Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Arabic world rights (Kalima), Lithuania (Lithuania Writers Union Publishers)
Fire Doesn't Burn / Feuer brennt nicht
Novel
Ralf Rothmann has written a novel about the delicate convergence of East and West, as well as a chronicle of erotic desire - a torrid love story.
Berlin, nearly 20 years after the fall of the wall. Kreuzberg has become unappealing, the trendiness unbearable, and so Alina and Wolf move to the bucolic border of the city. In Müggelsee, where the differences between East and West have not yet faded, and the scene of astonishing enounters with men from the vanishing republic, Wolf finds...
Berlin, nearly 20 years after the fall of the wall. Kreuzberg has become unappealing, the trendiness unbearable, and so Alina and Wolf move to the bucolic border of the city. In Müggelsee, where the differences between East and West have not yet faded, and the scene of astonishing enounters with men from the vanishing republic, Wolf finds...
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Ralf Rothmann has written a novel about the delicate convergence of East and West, as well as a chronicle of erotic desire - a torrid love story.
Berlin, nearly 20 years after the fall of the wall. Kreuzberg has become unappealing, the trendiness unbearable, and so Alina and Wolf move to the bucolic border of the city. In Müggelsee, where the differences between East and West have not yet faded, and the scene of astonishing enounters with men from the vanishing republic, Wolf finds himself increasingly overstrained from daily routine with Alina, the „triviality of togetherness,“ the feeling of confinement despite living in a comfortable apartment.
When his former lover Charlotte resurfaces, Wolf seizes the opportunity to escape to new stimuli, ignited by the assertive professor’s powers of seduction. His trysts are disguised as excursions with his dog Webster, in whose fur, however, the smell of unfamiliar perfume lingers unexpectedly long. Alina becomes suspicious, so Wolf overcomes the „hell of concealment“ and is surprised at the response: His wife not only accepts the affair, but encourages it.
»Ralf Rothmann’s new novel, Fire Doesn’t Burn, stands apart from earlier works of the 1953-born author, who has long been established as one of the greatest and most important storytellers of our time. Specifically, Rothmann re-orients himself with a captivatingly clear view of his own generation [...] and Fire Doesn’t Burn is truly something different - a more radical, vulnerable existential force [...]. Ralf Rothmann has written a magnificent reflection of an older generation and masculinity, love and desire, freedom and addiction.« Felicitas von Lovenberg, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»Ralf Rothmann’s new novel, Fire Doesn’t Burn, stands apart from earlier works of the 1953-born author, who has long been established as one of the greatest and most important storytellers of our time. Specifically, Rothmann re-orients himself with a captivatingly clear view of his own generation [...] and Fire Doesn’t Burn is truly something different - a more radical, vulnerable existential force [...]. Ralf Rothmann has written a magnificent reflection of an older ...
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2009, 303 pages
Persons
Ralf Rothmann
Author
Ralf Rothmann was born in Schleswig in 1953 and grew up in the Ruhr region. For his work, he has been awarded numerous prizes including the Heinrich-Böll-Preis 2005, the Max-Frisch-Preis 2006, the Kleist-Preis 2017, the Premio San Clemente 2018 (Spain) and most recently the Thomas-Mann-Preis 2023. His work Der Gott jenes Sommers received the Uwe-Johnson-Preis 2018 and the English translation of Im Frühling sterben was awarded the HWA Gold Crown for Historical Fiction (UK) 2018. Rothmann lives in Berlin.
Ralf Rothmann
Author
Ralf Rothmann was born in Schleswig in 1953 and grew up in the Ruhr region. For his work, he has been awarded numerous prizes including the...
© Heike Steinweg
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2023
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2023
Theory of Rain
»I have always loved the rain – as long as I didn’t get wet. The world is more peaceful when it rains, I sit by the window quietly and listen as the downpour makes the foliage of the lime tree, the letterboxes and the empty bottles behind the bistro sing. I’d like to write as fluidly as that. The entire rue Delambre is expressed brilliantly, up to the farthest...
Year of Publication: 2022
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2022
The Night under the Snow
Luisa is studying to become a librarian at university, which is housed in a former arms factory in Kiel. Elisabeth is working at the officers’ mess in the port and all she strives for is a...
Rights sold to:
Italy (Neri Pozza), Turkey (Yapi Kredi)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg)
Year of Publication: 2020
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2020
Hotel of Insomniacs
»Fear is a man’s best friend« is the motto of Hotel of Insomniacs, Ralf Rothmann’s new volume of stories, and indeed it is often fear that helps his characters overcome difficulties. The...
Rights sold to:
Italy (Neri Pozza)
Year of Publication: 2018
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2018
The God of that Summer
A child in the war: at the start of 1945, twelve-year-old Luisa Norff has to flee to the countryside with her mother and her older sister as the bombardment of Kiel has begun. The estate owned by...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Picador), Italy (Neri Pozza), Czech Republic (Argo), Croatia (Fraktura), Turkey (Yapi Kredi), Greece (Kastaniotis)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Book Club rights (Büchergilde Gutenberg)
Year of Publication: 2015
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2015
To Die in Spring
To Die in Spring is the story of Walter Urban and Friedich »Fiete« Caroli, two seventeen-year-old farm hands from Northern Germany who are both forced into military service in February 1945....
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Picador UK; USA/Canada sublicense: FSG; English audiobook sublicense: Tantor), Spanish world rights (Libros del Asteroide), Catalan rights (L'Altra Editorial), Chinese simplex rights (Archipel Press), Portuguese rights (Sextante Editora), France (Denoël), Italy (Neri Pozza), Netherlands (Arbeiderspers), Denmark (Rosinante), Sweden (Thorén & Lindskog), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Poland (W.A.B.), Czech Republic (Argo), Slovakia (Premedia), Hungary (Magvetö), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Romania (ART), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Laguna), Slovenia (Goga), Turkey (Yapi Kredi), Greece (Kastaniotis)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Finland (Atena), Estonia (Hea Lugu), Kosovo / Albanian world rights (Buzuku)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Entire Radio Reading (NDR)
Year of Publication: 2012
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2012
Shakespeare’s Chickens
Ralf Rothmann, undisputed master of long and short prose, has written stories whose realism is driven by a yearning for the unexpected, full of humour and empathy. Stories that continue to echo long after you’ve turned the last page.
In these eight stories, Ralf Rothmann depicts turning points in life, both happy and dramatic, in an affecting and magically precise...
In these eight stories, Ralf Rothmann depicts turning points in life, both happy and dramatic, in an affecting and magically precise...
Year of Publication: 2006
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2006
Seashore with Deers
Love stories? Are there any other stories, asks the author.
Whether he writes about the distress of a 12-year-old girl who feels responsible for her family after the death of her mother, or...
Whether he writes about the distress of a 12-year-old girl who feels responsible for her family after the death of her mother, or...
Rights sold to:
Turkey (Metis)
Year of Publication: 2004
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2004
Young Light
Ralf Rothmann’s narrative is held in his very own, poignant language which tells us about the last weeks of childhood, a childhood in the German Ruhrgebiet of the Sixties, the stillness of its...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Spanish world rights (Libros Del Asteroide), Russia (Fluid), Finland (Avain), Turkey (Metis), Azerbaijan (Alatoran)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Poland (Atut)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Lindhardt & Ringhof / Saga Egmont)
Year of Publication: 2003
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2003
Heat
This novel of Ralf Rothmann is set in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, and starts off in a canteen that supplies its customers in West and East alike with convenience food.
It is here, in...
It is here, in...
Rights sold to:
Croatia (Fraktura), Macedonia (Antolog)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (Ast)
Year of Publication: 2000
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 2000
Milk and Coal
We find traces of the author’s childhood in this novel. It tells the story of a family at the end of the 1960s. The father works underground: »You only need an hour down there. Up to our waists in...
Rights sold to:
Sweden (Thoren & Lindskog), Serbia (Clio), Turkey (Yapi Kredi)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: France (Laurence Teper)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Book Club rights (Büchergilde Gutenberg), German Hardcover Sublicense (Klartext)
Year of Publication: 1991
Ralf RothmannYear of Publication: 1991
Bull
»An essential chapter in the history of the Federal Republic, a swan song to the lost generation of the seventies that oscillates between melancholy and furore,« wrote Matthias...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Netherlands (de Arbeiderspers)
DISCOVER
News
Ralf Rothmann: 70th Birthday on May 10, 2023
»Is there such a thing as the perfect storyteller? If so, Ralf Rothmann is close to being one.« Michael Bittner, neues deutschlandNews
Ralf Rothmann awarded Thomas Mann-Preis 2023
Rothmann receives the prize for his literary oeuvre.Just published