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The Portrait is an impressive and breathtaking novel about a young woman whose outstanding artistic talent is uncannily exploited by a famous art collector.

Helen, a young painter, is on her way to an unknown city. Through the window of the plane, she gazes at the unfamiliar places below: somewhere down there is the house that she is going to spend the next three months in, invited by a well-known and rich art collector.
She is supposed to portray him. One condition of their contract is that she is not allowed to leave his property during her stay. Whilst the portrait progresses, Helen's feeling of unease increases. The huge villa is deserted. The employees give her the cold shoulder. Her trips into the wide, park-like estate show her that something strange must be going on. The initial idyll turns into a disaster. Her host controls her and regards her as his personal trophy. She finds out that he once supported a young artist, who subsequently committed suicide. When she tries to escape, the collector knowingly prevents her getaway. However, in the end, Helen manages to save herself.

Zoë Jenny was born in Basel in 1974 and spent parts of her childhood in Greece and Ticino. Her first novel, »The Pollen Room« (FVA 1997), was a global bestseller and has been translated into 27 languages. Following this success, Zoë Jenny was invited to give readings and talks at schools and universities in Japan, China and the U.S. She has lived in New York, Berlin and London, and currently resides in Austria. She has published two more novels – »The Call of the Conch Shell« (FVA 2000) and »The Portrait« (FVA 2007). »Spätestens morgen« is her first short story collection.

Bittersweet tales by the author of the »Pollen Room«

These characters may appear fragile, but they demonstrate unexpected strength. The ground trembles beneath their feet, but they do not fall: they strike out in moments of danger, and escape their cages as soon as they feel the wind beneath their wings.
Ginza, for example, who asserts her independence by sharing a tiny flat with friends and working as a tourist guide in the vibrant, overwhelming megacity of Shangai. Or Sophie, a shy woman in her fifties, whose headstrong daughter Clarice brings her photographer boyfriend on a visit to the family’s summer cottage. It comes as a surprise when Sophie suddenly blossoms under the camera’s gaze, upsetting the family balance.
Mike, a young stepfather to two girls, is quietly fighting for recognition. His wife has very clear ideas about how her daughters should be raised: she only buys organic food, and throws out any clothes made of polyester. Mike secretly takes his stepdaughters to an ice cream parlour, in a battle for life’s sweetness that he can never hope to win. In another story, young Elena, watching a black condor crane his skinny, vulnerable neck, as he struggles to fly inside his cage, is reminded of her elopement.

Beneath each of Zoë Jenny’s soft sentences lie darkness and profundity, pervading them with a subtle melancholy. Fear of loss and the awareness of vulnerability resonate just below the surface, and we sense that the characters in her stories are deeply troubled - but their power should not be underestimated. Zoë Jenny captivates the reader with these haunting, bittersweet tales.

Zoë Jenny was born in Basel in 1974 and spent parts of her childhood in Greece and Ticino. Her first novel, »The Pollen Room« (FVA 1997), was a global bestseller and has been translated into 27 languages. Following this success, Zoë Jenny was invited to give readings and talks at schools and universities in Japan, China and the U.S. She has lived in New York, Berlin and London, and currently resides in Austria. She has published two more novels – »The Call of the Conch Shell« (FVA 2000) and »The Portrait« (FVA 2007). »Spätestens morgen« is her first short story collection.

»It was too late, he had already let him share his thoughts. He could not get away from them, they created an unrest in him, made something deep inside him move, like a surgically precise surface damage and the echo of a pain; an echo that grew louder in the emptiness of the house and forced him to listen, amid silence, effective as the pause of a symphony.«

As the head of Vienna’s Astronomy Institute, Marty's life revolves around the vastness of the universe. He gladly allows it to push the reality of his own life aside; the fact that his wife Marlene is already secretly making completely different plans for the future, and that his daughter is beginning to question her gender, remains hidden from him. At a conference he meets the psychoanalyst Steindorfer, who asks him why it is man actually knows more about distant planets than about his own consciousness, and who then gives him a manuscript he has been writing, the reading of which deeply disturbs Marty.
Zoë Jenny's long-awaited new novel is brimming with an unsettling atmosphere. The silent, distant stars of the galaxy seem at great odds with the ominous and ever-more-rapidly unfolding events on Earth. Jenny writes of artificial intelligence and the question of what consciousness is; of gender reassignment, personal freedom, a lack of alternatives, climate crisis, light pollution, and more, moving along the edges of a recognizable reality in the midst of our stellar chaos.

»Zoë Jenny offers up strong, poetic images like wondrous, melancholic Instagram photos. She is undoubtedly a master of the short form.« MISSY MAGAZINE on »Latest Tomorrow« (»Spätestens morgen«)

»Omission is an art, and Zoë Jenny masters it in these terse, precisely condensed stories. Her narration is casual, stylistically appropriate, and practically perfect. The tone is simple, matter-of-fact and it touches and resonates.« SRF 2 on »Latest Tomorrow« (»Spätestens morgen«)

Zoë Jenny was born in Basel in 1974. Her first novel »The Pollen Room« (»Das Blütenstaubzimmer«, FVA, 1997) was a global bestseller translated into 27 languages, and awarded the 3sat scholarship, the Jürgen Ponto Foundation Literature Prize, and the aspekte Literature Prize. Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt also published her novels »Der Ruf des Muschelhorns« (2000) and »Das Portrait« (2007), as well as her short stories »Spätestens morgen« (2013). She lives near Vienna.

»No punk she knew would have tolerated that. Never. There had been a code of honor in the scene, despite everything. Red lines uncrossed. Jackass and Butt-Head: always. Nazis and child molesters: never.«
 
A group of aging punks get caught up in their past – a fast-paced rocking-rollercoaster of a novel, accompanied by the soundtrack of a vibrant youth movement
 
The smell of stage smoke and sweat, booming bass, glaring neon lights and squatted houses – Bey misses all of that deeply. Before the birth of her son, the former bassist of an avant-garde punk band couldn’t have imagined living a traditional, bourgeois life – now she’s stuck on the outskirts of Amsterdam, surrounded by well-to-do mothers and no late-adolescent excesses in sight. Suddenly, the arrival of a chalk-white envelope throws her daily routine out of step: her ex-boyfriend Iggy has died. Bey sets off to Berlin for the funeral, where she finds an old audio recording among Iggy’s belongings that makes her doubt the circumstances of his death. Her investigations are met with resistance from the rest of the old punks who knew him, but lead nonetheless to incriminating evidence. When Karina, Bey’s missing nemesis, unexpectedly appears on the scene, a breathless race for cassette tape begins and a monstrous truth is revealed that shatters everything Bey and her old friends ever believed.
 
Yasmin Sibai’s debut novel takes place in the dark basement clubs of the nineties and secret hacker salons of the two-thousands; it roams through gentrified urban landscapes and penetrates into the black heart of a lively subculture, venting its anger with hard beats towards post-war conservatism, capitalism and commerce. In »PUNKED«, Sibai lets a utopia implode and puts her protagonist on the trail of a criminal case that sheds new light on her punk past.
 

Yasmin Sibai was born in northern Germany in 1976 and has since moved thirty-two times. In the eighties and nineties of the last millennium she was the singer and frontwoman of a rather insignificant avant-garde punk band, with whom she toured the smallest bars and clubs in the world for months. She has lived in Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, New York and Amsterdam, worked as an organic farmer, truck driver, freelance architect, DJane and artist. She lives with her family in Frankfurt a/M and has no plans to move in the near future.
 

»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.

»Stauffer’s texts do not shy away from the ›sharp pains‹ that a comprehensive look at the splendor and misery of human existence brings. In addition to their formal range, the unpredictability of these texts is fascinating. Time after time, it hits its mark: straight into the heart.« From the jury's statement of the Manuscript Advancement Award.

»I live in this text, floating from line to line, playing the dead woman. Only here in this sea can I swim, but now it freezes over on all sides.«
Only in appearance do the records oscillate between reality and dreams in their outer chronology, which begins in November 2020 in Vienna. In fact, the text immediately emancipates itself, plunging deeper into a elaborate clockwork whose hands stand still: We accompany the narrator on walks through the deserted Prater neighborhood, and stroll through the nocturnal, closed city, while her precise observations alternate small sharp sequences with lyrical passages. In what paradise can we observe ourselves living today, and what will come in the summer? Witty and cheeky, both sad and comforting, Verena Stauffer reveals an »I« as a center in a time when the longing for touch grows as people are banished to their rooms. She forms a protocol of the »madness that now reveals all the flaws in the entire construction of society,« and offers a testimony to the ways poetry and imagination can offer a lifeline. Verena Stauffer takes on a poetic and humorously biting form as she describes everyday life in times of pandemic.

Verena Stauffer was born in 1978 in Kirchdorf an der Krems in Austria. Her her debut novel Orchis (2018) was nominated for the Alpha Literary Prize, the Independents’ Hotlist, and the Blogger Debut Prize. Most recently her poetry collection Ousia was published by Kookbooks and nominated for the Austrian Book Prize. She is living in Vienna.

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.

BDI Literature Prize of the Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy 2016

Sold to: Egypt (Mahrousa)

Holle is an artist from Berlin. She takes pictures of cities and empty spaces to capture their hidden energy. She spends several months in Istanbul, an achingly beautiful city she tries to understand in a new way, leaving behind her dividing terms like occident and orient. But then the encounter with Christoph Wanka causes her to sway. Although Wanka represents everything Holle is opposed to in her life and art, this silky and successful businessman fascinates her. When Wanka offers to finance her next project in Mumbai, Holle, in an endless trial of strength, has to question her whole life script and concept of art. Back in Istanbul, she would love nothing better than to get lost in the labyrinthine body of the city. When the Gezi Park demonstrations begin and the whole city is in turmoil, it seems the perfect opportunity ...

»The Endless City« tells the story of two women in two adventurous cities, Istanbul and Mumbai, and their search for an existence in accordance with their values. An eclectic and outstanding novel about art, power and the fragile construction of identity.

Ulla Lenze, born in Mönchengladbach in 1973, studied music and philosophy in Cologne. In 2003 her debut novel »Schwester und Bruder« was awarded the Ernst Willner Prize at the Klagenfurt Bachmann Competition, the Jürgen Ponto Prize for best debut novel, and Cologne’s Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Scholarship. She lived as a writer-in-residence in Mumbai, Venice and Istanbul, travels have taken her to Libya, Syria and Iran. Her novel »The Small Remains of Death« was published by Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt in 2012.

Had anyone told him a few years ago that he would end up in Hannover-Langenhagen, Jesse Bronske would not have believed them. Neither would he have trusted anyone who suggested that Mona, who works at the cash register in the supermarket inside of which Jesse runs a bar called »Klaus Meine«, would become the woman by his side. From the moment he is born, Jesse's aspirations to be extraordinary are doomed to fail: his identical twin Aaron looks so much like him that not even their father can tell the two boys apart. Thus Jesse grows up the exact copy of his older brother in Hamburg-Rahlstedt where their father – the owner of a snack stand and an Elvis impersonator – slowly but surely turns the house into an Elvis museum. Jesse moves to Langenhagen in order to leave all of that behind and begin a new life. But despite his relationship with Mona and the (possibly) imaginary pen pal Klaus Meine, Jesse cannot let go of the fear of being interchangeable. One day, while incessant rain slowly makes its way into the house and threatens to flood everything, Jesse notices a figure in a nearby cornfield. All of the sudden he is certain: Aaron has returned to his life in order to replace him. However, Jesse is prepared...

SUPERBUHEI is a literary-psychological thriller a sub-urban novel, a viscous romantic comedy, a cross between Sven Regener’s Herr Lehmann, Frank Schulz’ Onno Viets and Fight Club. Sven Amtsberg's furious and long-awaited debut novel takes us into previously unknown realms of reading pleasure. His unique sound carries the reader from one page to the next and his tone is just as sharp as his wit.

Sven Amtsberg was born in 1972 and lives in Hamburg. He is a writer and he hosts and presents for a diverse array of entertainment formats. In 2001 and 2008, he received a prize for promising young writers from the city of Hamburg, while in 2011 he was granted a work scholarship by the federal state Schleswig-Holstein. His latest publications include: »The Truth About Germany« (2011), »111 Reasons to Love the FC St. Pauli« (2013) as well as »Paranormal Phenomena – 20 Stories that Are Almost True.« (2015). »SUPERBUHEI«, is his debut as a novelist.

»An adolescent journey during the year 1989: Susanne Gregor’s supremely readable novel gives readers an exceptional insight into an important chapter of recent European history« New Books in German

Miša, Rita and Slavka have been friends for as long as they can remember. They all live in the same house in the city of Žilina: Miša, the 14-year-old narrator, and her family in the middle, Rita, also 14, in the apartment above, and Slavka in the apartment underneath. They confide their secrets in one another and speak about their first loves. And yet, they could scarcely be more different. Rita is a staunch Youth Pioneer, which makes her parents’ confidential plan to escape to Austria seem all the more scandalous. Rita is outraged: she doesn’t want to end up like Slavka whose father absconded to Sweden 10 years ago. Slavka cares little for politics. Rather, she is interested in the new history teacher, Comrade Baník, and in gymnastics, her real passion. Miša is the most sensitive of the three. Her love is literature, which nobody – least of all her father – can really understand. Miša has the feeling that life will always continue on in the same manner. The opposite is the case: It is 1989 and nothing will ever be as it was.

Three friends and their families experience the year before the collapse of the Socialist regime in Slovakia. Opportunism or rebellion; adaption or revolt – the girls on the brink of adulthood and their parents, each face socialism’s decline in their own way.

In precise, elegant language Susanne Gregor insightfully explores the external and internal worlds of the three young friends. By means of small shifts, she allows huge transformations to become tangible and with a steady hand, leads the reader through the seasons of the year 1989. It is »The Last Red Year.«

Susanne Gregor, born in 1981 in Žilina (Czechoslovakia), moved with her family to Austria in 1990. Since 2005, Gregor lives in Vienna where she teaches German as a foreign language. In 2009, she received the ›Hohenemser Literaturpreis‹ Advancement Award and the ›exil-literaturpreis‹ in 2010. Her debut novel »No Place of One’s Own« was published in 2011, the novel »Territories« in 2015 and the short story collection »Under Water« in 2018.

»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.

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.