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Weiskern's Legacy

Novel
Translation SampleSuhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

France (Métailié)

Film rights (SBS Production)


Weiskern's Legacy / Weiskerns Nachlass
Novel
Has life become a forgery?


Rüdiger Stolzenburg, 59 years old, has been working as a part-time adjunct at a cultural studies institute for the past fifteen years. His career is flatlining, and on his meagre salary he can barely make ends meet. He is a prototypical member of the academic precariat. Stolzenburg is working on an edition of the complete works of Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern, an 18th century Viennese actor, librettist and cartographer, but he has been...
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Has life become a forgery?


Rüdiger Stolzenburg, 59 years old, has been working as a part-time adjunct at a cultural studies institute for the past fifteen years. His career is flatlining, and on his meagre salary he can barely make ends meet. He is a prototypical member of the academic precariat. Stolzenburg is working on an edition of the complete works of Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern, an 18th century Viennese actor, librettist and cartographer, but he has been unable to find anyone willing to fund or publish this work. On top of all that, the supposedly sensational new material discovered among Weiskern’s papers turns out to be a forgery.

When an additional tax claim from the government threatens to ruin him, Rüdiger Stolzenburg suddenly realises how precarious it all is: the world, the economy, politics, relationships. Everything falls apart, erupts into violence, and for the most part there is nothing behind the hollow façade. In Rüdiger Stolzenburg, Christoph Hein has created a character who reflects all the symptomatic perils facing our society and our civilisation here at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Hein has succeeded in producing a highly relevant, realistic, and finely crafted social novel for the age.

»Weiskerns Nachlass is classic Hein. In a case study at once social and psychological, the reader experiences the protagonist’s bewilderment at contemporary society and anguish as he recalls incidents from his past that have led to his current plight. […] Hein’s work have consistently achieved wide appeal, and this novel also turn a mirror on some universal aspects of European societies: ageing, the crisis of higher education, the plight of older people, rising street violence, generation gaps, and the marginalization of literature in the digital age.« New Books in German

»Christoph Hein’s new book is probably the most distinct novel of the season.« Judith von Sternburg, Berliner Zeitung

»Christoph Hein’s reputation as an incorruptible commentator of our times has been reinforced with Weiskerns Nachlass. […] It celebrates the renaissance for the Leitmotif, a perfection of form, as is the book as a whole.« Katrin Hillgruber, Tagesspiegel

»Weiskerns Nachlass seems to be the artistic unification of dramatist and prose author Christoph Hein’s hitherto separate fields of literary work. […] Christoph Hein has published a finely constructed, finely balanced and cunning novel, exploring the forms of realistic narrative in new ways.« Christian Metz, FAZ

»A social novel with verve and anger.« Janina Fleischer, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

»Weiskerns Nachlass is not only entertaining in its laconic descriptions of our social status quo; it is also extremely unsettling.« Jürgen Kanold, Südwestpresse

»Weiskerns Nachlass is classic Hein. In a case study at once social and psychological, the reader experiences the protagonist’s bewilderment at contemporary society and anguish as he recalls incidents from his past that have led to his current plight. […] Hein’s work have consistently achieved wide appeal, and this novel also turn a mirror on some universal aspects of European societies: ageing, the crisis of higher education, the plight of older people, rising street violence,...
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2011, 318 pages

Persons

Christoph Hein, born in 1944, lives in Berlin. He is the author of novels, novellas, short stories, plays, essays and children’s books. His most recent novels were on the Spiegel bestseller list for weeks. His most recent awards include the 2019 Prix du Meilleur livre étranger (for Glückskind mit Vater), the 2019 Samuel Bogumił Linde Prize and the 2017 Grimmelshausen Prize.

 

Christoph Hein, born in 1944, lives in Berlin. He is the author of novels, novellas, short stories, plays, essays and children’s books. His...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

The Wild Horse Under the Stove
Year of Publication: 2023
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2023

The cast of characters who sleep under the sofa in Jakob Borg’s room sure are a motley crew: there is Snout the donkey, who feels called to be a professor and loves nothing more than a good meal....

Rights sold to:

Serbia (Čigoja štampa), Iran (Rahsaa Publications)

Underneath the Dust of Time
Year of Publication: 2023
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2023

The late 1950s in the divided Germany: as the son of a pastor, 14-year-old Daniel is barred from taking the Abitur, the secondary school leaving examination, in his East German hometown and so he...

Rights sold to:

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)

Guldenberg
Year of Publication: 2021
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2021

In the small town of Bad Guldenberg the world is still alright. At least until a group of underage immigrants is given accommodation in the Old Seglerheim. The people of Guldenberg agree: The...

Rights sold to:
France (Métailié)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)
Counter Eavesdropping
Year of Publication: 2019
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2019

He is considered the chronicler of German-German relationships, the precise dissector of a formerly divided nation which still hasn’t found its way back together completely, and as...

Rights sold to:

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (GehörGäng)

Befuddlement
Year of Publication: 2018
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2018

Friedeward loves Wolfgang. And Wolfgang loves Friedeward. They are young, enjoying the summer vacation, cycle the long way to the sea, discuss all the subjects under the sun. They are happy when...

Rights sold to:

France (Métailié)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)

Trutz
Year of Publication: 2017
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2017

A brilliant chronicle of the lives of two families in 20th century Germany and Russia. The futile hope for an existence beyond misery and slavery. Encompassing an entire century, reflecting an entire century.


Trutz is a 20th century novel, the one written by novelist Rainer Trutz and the one written by Waldemar Gejm, a professor for mathematics and...

Portrait of a Son With Father
Year of Publication: 2016
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2016

What does Konstantin Boggosch, whom his mother described as »child of fortune«, owe to his father? In Christoph Hein’s new novel, which mobilises all the registers of his storytelling prowess and...

Rights sold to:

Arabic world rights (Sefsafa), France (Métailié), Italy (e/o), Denmark (Gyldendal), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Estonia (Eesti Raamat)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV), German Entire Radio Reading (MDR)

Ahead of Time
Year of Publication: 2013
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2013
A new take on antiquity


In his latest work, Christoph Hein, the great chronicler of the present, fastidious recorder of the internal contradictions of the GDR and diagnostician of the flaws in the development of the unified Germany, turns his attention to the myths, gods, and tales of the deeds and misdeeds of antiquity. In his investigations he makes an exciting...
Ms. Paula Trousseau
Year of Publication: 2007
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2007
How do we become – or not become – the people that we have become? This is the fundamental question addressed in Christoph Hein’s novel, a novel that consistently views things...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Metropolitan), French world rights (Métailié), Italy (e/o), Hungary (Europa)

In his early childhood, a garden
Year of Publication: 2005
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2005
A political scandal erupts when a terrorist wanted throughout, Oliver Zureck, is fatally wounded in an exchange with border guards and the official report of suicide does not correspond to the...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Metropolitan), France (Métailié), Italy (e/o), Denmark (Gyldendal)

Mama Has Gone
Year of Publication: 2005
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2005

Ten-year-old Ulla lives with her brothers Karel and Paul, the dog Strolch and her parents. The father is a sculptor, the mother a director and Ulla’s best friend, beautiful and always laughing....

Rights sold to:

Chinese simplex rights (21st Century Publishing House), Iran (Rahsaa Publications)

Settlement
Year of Publication: 2004
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2004
Bernhard Haber is only ten years old when, in 1950, he moves with his parents from Wroclaw in Poland to a small town in Saxony – where the local inhabitants would prefer to see refugees and...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Metropolitan), Arabic world rights (Kanaan), France (Métailié), Italian Audiobook (Tracce.Studio), Denmark (Gyldendal), Slovakia (Kalligram), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Emas), Georgia (Ibis), Israel (Hakkibutz Hamecheud)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Italy (e/o)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Book Club (Bertelsmann), German Book Club Special Edition (Büchergilde Gutenberg)

Willenbrock
Year of Publication: 2000
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 2000
With utmost precision and apparent effortlessness, Christoph Hein paints a picture of our society as one in which, behind the facades, lurking catastrophes are only thinly concealed....
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Metropolitan), Spanish world rights (Anagrama), France (Métailié), Italy (e/o), Denmark (Gyldendal), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Czech Republic (Volvox Globator), Bulgaria (Emas), Greece (Kastaniotis), Ukraine (Junivers)

Von allem Anfang an
Year of Publication: 1997
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 1997

Rights sold to:

French world rights (Métailié), Italy (e/o), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Korea (Thinking Tree)

The Tango Player
Year of Publication: 1989
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 1989

Leipzig 1968: Historian Dallow is released from prison after twenty-one months. His crime: He filled in as a piano player at a student cabaret and the text that he was asked to accompany with a...

Rights sold to:

Serbia (Radni Sto)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (FSG), Catalan rights (Climent), Russia (Raduga), France (Alinea), Italy (e/o), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Norstedt), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Otava), Hungary (Europa)

Horn's End
Year of Publication: 1985
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 1985

Thomas was almost a child still at the time, but he remembers the events in sleepy bad Guldenberg in the summer of 1957 very well: how he started working for the gypsies and was punished for it by...

Rights sold to:

France (Métailié), Korea (CommunicationBooks), Japan (Dogakusha)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (Raduga), Italy (e/o), Netherlands (Van Gennep), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Norstedt), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Otava), Poland (PIW), Czech Republic (Odeon), Slovakia (Slovenský spisovatel), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Emas), Romania / Republic of Moldova (Univers), Estonia (Eesti Raamat), Israel (Sifriat Poalim)

The Distant Lover. Dragon's Blood
Year of Publication: 1982
Christoph HeinYear of Publication: 1982

»I have become invulnerable. I have bathed in dragon’s blood, and no linden leaf anywhere left me unprotected. I can never get out of this skin.« This is the conclusion of the...

Rights sold to:

Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Italy (e/o), Serbia (Radni Sto)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Pantheon Books), Spanish world rights (Saymon), Catalan rights (Empuries), Russia (Raduga), France (Métailié), Netherlands (Van Gennep), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Norstedt), Norway (Gyldendal), Finland (Otava), Japan (Dogakusha), Vietnam (Lao Dong), Czech Republic (Odeon), Hungary (Magvetö), Bulgaria (Emas), Romania (Univers), Estonia (Eesti Raamat), Greece (Periplus), Macedonia (Goten), Georgia (Ibis), Armenia (HGM "Areviq" Himnadram)


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