), Germany (Random House/BTB)
Non-fiction
A man has made a resolution. He’s not going to lie any more. He’s always going to tell the truth – on the job, at a bar, in bed – for 40 days straight. Is that really a good idea? Jürgen Schmieder, a young journalist of the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, tried to find it find out: Thou shalt not lie (Du sollst nicht lügen, C.Bertelsmann 2010) is becoming a bestseller in Germany.
Here’s what the experiment calls for: no lies. Nothing but the truth – whether tactful or not, and without any euphemisms. That can certainly change your life. I often heard the words “arrogant asshole” during the week. That’s what I was – and perhaps I still am. “You tactless idiot” and “get lost” were also high on the list of the comments I had to bear with. My shins were bruised, my left cheek was a little red, and I got a stomach ache. I spent a night on the couch, I’m short one best friend, my colleagues are annoyed – and all because one man set out to tell the truth. Our world continually asks us to be authentic and honest; but as soon as you try to do just that, things get rough.
For all fans of A. J. Jacobs and Danny Wallace!
Jürgen Schmieder (born 1979) is editor in chief of the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Incidentally he is – still – married.
English Sample translation available
One of the major pop-science books of the year in Germany is Max Rauner’s and Tobias Hürter’s The Crazy Theory of the Multiverses, published by Piper Verlag. The authors, both with PhDs in physics and philosophy, are editors at important German popular science magazines. The challenge of this book is to write a new creation story for the 3rd millennium!
A groundbreaking idea has seized the scientific world. Could our universe be just one of many? Could we be living in many different worlds at the same time, as replicas of ourselves? This multiple universe theory is starting to take root in modern cosmology. Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees would bet his dog’s life on its existence. The cosmologist Andrei Linde from Stanford University would bet his own life. This book reveals the latest on this scientific revolution. Since Nicolaus Copernicus declared that earth was not the centre of the universe, man lost his privileged position in the cosmos. In this book , the authors, Tobias Hürter and Max Rauner, spoke to Nobel laureates, papal astronomers, philosophers and the most prominent defenders and opponents of this new world theory. They explain the theory of multiple universes and ponder what it would mean for us, if there really were multiple replicas of ourselves. They go in search of the roots of the image of the multiple universe in literature, philosophy and religion. Here the third millennium gets its own creation theory.
If Simon Singh whetted your appetite but you didn’t quite get your head around Lisa Randall, you’ll be blown away by this book!
Sold to: South-Corea (Alma), France (CNRS)
Available rights: Italy, Netherlands, Sweden
English Sample translation available