Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Czech Republic (Archa)
The World-Fixer / Der Weltverbesserer
Cartoons by Mahler
The graphic novel adaptation of Thomas Bernhard’s »withering obloquy against the world« (Die Zeit) by Nicolas Mahler, the »existentialist of humour« (3sat Kulturzeit).
An elderly scholar, paralysed and hard of hearing, a philosopher and petty tyrant, who is set to receive an honorary doctorate for his barely comprehensible »Treatise for the Improvement of the World«, sits at home with his wife – his »necessary evil« – in anticipation of the conferral ceremony.
As they wait for the dignitaries to arrive, we witness not only the comedic pleasure of spiteful remarks seasoned with age, the merciless irony of a linguistic virtuoso and the terrifying image...
As they wait for the dignitaries to arrive, we witness not only the comedic pleasure of spiteful remarks seasoned with age, the merciless irony of a linguistic virtuoso and the terrifying image...
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An elderly scholar, paralysed and hard of hearing, a philosopher and petty tyrant, who is set to receive an honorary doctorate for his barely comprehensible »Treatise for the Improvement of the World«, sits at home with his wife – his »necessary evil« – in anticipation of the conferral ceremony.
As they wait for the dignitaries to arrive, we witness not only the comedic pleasure of spiteful remarks seasoned with age, the merciless irony of a linguistic virtuoso and the terrifying image of a marriage gone sour, but also the contradictions and vulnerability of a peculiar human being, whose treatise advocates the »total eradication« of the world and who is celebrated but understood by this »crazy« world.
»Comics can hardly be funnier than the way Nicolas Mahler makes them. They are as unmistakable in their minimalist illustrations as they are in the richness of their content.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Comics can hardly be funnier than the way Nicolas Mahler makes them. They are as unmistakable in their minimalist illustrations as they are in the richness of their content.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
2014, 124 pages
Persons
Nicolas Mahler
Author
Nicolas Mahler, born in 1969, lives in Vienna where he works as a comic artist and illustrator. His comic strips and cartoons have been published by newspapers and magazines such as DIE ZEIT, NZZ am Sonntag, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and Titanic. He has received numerous awards for his extensive oeuvre, including the Max-und-Moritz Prize for Best German-Language Comic Artist in 2010 and the Preis der Literaturhäuser in 2015 and the Sondermann Prize in 2019.
Nicolas Mahler
Author
Nicolas Mahler, born in 1969, lives in Vienna where he works as a comic artist and illustrator. His comic strips and cartoons have been published...
© Suhrkamp Verlag
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2024
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2024
My Therapist is a Psycho
For people plagued by obsessions, madness, nightmares, or a fear of commitment, sometimes, chaos therapy, light therapy, happiness training or aromatherapy can help. But what should you do when all these fail? That leaves only one remedy: the cartoons of Nicolas Mahler! They’re definitely cheaper and easier to use. It certainly can’t hurt to give them a try.
Year of Publication: 2023
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2023
Completely Kafka
Franz Kafka not only wrote prose, he was also passionate about drawing: »Did you know I was once a great drawer,« he wrote about his artistic ambitions, half ironic, half proud, to his...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Pushkin Press), Spanish world rights (Salamandra), France (L'Association), Italy (Clichy), Czech Republic (Argo)
Year of Publication: 2021
Nicolas Mahler, Arno SchmidtYear of Publication: 2021
Black Mirrors
The summer of 1960. A man is cycling through a ghostly landscape. A nuclear strike five years earlier has depopulated the earth, and quite thoroughly at that. The man forages in the deserted villages...
Rights sold to:
Suhrkamp represents the rights for Nicolas Mahler’s contribution to the volume. The underlying rights to the work by Arno Schmidt are represented by the Arno Schmidt Foundation.
Year of Publication: 2021
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2021
Thomas Bernhard
»Thomas Bernhard is born in Heerlen (the Netherlands) on February 9, 1931. The afterbirth has the shape of Austria.« – thus begins Bernhard’s biography as drawn by comic artist Nicolas Mahler.
The grand master of minimalism, who has previously and »congenially« adapted Bernhard’s Old Masters and The World-Fixer, takes readers on a wickedly funny tour...
Year of Publication: 2020
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2020
Ulysses
Dublin, June 16, 1904: a day in the life of the advertising agent Leopold Bloom and the sensations of the ordinary – James Joyce has created a maximal book from a minimum of matter:...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), France (L’Association)
Year of Publication: 2018
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2018
The Little ABC of Survival
Sometimes, it just hits you and you don’t even know why. That’s when life seems nothing but chaotic, devastating and confusing. Fighting this, however, is profoundly pointless – and anything but funny. If, yet again, you’ve rushed into one of those crises at full throttle and can’t find your way out, you should take a look at The Little ABC of Survival. From »Age« to »Work«, from...
Year of Publication: 2017
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2017
In Search Of Lost Time. Adapted from Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust’s Recherche is one of the most important French novels, if not the most important – reading it can be life changing. Nicolas Mahler’s comic is not a retelling, not a...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon)
Year of Publication: 2015
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2015
Party Fun With Kant
Austria’s best-known comic artist, Nicolas Mahler, presents hitherto unknown scenes from the lives of twenty-two of the world’s most famous philosophers: we go to a party with Kant, visit an art...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Archa)
Year of Publication: 2014
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2014
Lulu and the Black Square
In his brilliant new graphic novel Nicolas Mahler purges Frank Wedekind’s tragedies Earth Spirit und Pandora’s Box and creates a black comedy about the corporeality of women, the possessive mentality of men, and Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square.
Frank Wedekind’s man-eating Lulu once again finds herself in a Suprematist’s atelier. Struggling back and...
Year of Publication: 2014
Thomas BernhardYear of Publication: 2014
The Public Bernhard
This edition presents the first comprehensive collection of all texts that Thomas Bernhard wrote for publication in the media between 1950 and 1989 – from his court reports from Salzburg in the fifties to the tirades against God and the rest of the world published in the sixties and seventies, to the interviews about his play Heldenplatz conducted shortly before his death.
Year of Publication: 2013
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2013
The Man Without Qualities
There are books that a person just has to have read. We can know this, and still recoil from them. These books seem too massive, too challenging, too awe-inspiring. Robert Musil’s The Man...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Salamandra), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (Edizioni Clichy), Czech Republic (Archa)
Year of Publication: 2013
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2013
Poems
A philosophy of life presented in image-poems about the absurdity of existence
Poems worthy of Beckett, Cioran and Wittgenstein’s praise
Written by the »existentialist...
Poems worthy of Beckett, Cioran and Wittgenstein’s praise
Written by the »existentialist...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Czech Republic (Archa)
Year of Publication: 2013
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2013
Alice in Sussex
Alice is back in Wonderland. Here she meets the White Rabbit, who leads her down into his rabbit hole in search of an illustrated edition of H. C. Artmann’s Frankenstein in Sussex. Over the...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Salamandra), Russia (Boomkniga), Slovenia (VigeVageKnjige)
Year of Publication: 2011
Nicolas MahlerYear of Publication: 2011
Old Masters
The devilishly funny comedy by Thomas Bernhard illustrated from one of the most internationally known German-language cartoonists.
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), France (L'Association), Serbia (Bulevar)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Sinsentido), Poland (Proszynski), Czech Republic (Archa)
Year of Publication: 2010
Thomas BernhardYear of Publication: 2010
On the Trail of the Truth
Thomas Bernhard and the public sphere: scarcely a single utterance that didn’t provoke a scandal. This volume presents a selection of Bernhard’s most important pieces of journalism, letters...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (Alianza), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Todavia), France (Gallimard), Italy (Adelphi), Czech Republic (Prostor), Turkey (Yapi Kredi)
Year of Publication: 2010
Thomas BernhardYear of Publication: 2010
Goethe Dies
Thomas Bernhard did not live to see these stories published in book-form: he was too preoccupied with his monumental novel Extinction and the play Heldenplatz and the ensuing...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Alianza), France (Gallimard), Italy (Adelphi), Netherlands (Ijzer), Sweden (Tranan), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Serbia (Lom), Turkey (Yapi Kredi), Greece (Kelefthos)
Year of Publication: 2009
Thomas BernhardYear of Publication: 2009
My Prizes
This hitherto unpublished comedic work shows Bernhard at the very top of his art: invective, flabbergasted, swearing and ridiculing. Thomas Bernhard quarrels with the world in general, the...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Knopf), Spanish world rights (Alianza), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Brazilian Portuguese (Companhia das Letras), Portugal (Bertrand), France (Gallimard), Italy (Adelphi), Netherlands (Atlas), Denmark (Sisyfos), Sweden (Tranan), Norway (Bokvennen), Finland (Teos), Japan (Misuzu Shobo), Poland (Czytelnik), Czech Republic (Prostor), Hungary (Kalligram), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Serbia (LOM), Slovenia (Studentska Zalozba), Turkey (Yapi Kredi), Greece (Hestia)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Roof Music)
Year of Publication: 2009
Thomas Bernhard, Siegfried UnseldYear of Publication: 2009
The Correspondence
»If anyone has been hoping for just one last undiscovered drama by Thomas Bernhard, here it is. Its title is Correspondence, its birth spanning from 1961 to Bernhard's death in...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Complices)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag)
Year of Publication: 2006
Thomas Bernhard, Krista FleischmannYear of Publication: 2006
A Meeting
Thomas Bernhard rarely agreed to interviews in front of a camera. He did, however, appreciate the television journalist Krista Fleischmann as a sensitive interlocutor, with whom he produced two...
Rights sold to:
Sweden (Svenska Thomas Bernhardsällskapet), Serbia (Red Box)
Year of Publication: 1986
Thomas BernhardYear of Publication: 1986
Extinction
Extinction is the title of an account that Franz-Josef Murau wrote during the last year of his life in Rome and that Thomas Bernhard made public. These notes were absolutely essential to...
Rights sold to:
USA (Knopf), UK (Faber & Faber), Spanish world rights (Alfaguara), Catalan (El Gall), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Companhia das Letras), Portuguese rights (Sistema Solar), France (Gallimard), Italy (Adelphi), Netherlands (Ijzer), Sweden (Tranan), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Japan (Misuzu Shobo), Vietnam (Tao Dan), Poland (Od Do), Czech Republic (Prostor), Hungary (Kalligram), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Estonia (Varrak), Croatia (Meandar), Serbia (LOM), Turkey (Yapi Kredi), Greece (Exandas), Albania/Kosovo (OM)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Denmark (Husets), Korea (Hyeonamsa), Romania (ART), Slovenia (Maribor), Israel (Schocken)