Thomas Kunst
Colonies And Cufflinks
Thomas Kunst’s new poems are like a foray through a Luna park: Arab horsemen gather in the DIY superstore, the battle of Tours and Poitiers rages between carports and garden furniture covers in the year 732, and we encounter a Viking on 54th street in New York.Rights available
Svenja Leiber
Dust
As an eleven-year-old, Jonas Blaum spends a year in Saudi Arabia together with his parents and his two siblings – the father has accepted a position as a doctor at a hospital in Riyadh. The Germans are having a hard time adapting to life in the strange country. When the Blaum’s youngest child, a girl who identifies as a boy, disappears without a trace one day, and returns a short while later, unharmed but without speech, the family returns to Germany hastily.Sold to
English world rights (Seagull)
Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Najem Wali
Abraham Meets Ibrahim
A highly dramatic scene: a father leans over the defenceless boy, the knife flashing in his hand – when, at the last moment, an angel orders him to sacrifice a ram instead of his own son. The biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is well-known. That it caused the philosopher Kierkegaard a sleepless night at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, during which a divine power appeared to him to discuss the question of mercy – this is something only Sibylle Lewitscharoff knows. How the Quran deals with this material in turn, how it relegates Isaac to the background and elevates Abraham’s firstborn Ismail to his position instead, that’s what Najem Wali tells us about.Rights available
Niklas Luhmann
A Systems Theory of Society
»Theme: theory of society; duration: 30 years; costs: none« – so ran Niklas Luhman’s infamous answer at the end of the 1960s in regard to his research project. The schedule was kept: in 1997 The Society of Society, Luhmann’s magnum opus and the key element of the project, was published.Sold to
Korea (Saemulgyul)
Ulli Lust
How I Tried To Be A Good Person
When Ulli Lust’s autobiographical comic Heute ist der letzte Tag vom Rest deines Lebens came out eight years ago, it was celebrated as a masterpiece and awarded numerous international prizes. In her sensational new comic, which picks up directly where its predecessor left off, she recounts the intense story of a ménage à trois, a utopian love affair that becomes possessive and violent, a story of a sexual obsession, gender conflict and self-liberation – her story.Sold to
USA (Fantagraphics), Spanish world rights (La Cúpula), France (Ça et La)
Thomas Macho
To Take One’s Own Life
»Suicide«, Walter Benjamin wrote in his Arcades Project, appears »as the quintessence of modernity«. And, indeed, after having been seen for centuries as a sin or the expression of psychic disturbance, in some countries even criminally sanctioned, since the 20th century there has been a profound change in how suicide is viewed and this in turn has led to the emergence of a new culture of death. More and more often one’s own death is regarded as a “project” for which he or she is responsible. Those who take their own lives no longer simply desire to do away with them, but to take hold of them and give them new meaning.Sold to
Spanish world rights (Herder), Brazilian Portuguese rights (WMF Martins Fontes)
Nicolas Mahler
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 »Jealousy« to »Divorce« and from »Subconsciousness« to »Doubt« it offers humoristic crutches for the more rattling aspects of life and a lot of fun on top of that.Rights available
Nicolas Mahler
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 shortened version of Proust’s monumental oeuvre, but rather a surprisingly funny picture narrative, disrespectful and at the same time completely permeated by Proustian spirit. And so this ‘Search Of Lost Time’ becomes a dense picture stream through time and space, a brilliant complex house of mirrors of Proustian motives and perceptions.Rights available
Andreas Maier
The University
Goethe University Frankfurt. 1988, 1989. An entirely different degree back then: in short, nothing less than complete freedom. From drinking beer in the pub »Doctor Flotte« to seminars on truth theory (which see the philosophy students rushing to the doctor’s already mid-semester) a complete loss of self is just around the corner for our protagonist, while time too is getting turned on its head.Rights available
Steffen Mau
The Metric We
Whether education, health or consumption: by now, data is gathered on almost every aspect of our personalities and behaviour. Step by step we are becoming a society of stars, scores, likes and lists in which everything and everyone is constantly measured and rated.Sold to
English world rights (Polity)
Walter Mayer
Bread
Bread smells of coming home, of family and love. Bread creates religions and revolutions – and causes coeliac disease and a fear of wheat-bloated bellies. Bread is a basic foodstuff – and an edible longing. Bread is a metaphor. Bread is universal. What does bread say about the people who eat it and about the circumstances in which it is baked? What do you find when you follow the smell of bread?Rights available
Robert Menasse
The Capital
Brussels. A panorama of tragic heroes, manipulative losers, involuntary accomplices. In his new novel, Robert Menasse spans a narrative arc between the times, the nations, the inevitable and the irony of fate, between petty bureaucracy and big emotions.Sold to
UK & Commonwealth (MacLehose Press), USA & Canada (W.W.Norton/Liveright), Spanish world rights (Seix Barral), Chinese simplex rights (People's Literature Publishing House), Russia (Text), Portuguese rights (Dom Quixote), Arabic world rights (AFAQ), France (Verdier), Italy (Sellerio), Netherlands (Arbeiderspers), Sweden (Weyler), Poland (Noir sur Blanc), Czech Republic (Plus), Hungary (Geopen), Bulgaria (Lege Artis), Lithuania (Tyto Alba), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Arhipelag), Slovenia (Cankarjeva založba), Turkey (Everest), Greece (Patakis), Georgia (Intelekti), Armenia (Antares)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg)
Markus Metz, Georg Seeßlen
Freedom and Control
One of the defining experiences of the present is that the eternal dichotomy of freedom and control continues to unfold with new sharpness: the individual and society are confronted with an unprecedented variety of ways of being free. On the other hand, technical possibilities and the widely felt need for ever-increasing control are escalating - whether over one's own body, the borders or the whole world.Rights available
Hg.: Antje Modersohn, Wolfgang Werner
»We belong to each other indeed«. The letters
When Paula Becker first meets the considerably older Otto Modersohn in 1899, she is a young, ambitious artist who wants to paint at any cost; he, on the contrary, has already had a name for quite some time, is one of the founders of the artists’ colony in Worpswede, and, on top of it all, married. Nonetheless, their mutual attraction is undeniable and one year later they are a couple. The first letters they exchange while Paula Becker is travelling between Berlin and Paris already bear witness to the great affection they felt for each other but also to their great connection in terms of artistic creation. Later, their written correspondence would continuously prove to be a means for them to discuss painting as well as the formulation of artistic goals. And, last but not least, they are full of anecdotes concerning their circles of friends in Worpswede as well as Paula Becker’s amusement over her marriage preparation course in Berlin.Rights available
Thomas Montasser
The Summer of the Penguins
A small bookshop in London’s Mayfair borough. Mrs. Annetta Robington finds herself completely absorbed in a fascinating book about penguins and has lost track of time. Just as she is about to leave the bookshop, she makes a sudden, incredible discovery: the shop owner is a penguin! The elderly gentleman denies it at first, but then admits to it: yes, he is a penguin – one of many that live among us humans.Rights available
Bodo Mrozek
Youth – Pop – Culture
Clamorous sounds, unruly behavior, and colorful fashions: the sonic vocabulary used by contemporaries to describe the new youth scene in the mid-20th century mark a cultural dividing point. Aesthetic conflicts culminated in street riots and produced police measures, censorship, and laws. Spectacular court cases against youths led to negative social clichés of male urban youth: the American juvenile delinquent, the British teddy boy, the French blouson noir and the German halbstarke.Rights available
Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt
Seeing with Your Hands
Müller-Wohlfahrt is considered one of the best sports medicine physicians in the world. His sense of touch is rumoured to be magical. He does not rely on MRIs or sonographs –his fingers tell him what the problem is, and he treats injuries with natural medicine exclusively.Rights available
Melinda Nadj Abonji
Tortoise Soldier
Zoltán Kertész, blue-eyed son of a »half gypsy« and a day labourer with constantly changing lovers, is the outsider of his little town in Serbia. When a child, he fell out of his father’s hands and off the back of a speeding motorcycle and later, unable to carry a sack of flour through a bakery quickly enough, the baker he was working for beat him bloody. Ever since he has suffered »a fluttering of the temples«, and is happiest sitting in his barn doing crossword puzzles. When the Yugoslavian civil war breaks out in 1991, his parents see it as his big chance: in the People’s Army the »good-for-nothing« and »idiot« will become a man and then a hero. But Zoltán doesn’t fit in, he asks the wrong questions and, on top of it all, stutters when he does. After his only friend’s collapse on a pointless training march turns out to be fatal, Zoltán refuses to play the game anymore with a system that has given all the power to the strongest.Sold to
France (Métailié), Arabic world rights (Tanmia)
Christian Neuhäuser
Wealth as an Ethical Problem
Wealth is considered a good thing, desirable even. Even those not in pursuit of it would be unlikely to reject it, and those who begrudge others their wealth are quickly labelled as jealous.Rights available
Hg.: Angelika Neuwirth
The Quran
Is the Quran a purely Islamic text and therefore foreign to us? Or is it not rather a new and unconventional voice in the concert of late antiquity debates in which the theological foundations of the Jewish and Christian religion were also laid down? It is not the Quran that must be reshaped as a result of new manuscript findings or with the help of linguistic experiments – it is our perspective of the Quran that needs to undergo a decisive change, if we wish to seek out its revolutionary originality.Sold to
English world rights (Yale University Press)
