Suhrkamp Insel

Friedrich Ani

Killing Happiness - Novel

Happiness is extinguished completely when 11-year-old Lennard Grabbe doesn’t come home one night during the cold November days in Munich. 34 days later, he is found the victim of a murderer. Former Detective Chief Superintendent Jakob Franck, protagonist of Ani’s previous novel Day Without a Name, delivers the most horrible news of all to the parents – and so, happiness disappears from their house. And so does the happiness of other people connected to Lennard.

Ingeborg Bachmann

The Book Goldmann

The Book Goldmann is the name Ingeborg Bachmann gave to her great narrative project, which she cherished until the end. This edition renders the previously only fragmentarily available work recognizable as a project of redemptive narration. The Book Goldmann deals with the various aspects of indiscretion, including misunderstood indiscretion that leaves the other alone in his distress. Half a century after Hofmannsthal, Bachmann discovers a social medium in the somewhat indiscrete Viennese conversation, which could have prevented the worst: Fanny Goldmann’s death.

Georg Baselitz, Alexander Kluge

World-changing Rage

Rage and obstinacy are closely related. In the work of Georg Baselitz and Alexander Kluge they are fundamental categories. Rage is dynamic: it can grow and suddenly erupt into flaming protests, revolts, revolutions, and war. Within the figure of the hero its energies are concentrated. In this book Georg Baselitz and Alexander Kluge compare the melancholically inclined figure of the occidental hero (and its deconstruction) to the very different ethos of the Japanese hero, the »Antipodean«.

Zoë Beck

The Supplier

London, in the not too distant future: A drug dealer is floating down the Thames – dead. A protection racketeer disappears without a trace. And Ellie Johnson is certain that she is in danger too.

Jurek Becker

On the beach at Bochum there’s a lot going on

Over the course of his life as a writer Jurek Becker has explored many genres. He wrote texts for the cabaret, authored movie scripts, garnered international acclaim with his debut novel Jacob the Liar, published short stories and essays. In his estate drafts were found for most of his works. Among these, drafts for postcards were discovered as well, in which he used the same conceptual approach as he did in his prose works. The number of postcards, which Becker primarily wrote towards the end of his life, shows that his aim in writing them was to bring a moment of joy to friends or family members. Messages of the author about himself were of secondary importance. First and foremost, Jurek Becker was concerned with entertaining the reader for a few minutes. Increasingly, the postcard became the textual form in which the author enjoyed expressing himself. It was, after all, a form that allowed for word games and silliness – and that, on the other hand, off ered the possibility of showing affection without having to disclose too much information about himself.

Timm Beichelt

Substitute Playing Fields

The selection of Russia and Qatar as hosts of the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups have once more shown that the football pitch is never merely a green rectangle on which 22 players chase after a ball. (Professional) football is always a substitute pitch on which politics operate simultaneously: political leaders of all types draw attention to themselves, norms like competitive thinking are rehearsed, national teams are an indicator as to which groups are regarded as belonging to the nation and which groups aren’t.

Ulla Berkéwicz

Beyond Script

Based on Vedic, Jewish and mathematictopological knowledge, Ulla Berkéwicz’ new work, comprised of two corresponding parts which reflect each other, invites us to discern what restricts our consciousness.

Marcel Beyer

The Century that Cried itself Blind

Considering this current moment of great change as well as the 20th century when death became a master from Germany, is literature still possible? Does it still have a reason for being in a post-Auschwitz world where all cultural production can only be an expression of barbarism? Or is literature necessary, indeed indispensible, precisely because of such atrocities? Which methods must such a literature use? The 2016 Georg Büchner Prize-winning writer examines these questions and more in his poetic explorations and has a succinct and far-reaching answer at hand: through the fine-tuning of the material of reality like literature.

Hans Blumenberg

Writings on Literature 1945-1958

Long awaited and now available from the estate: Hans Blumenberg’s reviews, talks and lectures on international literature: Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Greene, Kafka, Jünger, Faulkner, Robbe-Grillet and many others.

Bernd Brunner

The Book of Pomegranates

Next to olives, figs, grapes and dates, the pomegranate belongs to the earliest fruit to be cultivated by humankind. Until today, it is surrounded by mysteries. Was the »forbidden apple« with which Eve tempted Adam actually a pomegranate? Is the pomegranate – botanically speaking – even an »apple«? Is it the universal remedy which many believe it to be? Most likely, the origin of the pomegranate lies in the area south of the Caspian Sea, and its traditional area of cultivation spans from the Himalayas to the Mediterranean. Its rich associations, especially as a symbol of fertility, run through the cultures of antiquity like a golden thread; later, it was used as an attribute of the Madonna figure and in still lives in Renaissance paintings until it was replaced by citrus fruit, which were much easier to process.

Simone Buchholz

Beton Rouge

Chastity Riley is chasing a madman. Or at least that’s what it seems like. Because who else would lock high-ranking executives in a cage in the middle of Hamburg? And so Chastity experiences one of the rare occasions where her bosses stop trying to rein her in and confine her to the tediousness that is her desk. Her investigations take her into the world of publishing and the institutions that form elites. And all the while her friends are driving her crazy, because of all people it’s those that usually give her support who suddenly prove to be a fickle bunch.

Nina Bußmann

Earth’s Mantle is Hot and Partially Molten

On a clear day in the Caribbean a propeller plane with the 32-year-old seismologist Nelly on board suddenly disappears from the radar. After months of searching, pieces of wreckage are found in the jungles of Nicaragua. But of Nelly not a trace remains. At home in Frankfurt, her girlfriend cannot get over her disappearance. She travels to Managua, settles into Nelly’s old room, reads the notes and diaries she left behind and talks with the people who knew her there, driven by a strange obsession that seems to be keeping her from confronting a secret in her own life. And in this way, her search for Nelly steadily takes on the contours of escape.

Michael Butter

»Nothing is as it seems«

According to most recent empirical studies, fifty percent of the US-American population and a smaller, but not insignificant number of Germans believe in at least one conspiracy theory. Personalities like David Icke or Alex Jones enjoy celebrity status; in his TV show the latter chats to Donald Trump, who for his part undermines the belief in shared interpretations with his attacks on the »Fake-News Media«.

Eva Corino

The Principle of Succession

Here’s the good news: over the past fifty years, there has been an increase of 15 years in the life expectancy of women. But why do they rush through life faster and faster despite the time they gained? The reason for this lies in the fact that what is expected of them has increased in a similar fashion, but unfortunately to an unhealthy degree. Raising children, professional development, university degree, partner, career, social engagement – women should and are expected to deliver and know how to do everything, simultaneously, successively. Lack of time and excessive demand are the harmless, failing relationships or burn-outs the severe consequences of this new, precarious lifestyle.

Sigrid Damm

Time Moves in a Circle

Sigrid Damm’s new book presents a retrospective love for her father. All her life, she was in conflict with him, rejected him. It wasn’t until shortly before his death that a tentative relationship started to develop between the two. More than twenty years later, she begins to trace her father’s life.

Eva Demski

I’ll Carry My Suitcase Myself

Despite the odds, a life which shouldn’t have been at all becomes colourful and exciting. Being a constant part of this life, farewells can be countered by encounters and stories though the feeling that this is all a game continues throughout unabated. Eva Demski gathers together others’ lives, those both known and unknown; leading lights of literature like Reich-Ranicki, Koeppen, Kempowski, and Rose Ausländer share their stories, but over and over again she also seeks out outsiders and finds them. She has her own dead poets society, too. Her early life in Regensburg is one of incense and cigarette smoke, then there’s the theatre, and becoming a young adult in politically instable times. These times become even more unstable, however, when her husband, a lawyer for the Red Army Faction, suddenly dies and the police become interested in her.

Gabriele Diechler

Lavender Dreams

A picturesque village in the Provence, not far from Grasse, the world capital of perfume. But Julia isn’t here to enjoy the beauty of the landscape: her life is falling apart, and she has come here in search of the truth …

Ebba D. Drolshagen

Knit One, Purl One

The Norwegian star is the most famous pattern on winter jumpers around the world. But how did it come about? It was conceived in 1857 by a young Norwegian girl, who tried to knit gloves with two differently coloured types of wool while herding goats. Other people noticed the gloves when she wore them to church and soon the octagonal star became a signature feature for the entire region. In cold Norway it carries a poetic name: eight-leafed rose.

Ellen Dunne

Hard Landing

Patsy Logan, 38, German-Irish commissioner with the State Office of Criminal Investigations in Munich, is investigating in a renowned online company. The case quickly attracts attention, media and internal pressure is huge. And Patsy’s private life also becomes increasingly troubled…

Ulrike Edschmid

A Man Who Falls

Summer 1986. Berlin-Charlottenburg. A man climbs up onto a ladder to paint the ceiling of a flat in a turn-of-the-century building he intends to move into with his partner. He loses his balance and falls. Afterwards, nothing at all is like it was. Little else could have shattered the life of two people at the beginning of their future together in such a brutal way. But what at first seems like an ending slowly turns into the exploration of an unknown continent: one’s own life.