Holy Winter 20/21
USA & Canada (New Directions), UK & Commonwealth (Bloodaxe), Italy (Bompiani), Sweden (Nirstedt/litteratur), Greece (Vakxikon)
The new outstanding work by the internationally acclaimed author of In Memory of Memory, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and winner of a Prix du Meilleur livre étranger
Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding 2023
Longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2024
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic cut short Maria Stepanova’s stay in Cambridge, UK, in March 2020. Back in Russia, she spent the ensuing months in a state of torpor – the world had withdrawn from her, time had »gone numb«. When she awoke from this state, she began to read Ovid and the shock of the pandemic dissolved into the voices and metaphors of an epochal experience. Motifs that had waited within her for a long time found each other. As in The Body...
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic cut short Maria Stepanova’s stay in Cambridge, UK, in March 2020. Back in Russia, she spent the ensuing months in a state of torpor – the world had withdrawn from her, time had »gone numb«. When she awoke from this state, she began to read Ovid and the shock of the pandemic dissolved into the voices and metaphors of an epochal experience. Motifs that had waited within her for a long time found each other. As in The Body Returns, she transforms historic and current cataclysms into an incredibly delicate, flexible construct of rhythms and voices.
The poem, which was written in a frenzy of poetic inspiration, speaks of winter and war, of banishment and exile, of social isolation and existential abandonment. Stepanova finds sublime imagery for the process of falling silent: words that we call out to each other freezing in the air, for instance, and no longer reaching our interlocutor. The work interweaves love letters and travelogues, Chinese verse and Danish fairy tales into a polyphonic evocation of frozen and slowly thawing time.
»Much in Holy Winter 20/21 is of great tenderness in interplay with intoxicating inspiration.« Marie Luise Knott, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»In nearly every line, Holy Winter 20/21 reveals multiple historical and literary layers.« Helmut Böttiger, taz am wochenende
»Maria Stepanova is a magician with words. She directs an entire orchestra of voices ...« Ilma Rakusa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»Poetry of astonishing presence.« Deutschlandfunk
»Much in Holy Winter 20/21 is of great tenderness in interplay with intoxicating inspiration.« Marie Luise Knott, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»In nearly every line, Holy Winter 20/21...
Persons
Maria Stepanova
Suhrkamp represents world rights to Maria Stepanova’s entire oeuvre.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Disappearing Act
UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo Editions), USA & Canada (New Directions), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Catalan (Angle), Chinese simplex rights (Yilin), Brazilian Portuguese rights (WMF Martin Fontes), Portuguese rights (Rélogio d’Agua), France (Stock), Italy (Bompiani), Netherlands (Bezige Bij), Denmark (Palomar), Sweden (Nirstedt/litteratur), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Siltala), Czech Republic (Akropolis), Bulgaria (Janet 45), Romania (Humanitas), Greece (Gutenberg)
The Body Returns
Even before the international success of her first work of prose, Post-Memory, Maria Stepanova was a famous author. For twenty years, she has been contributing to shaping Moscow’s...
Italy (Bompiani)
Girls Without Clothes
The contents of the Suhrkamp-edition are also included in the Italian selection of poems to be published by Bompiani and the Swedish edition of The Body Returns (Kroppens återkomst), published by Nirstedt/literatur in 2021. Other language rights are available.
Greece (Vakxikon)
In Memory of Memory
Montpellier, 1908: the photograph of a young woman by an easel or »Grandma on the barricades«, as the family calls it. Pre-Revolution portraits, postcards from Venice, Montpellier, or...
USA (New Directions), Canada (Book*hug Press), UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo Editions), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Chinese simplex rights (China CITIC Press), Brazilian Portuguese rights (WMF Martins Fontes), Portuguese rights (Relógio D'Água), France (Stock, Paperback Sublicense: Le Livre de Poche), Italy (Bompiani), Netherlands (De Bezige Bij), Denmark (Palomar), Sweden (Nirstedt/litteratur), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Siltala), Korea (Bokbok Seoga), Japan (Hakusuisha), Poland (Prószyński), Czech Republic (Akropolis), Hungary (Park), Bulgaria (Janet45), Romania (Humanitas), Lithuania (Alma Littera), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Booka), Slovenia (Beletrina), Turkey (CAN), Greece (Vakxikon), North Macedonia (Bata Press)