Judith Schalansky

Marble, Mercury, Mist

What the World Is Made Of
U1 for Marble, Mercury, Mist
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Judith Schalansky
Marble, Mercury, Mist / Marmor, Quecksilber, Nebel
What the World Is Made Of
The stunnning new work by the author of An Inventory of Losses
It begins not with the white of a blank piece of paper but of a block of stone, a 17-tonne monster of solid marble. Months after a fateful encounter with this stone on a ferry off the coast of the island of Thassos, Judith Schalansky finds herself unable to forget it, following it down a snow-white trail towards a marble quarry and a sculptor’s studio, through the dark, often violent history of resource extraction and of appropriating the world. A workshop at the Art Academy of Guadalajara...
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It begins not with the white of a blank piece of paper but of a block of stone, a 17-tonne monster of solid marble. Months after a fateful encounter with this stone on a ferry off the coast of the island of Thassos, Judith Schalansky finds herself unable to forget it, following it down a snow-white trail towards a marble quarry and a sculptor’s studio, through the dark, often violent history of resource extraction and of appropriating the world. A workshop at the Art Academy of Guadalajara turns into a daring and mercurial performance as an apologist for the culture of the book. And the reconstruction of a bygone ascent of the usually mist-shrouded Brocken mountain crystallises into an encyclopaedia of intransparency that seeks the illuminating in the uncertain.

As always with Judith Schalansky, this new book leaves no stone unturned: it explores the nutritional value of marble pigs, the weight of the Earth, the layout of Noah’s Arc, the authenticity of Licha libre wrestling, and the Brocken spectre – phenomena in which the eeriness and unruliness of reality are reflected and refracted. Her three texts, full of twists and turns that take them back and forth between essay and narrative, explore with playful precision the material conditions of life, of literature, and ultimately, of the author’s own writing.
2026, 160 pages
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Judith Schalansky

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Judith Schalansky, born in Greifswald in 1980, lives in Berlin where she works as a writer, editor and book designer. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has won several prizes. Verzeichnis einiger Verluste received the Premio Strega Internazionale 2020 and was longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the Europese Literatuurprijs 2021.
 

Judith Schalansky, born in Greifswald in 1980, lives in Berlin where she works as a writer, editor and book designer. Her work has been translated...

© Jürgen Bauer

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Latest first
An Inventory of Losses
Year of Publication: 2018
Judith SchalanskyYear of Publication: 2018

An Inventory of Losses

»There are no gains without corresponding losses, no losses without corresponding gains.« Agnes Heller

»Western man’s inclination to value what is extinct more than what still exists...

Rights sold to:

USA & Canada (New Directions), UK & Commonwealth (MacLehose Press), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Catalan rights (Mès llibres), Chinese simplex rights (China CITIC Press / Sight), Chinese complex rights (Locus), Russia (Ad Marginem), Portuguese rights (Elsinore), Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Ypsilon Éditeur), Italy (Nottetempo), Netherlands (Meridiaan), Denmark (Palomar), Sweden (Pequod Press), Norway (Forlaget Press), Finland (Osuuskunta Poesia), Korea (Mujintree), Japan (Kawade), Thailand (Gamme Magie Editions), Indonesia (Yayasan Pustaka Obor), Poland (Ha!Art), Hungary (Corvina), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (Trei), Croatia (Mizantrop), Serbia (Dereta), Turkey (CAN), Greece (Antipodes), Mongolia (Monsudar)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)

The Giraffe's Neck
Year of Publication: 2011
Judith SchalanskyYear of Publication: 2011

The Giraffe's Neck

»There was no having your say with Inge Lohmark. No one had a choice. It was selective breeding or nothing.«

Three days in the life of a biology teacher – the last of her kind, a relic of...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Bloomsbury), Spanish world rights (Random House Mondadori), Chinese simplex rights (People's Literature Publishing House), Russia (Text), Portuguese rights (Elsinore), France (Ypsilon), Italy (nottetempo), Netherlands (Meridiaan), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Sweden (Pequod Press), Norway (Press), Finland (Tammi), Korea (Galmuri), Japan (Kawade), Poland (Ha!Art), Czech Republic (Paseka), Hungary (Typotex), Bulgaria (Geia-Libris), Romania (Allfa), Estonia (Tänapäev), Bosnia (Imprimatur), Turkey (Ayrinti), Albanian (Pema)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese complex rights (Locus), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Objetiva), Macedonia (Blesok)


Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg), German Radio Play (SWR), German Stage Adaptations (Schauspiel Frankfurt - also performed at various other German Theatres; Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin)