Rightslist

Surprising and compelling until the very last page, Johann Reißer tells the extraordinary story of Max Duttenhofer, the beginnings of the German armaments industry, and the hopes, desires, and abysses behind it. A gripping, multi-voiced family and epochal novel that stretches a narrative arc from the late 19th century to the 21st.

»Max Duttenhofer’s existence has almost faded into oblivion, although he was one of the most powerful men in the German Empire – and one of its most enigmatic.« Der Spiegel

In the Black Forest town everyone knows the cheeky Max, who would rather hang around the old gunpowder mill than work in his parents’ pharmacy. No one suspects that this ambitious boy will one day take over the mill and build an internationally operating corporation in just a few years. His smokeless powder revolutionizes warfare and makes him one of the most powerful men in the Empire, brokering deals with Bismarck and Krupp and selling his powder all the way to Japan. Yet not everyone welcomes the social changes brought by industrialization and nationalism. The arms race erupts into the First World War, experienced by his illegitimate granddaughter Rosa as a worker in the gunpowder factory. Life-changing events turn her into a fighter against militarism…

This multi-voiced historical and family novel spans the 19th to the 21st century, traversing locations such as Rottweil, Stuttgart, Hamburg, and Berlin. Gripping to the last page, it follows the drive for acceleration and expansion in modernity and its transformation into destruction and violence, revealing the growing social divides, mounting tensions, and political radicalization.

Johann Reißer, born in 1979 in Regensburg, earned his doctorate with a thesis on archaeology and sampling in poetry. He has performed pieces in German- and English-speaking countries, and in 2010 received the jury prize at the 100 Grad Theater Festival in Berlin. He received the Berlin Senate Scholarship for the manuscript of his debut novel Pulver. Reißer teaches philosophy and creative writing and lives in Berlin.

With psychological precision and a language that shimmers like a painting, Stauffer explores the fragility of human relationships in a world where virtuality and reality blend into one another.

»From the very first page, Verena Stauffer takes us on the love journey of an artist who, with every step, packs up and transforms a piece of the world. After reading, your own world will remain changed forever – more colorful, richer, and deeper.« Yevgeniy Breyger

»Verena Stauffer does not shy away from taboos. The language is rich, following in a tradition that stretches from Charles Baudelaire to Arthur Schnitzler, Else Laske-Schüler, and the French writer Colette. And the novel's motifs are sophisticated and precisely interwoven. The transition between the analog and digital worlds is described in a reflective manner.« SWR

Ava is an artist living a precarious existence. She is trying to free herself from an unhappy relationship, and in her search for security she becomes entangled in a love triangle between a young, attractive doctor and the reality-shy E. A play of vibrating enchantment and shattering twists unfolds – of chasing and being chased, of fulfilment and withdrawal, of life and death. A growing mistrust spreads through her mind: Who is the father of her child – is she really pregnant? Has her lover been murdered? She almost loses herself in the constant shifting between virtual and real life, finding herself drawn into a role-playing game, a virtual world in which she seems to be fighting against herself. Yet through her unwavering faith in painting, in color, in friendship, and in goodness, she creates a new, grand painting and senses that she had to experience life in order to reconnect with herself and her art.

With her unique, award-winning language, Verena Stauffer dives into the digital world and skillfully blurs it with reality in unpredictable ways.

Verena Stauffer, born in 1978 in Kirchdorf an der Krems, Upper Austria, published her debut novel Orchis in 2018, which was nominated for the Alpha Literature Prize, the Hotlist of Independents, and the Blogger Debut Prize. She has twice been nominated for the Austrian Book Prize: with Ousia (published by Kookbooks) and with her latest poetry collection Kiki Beach. In 2025 she read at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt and in 2026 she received the George Saiko Travel Grant. Stauffer lives in Vienna.

»Beyond its psychological depth, the novel serves as a powerful allegory for German reunification. Hauser, whose previous work was nominated for the German Book Prize, expertly captures the psychological mood, rather than just the physical or economic transition of the former East. (…) a sophisticated, demanding, and rewarding work.«

New Books in German

»This is a book about violence and motherhood, devotion and humiliation. Franziska Hauser gently places a girl growing into a woman among it all – I am allowed to grow and heal with Irma.« Maren Wurster

Having fled to the city to escape her mother, young Irma finds herself stranded outside a theatre. That she might soon stand on its stage is something she never dared to hope for. Life backstage is exhilarating, sometimes glamorous, yet the theatre’s microcosm uncannily resembles the alternative communal settlement in which Irma grew up without a father. There is the celebrated actress Blanda, Helene, who takes Irma in, and the eccentric director Taron Capla, who offers her a life-changing opportunity.

As Irma stumbles through the dramas on and behind the stage, memories begin to catch up with her. The most painful are those of her mother: her warmth, her radiance, and her cold contempt. When Irma starts delivering her lines the way her mother once spoke, she is met with applause from all sides. And yet it becomes clear that she can no longer go on merely performing her life. To survive, she must break the spell.

With sharp wit and emotional clarity, Franziska Hauser writes about what binds and repels mothers and daughters, individuals and communities, freedom and dependency – and about the beautiful and terrible small things in between. At the End of Small Things is a novel about wounds that never fully heal, and about the quiet miracles that nonetheless occur.

Franziska Hauser was born in Berlin-Pankow in 1975. She studied at the Weißensee Academy of Art and Design and at Ostkreuz School of Photography. Her debut novel Sommerdreieck was followed by Die Gewitterschwimmerin (2018), which was shortlisted for the German Book Prize. After Die Glasschwestern and Keine von ihnen, she co-edited the widely acclaimed anthology Ost*West*frau* (FVA, spring 2025) together with Maren Wurster. Franziska Hauser has two children and lives partly in Berlin.

November 1989: the Wall falls, and five young people race to Berlin in a rickety Audi to witness history firsthand. Lanfermann’s posthumously published novel captures the spirit of a generation – with all its euphoria, hopes, and the first cracks in the dream of friendship and unity.

»Mad Times hits you unexpectedly. Because a friendship like this is heartbreaking. Because Mechthild Lanfermann writes compellingly about a time that set the course for our present.« Annegret Liepold

»That’s mad!« says a guy with a Walkman, while perm hairstyles, denim jackets and babies being passed over the Wall flicker across the screen. In Eliza’s dormitory in the North Frisian town, excitement runs high. Suddenly a horn blares, and Jo, his silent friend Thies, and Ava with a red scarf in her short blonde hair wave Eliza into the Audi. »Where are we going?« someone asks, grinning crookedly. »Well, to Berlin!«

In the fever of a time when the old is torn down and something new begins, Eliza, Ava, Maria, Jo, and Thies come together – and for the first time Eliza feels part of something. But just as the utopia of unity quickly shows its first cracks, Ava, the dazzling center of their friendship, sinks deeper into crisis. Jo becomes overwhelmed, Thies is consumed by his secret love for Eliza, and Eliza herself increasingly questions what is considered »normal.«

With sharp insight and warm humor, Mechthild Lanfermann tells the story of a time when everything still seemed possible: of a newly reunited country, a budding friendship, and the realization that what ultimately defines us is also the most fleeting. A moving novel about friendship, loss, and the belief in new beginnings.

Mechthild Lanfermann, born in 1969 in Lower Saxony, died in 2024 in Berlin, studied theatre studies, German literature and philosophy in Bochum, Paris and Cologne, later journalism in Hanover. She worked as a radio journalist at various public broadcasting institutions and spent over ten years on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She published five novels, including the crime series featuring the fictional Berlin journalist Emma Vonderwehr, for which she was nominated for the Glauser Prize.

»Sophia Klink writes about majestic bears and volcanoes, but she also writes about a nature that is invisible to the naked eye, about plankton, proteins, hormones, and she finds a visually powerful language for it.« Marion Poschmann
 
»Sophia Klink's language is like a microscope that magnifies and sharpens the connections in life. Anyone who has read this book will see the world and its delicate, endangered riches in a different light.« Isabelle Lehn
 
»A compelling, evocative debut novel« New Books in German
 

Anna, a biologist at the Russian research station on Kurile Lake in Kamchatka, spends her summers studying salmon, phytoplankton, and water samples amidst volcanoes and bears. With climate change endangering the salmon population, her team must decide whether to add phosphate fertilizers to the lake. Although Anna cherishes the beauty of Kurilskoye and its people, including Vova, Yulia, and her boss Feodor, she fears that human intervention may disrupt the delicate balance of nature. Yet, without action, the lake will never be the same. As the summer ends, they must make their choice.
 
In Sophia Klink’s debut novel, the rational language of science is overlaid with an emotionally charged observation of nature – a poetic lens through which the microsystem of Kurile Lake appears magnified, and the global phenomenon of climate change becomes tangible. Thanks to Klink’s perception-shaping language and psychologically compelling character dynamics, Kurile Lake is a literary adventure, a captivating example of nature writing that sharpens our awareness of the threats facing our planet, the ambivalence of science and the beauty of nature.
 

Sophia Klink (b. 1993, Munich) studied biology and wrote her doctoral thesis on the symbiosis between bacteria and plants. Her nature writing was awarded the Wolfgang Weyrauch Advancement Award and has been supported through fellowships from the British Council and the Foundation for Art and Nature. Klink has been a finalist of ‘open mike’ and a fellow at the Roger Willemsen Foundation, the Adalbert Stifter Association and Villa Sarkia in Finland. An extract from her novel Kurile Lake was shortlisted for the W. G. Sebald Prize.

»Witches Don’t Feel Ashamed moves with a delicate sensitivity through what lies between people: desire, insecurity, intimacy, origin, body. It doesn’t offer solutions, but rather contradictions – and in the very places where language often falters, it provides a tone that remains both tender and clear.« Sophia Fritz
 
»Bianca Nawrath strikes a nerve. She dares to do a lot, and it feels as though she's looking you straight in the eye while doing it.« Judith Poznan
 
»To all the Christians out there who want to know what female desire and fantasy might look like. Ask about it. Or at least read this book!« Anton Weil
 

Two Couples, One Single Friend, A Baltic Weekend – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
 
Four friends head to the Baltic Sea for a weekend getaway, and for the first time, Ola joins them. Ola is single, attracted to both women and men, and brings along a biography of Hildegard von Bingen. For Amalia's boyfriend Christian, Ola’s feminist remarks are nothing short of a disaster. The first evening threatens to become a fiasco, revolving around the question of who can light the grill and a conversation about female masturbation. The second couple, Kata and Lenny, are increasingly unsettled by Christian's behavior, but are mostly preoccupied with their own suppressed conflicts. The situation escalates when Amalia and Ola suddenly disappear without a trace.

How can one free oneself from a self-destructive relationship, and when does non-interference become complicity? Bianca Nawrath demonstrates a keen eye for the gray areas of friendship and love, for the subtle workings of shame and guilt. With sharp dialogue, psychological tension, and believable characters, she challenges traditional power structures and leads her readers through many, often highly amusing, detours to the realization of how valuable female solidarity truly is.
 
 
Bianca Nawrath, born in 1997 in Berlin, is an author and actress with Polish roots. At the age of 14, she appeared in front of the camera for the first time as the host of a youth program. In 2018, she made her acting debut and has since appeared alongside stars such as Judi Dench, Jürgen Vogel, and Christian Ulmen. In 2021, she released her first novel, Iss das jetzt, wenn du mich liebst, followed by Wenn ich dir jetzt recht gebe, liegen wir beide falsch in 2022. Bianca Nawrath lives and works in Berlin.

»A stand against war and a proclamation of love. This novel is a blessing to be cherished.«
Saša Stanišić 
 
»The day Dada disappeared, I lost everything. To understand what happened between us back then, in the ruins, I need to start from the beginning. I have to remember things I want to forget, I have to go back, back to the war and yet further back. Long before the loneliness took over, to a time when we believed nothing could ever separate us.«
 
With haunting power and breathtaking pace, Vernesa Berbo recounts the fate of Dada and Dijana in 1990’s Sarajevo. A captivating narrative about the bond between two sisters, about love, friendship and the will to survive.
 
When asked why he calls Dijana ›Son‹, her father only smiles mysteriously as if he knows something about his daughter that sooner or later everyone will discover. Dijana is self-confident and hot-blooded, but above all she is the protector of her younger sister. Sensitive and intelligent Dada comes into the world during the freezing winter of 1976, like a snowflake that floats into the room just before the window slams shut. From the onset of the siege of Sarajevo in 1992 it becomes clear that it is up-to Dijana to protect and fend for her sister and the rest of the family. While Dijana faces every challenge with determination, Dada clings onto Mirza, her first love, until disastrous events threaten to take everything away from the sisters.
 
This book is a rare gem – tender, yet uncompromising, a sweeping narrative about war and love against all odds. Vernesa Berbo lived through the siege of Sarajevo, and she transports us to the heart of the reality of a war that still receives too little attention – the fate of women, their deep psychological wounds, but also their great inner strength. A haunting novel of breathless suspense about the love of two sisters in dark times.
 

Vernesa Berbo was born in Priboj, in the former Yugoslavia. She studied acting at the State Academy of Dramatic Art in Sarajevo. In 1993 she arrived in Berlin as a war refugee. Since 1994 she has worked as an actress, musician and playwright at various theatres in Germany, including the Maxim Gorki Theatre, Thalia Theatre and the Deutsches Theater. Son and Snowflake is her debut novel. Vernesa Berbo lives in Berlin.

A dramatic welfare novel – »Money is the only weight that lifts you.«
 
»A text like a machine. Breathless to read. With steely courage. Magnificent and bitter.« Andreas Maier
 

At the supermarket checkout, Manfred Gruber realizes: the welfare office hasn’t transferred his benefits. When his card payment is declined yet again, a flush of shame creeps into his face. It’s a cold, rainy April day, and without money he has no choice but to walk the long stretch along the Austrian highway to confront the officials. He has met every requirement, sent off every hopeless job application, endured the miserable training courses and unpaid trial shifts. He has, damn it, fulfilled his obligation to make an effort — they can’t touch him. But he’s wrong.
 
With gripping intensity, Sandra Weihs depicts the desperate struggle of a man abandoned by the welfare system. Her razor-sharp social observations, paired with a keen humor in which flashes of Bernhardian irony gleam through, refuse to let go of the reader — a novel that dismantles prejudice and restores to its protagonist the one thing he desires most: dignity. An urgent novel for our times, it looks precisely where society is quickest to avert its gaze.
 
 
Sandra Weihs, born in 1983 in Klagenfurt, studied Social Work in Vienna and now lives in Upper Austria. In 2015, she received the Jürgen Ponto Prize for the best German-language debut for her novel Das grenzenlose Und (FVA, 2015). She has been awarded several fellowships and grants, most recently the Project Grant from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport for her manuscript Bemühungspflicht.

Rights sold to:

Georgia (Intelekti)

Netherlands (Meridiaan)

Speeches and essays by the bestselling author: Poetic and powerful speeches and essays on freedom, values, and democracy in troubled times

»Europe, we are bleeding. We can't take it anymore. We can either continue to wage war or we can stand on the barricades and try with our last ounce of strength to defend what you have taught us: democracy, freedom, dignity, and life itself.«

Nino Haratischwili — internationally acclaimed bestselling author and theater maker — is not only one of the most important literary voices in German-language literature, she is also one of the most important political German-language authors of our time. Our era is currently marked by political aggression and a social climate of hatred, upheaval, and concrete threats of war. The author has been fighting for years against the acute threat to freedom posed by Putin's imperialism. What happened in Ukraine must not be repeated – in Georgia, this fear has become a daily reality. This is one of the themes addressed in the texts and speeches collected here, which are emotional and personal, explosive and political, written in the unmistakably poetic and powerful language that has become Nino Haratischwili's trademark.

»Anyone who wants to better understand our international conflicts, which are currently being played out again in Eastern Europe, should read Nino Haratischwili.« DIE ZEIT

Born in Tbilisi in 1983, Nino Haratischwili is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. She writes in German and is among the most acclaimed and widely-read authors of contemporary German literature. Her third novel, The Eighth Life (for Brilka) (FVA 2014), was translated into thirty languages and became an international bestseller. It won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Anna Seghers Prize, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. The Lack of Light (FVA 2022) is her most recent novel. Haratischwili lives in Berlin.

Rights sold to:

Poland (Marpress)

»A wise and tender novel that asks what family truly means — skillfully crafted, clear, poetic, and compelling. And, with remarkable sensitivity, this gifted author has captured the heart of the Balkans and brought it into German.« Antonia Bontscheva
 
 
From Germany to Mostar, a journey into loss, courage, and the light of Herzegovina.
 
»One day we’ll come back, and then we’ll jump.« This was the promise a mother and daughter made to each other on the Old Bridge in Mostar — that heartbreakingly beautiful city with its painful history, the place where the mother had last been truly happy. But then, unexpectedly, Elise dies, and her daughter Rosa, in her mid-twenties, finds herself amid the wreckage of a fractured family history. Determined to keep the promise they once made, Rosa sets out on a journey through Eastern Europe, tracing the fault lines in her mother’s tumultuous life. Her adventure takes an unforeseen turn when she meets Emma, who is traveling to Mostar for entirely different — yet equally existential — reasons.
 
One Day We’ll Jump is a story of an intense mother–daughter bond and a search for the meaning of family — a wonderfully moving novel about grief, solace, and love in all its colors.
 
 
Gianna Lange, born in 1988 in Bremen, studied Journalism and Transnational Literary Studies in Bremen and London. She is a founding member of the poetry collective gabrieleschreibtgedichte, the young literature collective Kollit, and an editorial member of the literary magazine Koller. For the opening pages of her manuscript One Day We’ll Jump, she was awarded the Bremen Authors’ Grant. She lives in Bremen and works at the concert hall ›Die Glocke‹ as well as at the ›Musikfest Bremen‹.

An escape, an unequal friendship, a betrayal – an intense, original novel about global issues, where its light-footed prose and witty charm make it all the clearer: simple answers can’t be trusted.

»A novel about friendship, trust, and the honest examination of one’s own motives. This story stayed with me for a long time after I finished reading it.« Laura Beck, Bayerischer Rundfunk
 
»An invigorating debut with precise, incisive dialogue that masterfully illuminates the complexity of human relationships.« Demian Lienhard
 
Tom and Farid play table tennis, ride skateboards, swim in the Isar: They are friends. At the beginning of their friendship was a mentorship, which Tom, a PhD student in physics, had taken on for sixteen-year-old Farid, who had fled from Quetta. Together with Laura, Tom’s girlfriend, they form an unusual trio – until Farid makes a risky decision. Amid the unfolding events, Tom is confronted with questions: about Laura's supposed loyalty, his own feelings and aspirations, and, not least, about Farid’s silence regarding the harrowing experiences of his flight.
 
In his debut novel, Christian Mitzenmacher not only approaches major social issues like flight and the treatment of refugees, but he also tackles the problem of how, and from which perspective, these topics can be told. He doesn’t offer simple answers, but instead presents a tapestry of incisive questions, unexpected twists, unforgettable characters, and clever dialogue, all wrapped in a surprisingly light, often even humorous prose.
 

Christian Mitzenmacher was born in 1986 and grew up in Bad Buchau, Germany. A mathematician by training, he conducted research at the Technical University of Munich and at the M.I.T. in Cambridge, earning his doctorate in Operations Research. He was a fellow of the Bavarian Academy of Writing (2014), a finalist at the 24th ›open mike‹ (2016), and a fellow of the Prose Workshop of the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (2019). He lives in Berlin.

»Hannes Köhler has created fascinating characters in David and Luisa: complex, contradictory, clever. I fell more in love with them – and their love – with every page. A great text that I could not escape!« Julia Wolf
 
»Hannes Köhler is a truthful and tender storyteller.« Daniela Dröscher
 
»Ten Pictures of a Love is an accomplished novel that speaks to contemporary debates around gender roles, motherhood, and masculine identity. Hannes Köhler’s charming love story will resonate with readers of David Nicholl’s One Day and Benedict Wells’ The End of Loneliness.« New Books in German
 

David and Luisa meet for the first time on the island of Milos, spend a night together, and then go their separate ways. Years later, they unexpectedly cross paths again, this time choosing to stay together. Luisa brings her daughter Ronja from a previous relationship into their lives, and together, they form a patchwork family. As David embraces his role as a father, he grows closer to Ronja, but his deepening desire to have a child of his own becomes a source of tension between them …
 
The concept of a one true love: is it an idea that still makes sense today? And if it is, what might this great love look like, if it is one that isn't confined by traditional gender roles or romantic ideals? Ten Pictures of a Love follows such a love in our time – a love that's chaotic, a struggle between individuality and togetherness, complicated by age differences and past relationships. The novel unfolds in ten non-chronological "pictures," each offering a glimpse into the evolution of their relationship. Hannes Köhler examines the complexities of modern love, its risks, and the constant process of reinvention. A raw and unflinching portrayal of family, it captures both the struggles and beauty of a love that must continually adapt and redefine itself.
 

Hannes Köhler, born in 1982 in Hamburg, lives as a freelance author and translator in Berlin. He participated in the prose workshop at the Literary Colloquium Berlin, the Goldschmidt Program for German-French literary translation, and received the Döblin Grant by the Academy of Arts for his work on Ten Pictures of a Love. His highly successful novel One Possible Life (2018) won the price for best family novel of the year by the Ravensburger foundation, it was followed by Götterfunken in 2021.