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Love in the Times of the Mahlstädter Child

Stories
Translation SampleSuhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

Chinese simplex rights (CITIC Press / Sight), Arabic world rights (Al'Asreya), France (Actes Sud / Jacqueline Chambon), Czech Republic (Fra), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Funtasy), Romania (Univers), Macedonia (Blesok)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Denmark (Vandkunsten)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Griot)


Love in the Times of the Mahlstädter Child / Die Liebe zur Zeit des Mahlstädter Kindes
Stories
Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2011  

»One of the greatest hopes of German literature.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
A woman who has herself locked in a cage in her own kitchen; a man who lives all by himself in the innermost part of a distant planet; an aging poet in a crib who becomes the core of the collection in a literary archive.

And then there’s Lilly too who one day realizes »that little wings had grown on her shoulder blades: dirty rosy-coloured, vulnerable looking skin formations that itched like mosquito bites and which she could even move back and forth a little through her own...
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A woman who has herself locked in a cage in her own kitchen; a man who lives all by himself in the innermost part of a distant planet; an aging poet in a crib who becomes the core of the collection in a literary archive.

And then there’s Lilly too who one day realizes »that little wings had grown on her shoulder blades: dirty rosy-coloured, vulnerable looking skin formations that itched like mosquito bites and which she could even move back and forth a little through her own will power.«


After his two prize-winning, critically acclaimed novels, Söhne und Planeten and Die Frequenzen, the Austrian author Clemens J. Setz is now presenting a collection of short stories. These eighteen tales are furnished with grotesque ideas and subtle horror, full of violent moments and tender gestures. In this short prose form as in his novels, Setz proves to be a sharp observer of human nature and an empathetic, almost loving portraitist of its idiosyncrasies.

»You almost feel like […] kissing your own knee in delight.« Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Some might feel repulsion and wonder what on earth all of this is about. But literature doesn’t have to be about anything beyond literature. Its justification lies in what it is. Setz doesn’t tell his stories to shock: rather, he provides them with an immanent logic or an inner necessity and gives his characters psychological credibility.« Cicero

»He is the prodigy of German literature: radical, imperative, with a sound entirely different from his own generation. Of an apocalyptic desperation.« Die Zeit

»This is someone daring a radical counter-attack to the charmingly constructed literature of writing workshops, breaking free from the literary row-houses while whistling ominous songs.« Elmar Krekeler, Die Welt

»Clemens J. Setz has given new life to Grazer modernism, with rather sinister, potentially even malicious and cruel characters which share their curious plasticity with figures from computer games, eerily poised and brittle at the same time. « Thomas Steinfeld, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»This is a big one, one, for whom reality has not at all been written down yet in all its bizarre, grotesque, realistic and simulating aspects. On the contrary – it has just started.« neues deutschland online

»This radicality of a nearly air-tightly packed desperation existed in literature last in the years before Setz was born. It was there in Beckett’s garbage cans and in the last stories and plays by the mature Max Frisch.« Iris Radisch, Die Zeit

»Clemens J. Setz’s eighteen stories seem to make their appearance innocuously, in the garb of the everyday that everyone feels they know, and develop a brutality and viciousness which take the reader by surprise every time. Setz does something that is very rare in German literature. He is outspoken about bodies and sex in all its immediacy« Julia Encke, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

»His collection of short stories fulfills the expectations with a drumbeat. Here is a writer to be witnessed who masters crafts of writing which one didn’t even know existed before.« Richard Kämmerlings, Die Welt

»Setz supplies dramatic personality profiles which can make your skin crawl.« Sächsische Zeitung / Magazin
 

Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2011 Laureate:

At age 29, Clemens J. Setz was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2011 for his unconventional collection of short stories Die Liebe zur Zeit des Mahlstädter Kindes.
The jury stated: »The determining factors were Setz’ audacious composition, his idiosyncratic language and his consistent concept which leads to these equally original and uncanny stories. They get down to business with the disillusioned perspective on human kind that has long been accepted in the sciences but blissfully ignored in the arts. […] The award acknowledges a sinister and surprising prose experiment, for which a young writer had dared to gamble with the means of language.«

»You almost feel like […] kissing your own knee in delight.« Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Some might feel repulsion and wonder what on earth all of this is about. But literature doesn’t have to be about anything beyond literature. Its justification lies in what it is. Setz doesn’t tell his stories to shock: rather, he provides them with an immanent logic or an inner necessity and gives his characters psychological credibility.«...
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Persons

Clemens J. Setz, born in Graz in 1982, studied mathematics and German language and literature at the University of Graz from 2001 to 2009. Today he lives in Vienna. Clemens J. Setz is the author of novels, short stories, poems and plays. He has received numerous awards for his works.
Clemens J. Setz, born in Graz in 1982, studied mathematics and German language and literature at the University of Graz from 2001 to 2009. Today he...

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Moons before the Landing
Year of Publication: 2023
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2023

Worms in the early twenties of the last century. Peter Bender, a former lieutenant pilot in the German Army, makes a name for himself as the founder of a new religious community and with the...

Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (H&O Editores), Italy (La Nave di Teseo)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Roof Music)

The Triumph of Clematis in Europe
Year of Publication: 2022
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2022

Life plans are worrisome worlds apart, transitions and nuances threaten to disappear in the public debate. David is dead, as published by the influencer Tim and some journalists, but from the parents’ point of view their boy has been suffering from a kind of dementia ever since his traffic accident. Renate and Konrad are looking for a school for their son, who takes the form of a tablet...

The Bees and the Invisible
Year of Publication: 2020
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2020

Pure meaning, pure poetry – this idea seems to worry and spur on people throughout the centuries. It is the driving force behind the invention of languages like Esperanto, Volapük or...

Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (H&O Editores), Korea (Eulyoo), Esperanto world rights (Mondial)

 

The Comfort of Round Things
Year of Publication: 2019
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2019

An Alsatian soldier in the First World War discovers the constellation of the Great Young Kid in the night sky, but it is so awful that he can’t tell anyone about it. A young man, who has fallen...

Rights sold to:

Russia (Symposium), France (Actes Sud), Italy (La Nave di Teseo), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Japan (Kokusho Kankokai), Poland (Filtry), Greece (Gutenberg)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Griot)

Bot
Year of Publication: 2018
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2018

Imagine you’re a famous writer and are asked to give an extensive interview. You’re expected to disclose information about your interests and intellectual preferences, about the premises and backgrounds, the motifs and topics of your large body of work. Imagine not being able to think of anything to say, nothing whatsoever, try as you might. Well, someone else has to talk about you then. But...

The Hour Between Woman and Guitar
Year of Publication: 2015
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2015
In a residential home for people with physical and mental disabilities, a young woman – Natalie Reinegger – is employed as a caregiver to Alexander Dorm. The man is confined to a...
Rights sold to:

France (Jacqueline Chambon), Italy (La Nave di Teseo), Bulgaria (Paradox)

Till Eulenspiegel
Year of Publication: 2015
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2015
Every child knows the stories about this most famous of pranksters, the one who bakes owls and monkeys, teaches a donkey how to read and fools the Duke of Anhalt. His sly humour, taking everything literally and intentionally misunderstanding everything, with which he keeps lords and masters at bay, has become proverbial. But it’s not only the powerful that fall victim to his rough pranks:...
Happy as Lead in a Corn Field
Year of Publication: 2015
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2015
There are stories so inconceivable that they cannot be told publicly, explicitly, but can only be recounted. Naturally, by the author himself. Here they are. Forty-five in number, and each of them illustrated by Kai Pfeiffer.


»Some months ago«, writes Clemens Setz, »I found some old stories in a folder that I had written when I was eighteen or nineteen. Leafing through the...
The Ostrich Trumpet
Year of Publication: 2014
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2014
Why did young women in the nineteenth century like to stick sharp needles in their mouths in the dark? What is it that prevents someone from being a great lover? And what do childless parrots do?


The answers to these and many more questions are to be found in Clemens J. Setz’s new collection of poetry, The Ostrich Trumpet. The same can be said of his uncanny and by turns abyssal...
Indigo
Year of Publication: 2012
Clemens J. SetzYear of Publication: 2012
In the northern part of Styria, Austria, lies Helianau, a boarding school for children suffering from a mysterious condition known as indigo syndrome. Everyone who comes to close to them is struck...
Rights sold to:

USA (W. W. Norton / Liveright), UK (Serpent's Tail), Chinese simplex rights (CITIC Press / Sight), France (Jacqueline Chambon), Italy (La Nave di Teseo), Netherlands (Leesmagazijn), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Korea (Eulyoo), Japan (Kokusho Kankokai), Croatia (Hena Com), Greece (Gutenberg)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese complex rights (China Times), Czech Republic (Fra), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Funtasy)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Roof Music)

 


DISCOVER

News
Laura de Weck talks to Clemens J. Setz about aliens, synaesthesia, and about what we should be mindful of if we don't want to become Bitcoin millionaires.
News
»As evil as Nabokov, as virtuosic as David Foster Wallace.« Welt am Sonntag
News
05.04.2020
We are delighted to announce that Clemens J. Setz has been awarded the Kleist Prize 2020 for his œuvre.