Suhrkamp Insel

Klaus Bittermann

Furniture at Home, But No Money for Alcohol

Kreuzberg nights are longer than ever – and world-famous. When the young people of this neighbourhood in the centre of Berlin declare a bridge over the Landwehr canal to be a must-visit, even the New York Times takes notice.

Detlef Bluhm

Ship’s cats

The map of the world today would look very different were it not for cats. Without them the great sea expeditions and voyages of discovery would never have been possible: on the weeklong trips across the Atlantic cats were a necessity, for they protected the food from rats and mice.

Eva Demski

Garden Stories

In many religions paradise is described as a garden. Countless people would love to have something resembling paradise in this life already. From this moment on, a question arises every day: Does the garden own us or do we own the garden?

Gabriele Diechler

Lavender Dreams

A picturesque village in the Provence, not far from Grasse, the world capital of perfume. But Julia isn’t here to enjoy the beauty of the landscape: her life is falling apart, and she has come here in search of the truth …

einzlkind

Billy

Billy enjoys a sheltered childhood in his aunt and uncle’s family in Duffmore, a small town in Scotland. His hippie parents have split from the world with an overdose shortly after his birth. From them, he inherited his love for music: for the Beatles, the Ramones, Joy Division. From his uncle, on the other hand, he receives the love for philosophy.

Ursula Heinzelmann

Monsieur Vuong

There is a restaurant in the Alte Schönhauser Straße 46 in Berlin-Mitte that became an international place of pilgrimage many years ago: Monsieur Vuong’s restaurant.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

The Lives of Others

East German culture scene, mid-1980s. State power entrenches on the lives of two artists, a couple, initially seemingly untouched by politics – Georg is a playwright, Christa-Maria an actress. Minister Hempf sets the Stasi onto Georg and wants him out of the way, as he has fallen in love with Christa-Maria.

Rafael Horzon

The White Book

The unusual biography of an entrepreneur in the form of a picaresque novel Rafael Horzon’s Das weisse Buch grants us compelling insights into his fast-paced life as a furniture magnate, original genius and apple-cake tycoon.

Andreas Izquierdo

Miss Hedy Dreams Of Flying

»Lady in her prime seeks cavalier to drive her to the nudist beach. Payment guaranteed.« – An ad in the local newspaper sets the ball rolling: Hedy von Pyritz, 88 years old, disciplined, sharp-tongued, vain. Keen mind, dry humour, at times offensive. An old lady, who usually sits in a wheelchair, causes a substantial scandal in the small town in the region of Münster, where she resides in grand style.

Sarah Khan

The Fortune Teller’s Babblings

Apartment clearance and tabula rasa, fire or impulse sale – what drives people to sell their things for small change via classifieds? In all seriousness, with an intention to buy, Sarah Khan met numerous people who advertised and listened carefully when they started to recount their life stories – and created literature from oral history. The outcome is a series of stories about separation and new beginnings, happiness and unhappiness, of rising or already-burst dreams.

Tatjana Kruse

Mermaids Murder Better

Three strangers demolish Konny and Kriemhild’s bed & breakfast and demand that the sisters hand over the millions that the Commodore, Kriemhild’s deceased husband, owes them. Did the Commodore really unearth a treasure illegally, scam his crew, sell the treasure and stash away the money in a secret place?

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.

Mareike Nieberding

When We Forgot How to Speak

Throughout her childhood and teenage years Mareike Nieberding would be picked up by her father no matter where she was, if she was drunk, or who she was with. From a party at one in the morning, at seven after a shift at the bar. Her father was her protector, her comforter, an incurable optimist. When she sits in front of him today she asks herself who this greying man with freckles really is, what he thinks and feels, whether he’s happy. At some point between then and now the two stopped getting to know each other. These days, once he’s picked her up from the train station and they’re on their way, they talk about neighbours and other acquaintances until all of a sudden they’re home, and silent. They don’t argue. They just have nothing to say to each other.

Matthias Sachau

Alicia Disappears

Alicia and Robert are best friends. But then one day, Alicia suddenly disappears without a word of explanation. The only clues she left are three Photos and her favourite book, Wuthering Heights.

Hg.: Friederike Schilbach

The Bathroom Chronicles.

Friederike Schilbach about »The Bathroom Chronicles«: Last spring, I visited a friend in Italy when I found the inspiration for this book. She lives in Monopoli, a little city in Puglia by the sea, in an apartment that used to belong to a captain. My friend renovated it herself, in a very gentle and thoughtful manner. Where once stood the fireplace where pulpo was grilled now stands the bathroom. When you step into the shower, you can look up a meter-long shaft – and like in a James Turrell artwork, see the open sky way above. I realized this bathroom resembles my friend in character. Both are airy, open, minimalistic, beautiful. Before I left, I asked my friend to send me a picture of her bathroom, for the memory. She did, and wrote a few lines about it. I went back to Berlin and asked some other friends to do the same. In the beginning, I thought of four or five. But day after day mails arrived, with photos and emotional stories about yucca palms, foreign travels, glamourous grandmothers and ex-boyfriends. Almost every one of these friends sent the task to another friend. Only a few months later, I had a collection of more than a hundred pictures of bathrooms and stories.

Sarah Schmidt

Far Away is Something Else

A gruff Berliner and a small-town northern German with a penchant for yoga and handicrafts. Other than a mutually felt aversion, Edith Scholz and Christel Jacobi have nothing in common – and yet, the two 70-year-olds take off on an adventure that will wind up taking them all the way through Germany.

Bettina Suleiman

Return to the Wild

Free time? Sleep? No comment. Young, thirty-something Marina is living the dream of an entire generation of researchers. She and her mentor Griffin are working on a UN project worth millions that is to experiment with raising gorillas to be like human beings.

Hans Traxler

Sniffler

A summer month in a stately country residence in East Sussex. Sounds marvelous. When a married couple is invited by their English friends to look after the house and the dog while they go on holiday, they are overjoyed at the prospect. Swimming in Pevensey Bay, excursions with the Bluebell Express, visits to the Tate Gallery, hiking in the Downs – the two make great plans. But they have not taken Sniffler, their hosts’ dachshund, into account. The dog is panicked with fear of being left alone and comes up with ever more and new tricks to prevent his dog-sitters from leaving the premises …