Lutz Seiler

The Ticking Heart

A Novel
U1 for The Ticking Heart
produktfoto zu The Ticking Heart
produktfoto zu The Ticking Heart
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Rights sold to:

Domestic rights sales: German Audiobook (DAV), German radio reading (rbb)

Fiction
Lutz Seiler
The Ticking Heart / Das tickende Herz
A Novel
The new novel by the Büchner Prize winner and author of the bestselling Kruso and Star 111.
In the early days of the new millennium, Carl Bischoff returns to Berlin from the surrounding countryside, only to quickly head off again. His pilgrimage follows the path of a woman who seems to have appeared out of nowhere, the daughter of a Kazakh shaman. She seems to know everything about him, and their love story – a fairy tale with a hint of dubiousness – takes them to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Curonian Spit, and the icy winter steppes of Kazakhstan. Aysha and Carl’s story comes to a...
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In the early days of the new millennium, Carl Bischoff returns to Berlin from the surrounding countryside, only to quickly head off again. His pilgrimage follows the path of a woman who seems to have appeared out of nowhere, the daughter of a Kazakh shaman. She seems to know everything about him, and their love story – a fairy tale with a hint of dubiousness – takes them to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Curonian Spit, and the icy winter steppes of Kazakhstan. Aysha and Carl’s story comes to a surreal end in the middle of an old nuclear testing site, where Aysha’s tribe has holed up to make a sacrifice to save the Earth – while Carl has disappeared from the world.

Is this a story of love, fate – or conspiracy? This big, genre-busting novel begins with a small wound that refuses to heal. Inflicted by a single kiss, the story takes us around half the globe. After his prize-winning bestsellers Kruso and Star 111, Lutz Seiler continues the story of his hero, in which world history and personal fate overlap.
2026, 450 pages
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Persons

Lutz Seiler

Author

Lutz Seiler was born in Gera, Thuringia, in 1963 and today lives in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin and in Stockholm. He underwent training as a mason and a carpenter and completed his studies in 1990. Since 1997, he has been the literary director and custodian of the Peter Huchel Museum. He was writer-in-residence at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and at the German Academy in Rome. His many prizes include the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Bremen Prize for Literature, the Fontane Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize, and most recently the Georg Büchner Prize.

Lutz Seiler was born in Gera, Thuringia, in 1963 and today lives in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin and in Stockholm. He underwent training as a mason...

© Jürgen Bauer

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Latest first
script for blind giants
Year of Publication: 2021
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2021

script for blind giants

After publishing two novels, Lutz Seiler returns to the home port of poems. Back to the voices of childhood, to the Waldstadion, to the »bone park« and to the question of where our...
Rights sold to:

Sweden (Edda), Greece (Metronomos)

Star 111
Year of Publication: 2020
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2020

Star 111

»November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge und Walter, following a secret dream they’ve harboured all their lives, set out for life in the West....

Rights sold to:

UK & Commonwealth (And Other Stories),  USA & Canada (NYRB), Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Verdier), Italy (Utopia), Netherlands (Meridiaan), Denmark (Batzer), Sweden (Norstedts), Poland (ArtRage), Bulgaria (Black Flamingo), Lithuania (Hieronymus), Slovenia (Sodobnost), Greece (Patakis)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV), German Entire Radio Readings (rbb & NDR), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg)

Film rights optioned

Kruso
Year of Publication: 2014
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2014

Kruso

After the accident, Edgar Bendler decides to step out of his own life. He becomes a dishwasher on Hiddensee, that legendary island which is said to lie outside of time and »beyond the...
Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Anagrama), Catalan rights (Club Editor), Russia (Text), France (Verdier), Italy (Del Vecchio), Denmark (Batzer & Co.), Sweden (Norstedts), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Japan (Hakusuisha), Poland (Jagiellonian UP), Hungary (Europa), Romania (RAO), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Slovenia (Sodobnost), Turkey (Bence), Greece (Patakis), Macedonia (Goten), Armenia (Antares)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Scribe), Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Netherlands (Meridiaan / Dutch Media Group), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Serbia (Laguna)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Entire Radio Reading (NDR), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg + Club Bertelsmann)

in field latin
Year of Publication: 2010
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2010

in field latin

in field latin or in other words: to exist in a field of language, and at the same time explore a landscape’s legends, how they come to one’s ears, in walks, in whispers, in silence....
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Italy (selection, Del Vecchio), Sweden (selection, Faethon)

The Time-Balance
Year of Publication: 2009
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2009

The Time-Balance

Whether in the story of a play-acted shooting or in the everyday drama of a real-life separation – all the texts in The Time-Balance are about decisive turning-points, about the...
Rights sold to:

Catalan Rights (selection, Club Editor), Arabic world rights (Al'Asreya), France (Verdier), Italy (Del Vecchio Editore)

Turksib
Year of Publication: 2008
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2008

Turksib

Lutz Seiler first came to be known thanks to his two poetry collections, pech & blende (2000) and vierzig kilometer nacht (2003). For the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize in 2007 he offered up his first short story, Turksib, and was subsequently declared the winner.

  Ilma Rakusa describes the text’s allure: »With poetic-grotesque...
In Case of Loss
Year of Publication: 2004
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2004

In Case of Loss

»In Case of Loss gathers the best of Lutz Seiler’s non-fiction from last twenty-five years, revealing his essays to be different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry....

Rights sold to:

English world rights (And Other Stories), Italy (selection, Del Vecchio)

forty kilometres of night
Year of Publication: 2003
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2003

forty kilometres of night

Lutz Seiler‘s poems, created between 2000 and 2003, undertake a journey through forty kilometres of night, they lead out of the native landscape, destroyed by uranium mining, depicted in pech...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (And Other Stories)

Pitch & Glint
Year of Publication: 2000
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2000

Pitch & Glint

On its original publication in 2000, Pitch & Glint was widely hailed as a landmark in German poetry. Rooted in Seiler’s childhood home, an East German village brutally undermined by...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (And Other Stories)