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BDI Literature Prize of the Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy 2015, Anna Seghers Literature Prize 2015, Bertolt Brecht Literature Prize 2018

Sold to: United Kingdom (Scribe), Australia (Scribe), Spain (Alfaguara), Catalan (Navona), Italy (Marsilio), The Netherlands (Atlas contact), Norway (Aschehoug), China (Xiron), Czech Republic (Host), Poland (Otwarte), Turkey (Aylak Adam), Georgia (Intelekti), Bulgaria (Paradox)

»The Eighth Life (For Brilka)« is an epochal novel about a family, a powerfully written epos about eight exceptional lives in the vicissitudes of Georgian-Russian War and Revolution.

Georgia in 1900: Stasia, daughter of a chocolate factory‘s owner, and her three sisters grow up in the upper echelons of Georgian society. She dreams of a life in Paris and a career in ballet but at 17 marries a White Guard soldier. When Stalin becomes the sole leader of the Soviet Union, the socialist squads enjoy the good life, whilst the country’s impoverished population suffers. Stasia and her children Kitty and Kostja seek shelter in the house of Stasia’s sister Christine in Tbilisi. But when Stalin’s right-hand man Lawrenti Beria takes notice of Chistine’s astonishing beauty and unworldly manner, it has disastrous consequences …

Germany in 2006: After the fall of the Iron Curtain Niza, Stasia’s brilliant great-granddaughter, has broken with her family and moved to Berlin. When her twelve-year-old niece Brilka runs away during a trip to the west, Niza has to care about her. In search for her own identity, she will tell Brilka the whole story: about Stasia, silently affronting history, about Christine, who paid dearly for her beauty, about Kitty, who lost everything and still found a voice in London. And about the secret recipe for the family’s Hot Chocolate, which has offered both salvation and misfortune for six generations.

Nino Haratischwili, born in Georgia in 1983, is an award-winning novelist, playwright and director. In 2010 her debut »Juja« was nominated for the German Book Prize. The following year, »My Gentle Twin« won the Independent Publishers’ Hotlist Prize and has been sold to several countries. »The Eighth Life (For Brilka)« has been awarded the prestigious Literature Prize of the Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy 2015, the Anna Seghers Literature Prize 2015, the Hertha Koenig Prize 2017, the Fellowship of the Lessing Prize 2017 and the Bertolt Brecht Literature Prize 2018. On top of that, the English translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Scribe) has been selected for PEN Translates award 2016 and the Dutch edition (Atlas contact 2016) has been longlisted for the Europese Literatuurprijs 2018.

Rights sold to: The Netherlands (Meridiaan), Poland (Otwarte), Georgia (Intelekti), Italy (Marsilio), Spain (Alfaguara), Catalan (Navona), France (Belfond)

»Nino Haratischwili is a natural phenomenon on the German literary scene.« FAZ

»Nino Haratischwili has written an enormously compelling novel of almost Tolstoyian power. It tells of war and peace, guilt and atonement, revenge, betrayal, and spying, but of course also of love and death – in the best sense what one calls a Pageturner.« NDR Kultur

Chechnya, 1995: Nura is seventeen when a Russian unit enters the canyon where she lives with her family. With the outbreak of war in Chechnya, her dream of seeking freedom and autonomy, born on the day that Natalia handed her a Rubik’s Cube and left, is shattered. She’d meant to escape the confines of the village where clans reign and Islamic guards have a watchful eye over everyday life, but the war ends up changing everything.
Moscow, 1995: The young Alexander Orlow fears for his future. An army issued backpack full of books and his mother’s expectations on his shoulders, he leaves behind the love of his life to fight the war at the North Caucasian front, unaware yet that upon his return he will be a different person.
Berlin 2016: Alexander Orlow, who has, by this time, become a multi-billion-dollar oligarch, known as »the General« has turned his back on Russia and has moved to Germany with his daughter. The nineteen-year-old Ada is obsessed with her father’s past and when she begins asking questions, the images of war suddenly come rushing back to Alexander. The darkest of them, the most violent of all nights, a night that left the young Chechnyan woman with nothing but a colorful cube and an unbearable sense of guilt, the shadow of which will never leave any of those present that evening. The day of reckoning is fast approaching, the General can feel it coming. His plan, that will take him and his »teammates« to Moscow, Morocco and then all the way to Chechnya into Nura’s canyon, can only succeed if he manages to convince »the cat«, a headstrong Georgian-born actress whose face triggers an ancient kind of pain inside of him, to support his endeavor.

After her celebrated epic novel »The Eighth Life (for Brilka)« Nino Haratischwili has once again turned towards the abyss that lies beneath the rubble left behind by the crumbling of the Soviet Union. »The Cat and the General« is a gripping psychological exploration of crime and punishment. It tells the tale of wars between countries and wars inside of heads, it also tells the tale of those who are driven by a deep longing for freedom and redemption. As within a Rubik’s Cube, the protagonist’s fates revolve around a shared axis of love and guilt. The resulting clash is akin to that of a classic tragedy as the deadly game in which the protagonists are involved must come to a head.

Nino Haratischwili, born in 1983 in Tblissi is an award-winning playwright, director and author of the celebrated novel »The Eighth Life (for Brilka)« (FVA 2014) that has been translated into multiple languages and has received, among other awards and grants, the Lessing Award and the Bertolt-Brecht-Award. »The Cat And The General« is shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2018.

»Nino Haratischwili has proved herself as one of the most interesting and original writers of her generation.« New Books in German

»Who is this woman who seems to succeed in everything, who even performs, as some say, literary miracles?« Titel Thesen Temperamente (TV show)

Rights sold to: The Netherlands (Lebowski)

As he sets out to bring to life the eros of childhood and youth within an autobiographical novel, Bodo Kirchhoff takes us into narrow-minded, penny-pinching post-war Germany. It is these decades of dusk, these decades of turmoil, that will ultimately turn the boy into a writer.

Whose voice is it we hear when someone tells a tale from way back when? From the very same room in a small hotel by the sea, his parents had occupied decades earlier, when they’d still helped themselves to large servings of bliss, the last few of those, in fact, before they’d separated, the writer seeks to explore the emergence of his sexuality. And while he does employ professional distance in the telling of the story of his youth, putting it out there for anyone to claim, this story also remains the very path that took him into writing in the first place.  

In »Dusk and Turmoil«, Bodo Kirchhoff, approaches early biographical themes within the framework of a novel, telling his own but also his parent’s stories. The beautiful young actress from Vienna and the dashing one-legged young man from Hannover who is talented but penniless – a match made by the war. Both are determined to escape the plight of these times, each in their own way. The marriage is doomed and the narrator sent off to boarding school at eleven, a dramatic escalation of small events, once again beyond all that is conceivable through language, a dance on an alluring blade of violence.

With this most recent work, Bodo Kirchhoff continues his grand literary project to consolidate language and sexuality to a point where neither will expose the other as he tells a story of eros throughout childhood and adolescence, a story of what was and what it inspired.

Bodo Kirchhoff, born in 1948, is one of the most important and well-known authors of the contemporary German literature. His novels »Desire and Melancholy« (2014) and »Love in Broad Strokes« (2012) were published with Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt and celebrated by readers and critics alike. His novella »Widerfahrnis« has been awarded the German Book Prize 2016 and the Dutch edition (Lebowski 2017) has been longlisted for the Europese Literatuurprijs 2018. The Chinese translation of »Widerfahrnis« was announced as the 21st Century Best Foreign Novel of the Year 2017.

»Bodo Kirchhoff is an author who succeeds in everything: Writing great dialogues. Creating scenes, developing them and, with a dreamlike sureness, interrupting them at the right time. He also has a language of rare and traditional elegance. Entirely great literature.« ZEIT online

The life story of a glamorous thief

They call him »Diamond Eddie«, because jewelery and fur coats are his métier. With delicate hands, he cracks any lock, with his extraordinary intuition for the desires and aspirations of people, he‘ll sell them anything. Dressed in the finest suits, a charming and intelligent man, Edward Kray is popular at the gambling tables and bars of the city. He travels all across Europe, to France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Greece, he never makes plans, he doesn‘t put any money aside. For him, there is no tomorrow.
But his dreams are dark, the sinister images of the past constantly towering over him. Memories of his childhood in Zamosc, a small town in the southeast of Poland, where he was born in 1924. Memories of that first air raid that killed his family. With no one left to protect him, the sensitive boy is abducted to Nazi Germany and is forced to work in the armament industry. For the whole six years, that the war lasts, he is subjected to the terror and cruelty of the National Socialist regime, has to work day and night, frequently experiencing physical and emotional breakdown. In the labour camps, he seeks solace in the memory of his mothers voice, in chess games with other inmates of the camp and in fleeting friendships that are torn apart by the war again and again.
Miraculously, he survives and in 1945, after he is freed by the allies, he begins a new life in Düsseldorf. In the destroyed city he meets Marianne, an energetic and eager young woman. Together they grasp all opportunities that post-war Germany has to offer. Between economic promise, chaos, and political reform, he becomes a successful dealer of stolen goods and a thief ...

By the story of Diamanten Eddie Sabine Kray erects a lasting memorial in the honor of his grandfather. The rampant life of the jewelry thief during the time of the economic miracle, intertwines with the anguish and despair of the years of forced labour. It uncovers, layer after layer, the character of a man who stays in the country of his tormentors only to escape them over and over again.

Sabine Kray was born in Göttingen in 1984. After finishing her masters degree in American Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin, she decided to find out the truth about her grandfather, instead of pursuing a PhD. After several months of research in administration offices, archives and in conversations with contemporary witnesses, the untold story of an extraordinary man unfolded, while at the same time bringing to light the tragic fate of forced laborers during the Second World War. Sabine Kray lives in Berlin, where she works as an author and translator. In addition to this she is a volunteer mentor for young girls with an immigrant background. »Diamanten Eddie« is her debut.

Sold to: Turkey (Can), Egypt (Masr El Arabia)

Since his wife passed away nine years ago after a leap from 43 meters height, Hinrich lives alone. He wallows in memories of Irene, the mother of his daughter and a translator for high Italian literature. He remembers the summers in Italy, their journeys to Rome and Pompeji, where they lingered in front of the frescoes of the Villa dei Misteri for hours to understand their meaning. They loved cinema, the melancholy of the black-and-white images, but were also seduced by something light. However, what has really happened nine years ago? And what does the letter with the black edging contain? Only a journey to Warsaw can bring light into the dark.

»Desire and Melancholy« is charged with emotionally subtle suspense, a novel which takes the reader on a quest. Slowly but relentless, the protagonist discovers the truth about his wife’s death. Bodo Kirchhoff’s masterful novel is about aging and longing, describing the desire to stay eternally young and a melancholy that turns out to offer some solace at the end.

Bodo Kirchhoff, born in 1948, is one of the most important and well-known authors of the contemporary German literature. His last two novels »Desire and Melancholy« (2014) and »Love in Broad Strokes« (2012) were published with Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt and celebrated by readers and critics alike. His novella »Widerfahrnis« has been awarded the German Book Prize 2016.

»Time is a great healer. But I knew: That’s a lie. Time doesn’t heal anything. Going by. That’s all she’s capable of. And she’s not even very good at that.«

Except for the high bridge, there is nothing special about the little town Alba lives in. The bridge is 25 meters high, on a windless day the fall lasts 2,08 seconds and statistically the street underneath is the most dangerous in all of Switzerland: The school-year is far from over and her class is already down by three students. Meanwhile in Zurich, students are protesting, they are fighting for cultural freedom, against housing shortage and drugs on the streets. »Deflate the state!«, that’s their war-cry. The world seems to be upside down and Alba is caught right in the midst of it all while dealing with her very own problems. One of them: Jack. Shortly after Alba’s ›accident‹, the two of them become a couple. For the moment, Alba is happy, but no one knows better than Alba that there must be a snag – especially when it comes to happiness.
Demian Lienhard’s story of the highs and lows in his protagonist’s life is strikingly original, full of intelligent humor and subtle tragedy. The reader follows his refreshingly rebellious and likeable narrator through the blistering 1980’s and 1990’s which were informed by growing social problems and an insurgent youth movement. The narrative voice itself is the glowing core of this novel, a sparkling mix of »Smells Like Teen Spirit«, »La Boum« and an irresistible warmth, black humor and wittiness – you’ll be ready to follow her wherever she goes, even if it’s a trip to hell.

Demian Lienhard was born in 1987 in Baden/Switzerland. He has completed his Ph.D in classical archaeology and works as a research fellow at the Goethe University in Frankfurt on the Main. He has received numerous stipends and has won awards and competitions with his unpublished works. In 2016, he participated in the »24. open mike« in Berlin and in 2018, he ranked second in the »Prenzlauer Berg writing contest«. »I am the girl my mother warned me about« is his début novel.

»Don’t you remember that words can be sharp like knives?«

Maximilian Wenger used to be a big shot. He was a best-selling author and a man of action. Now, he’s standing at the edge of ruin: nobody wants to read his novels, and his wife has traded him in for a fitness instructor. In a small apartment near Salzburg, he hides himself away from the world. Wenger’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Zoe, plans a future according to her own beliefs. She soon realizes, however, that she has reached her own limits – and that becoming an adult is painful. Then, Wegner starts to receive those letters. Though they are addressed to the previous tenant, he opens them and is thrilled: they are brutal and delicate, shocking and inspiring. Who is this mysterious woman that tells of fleeting happiness, injury, and dashed hope? What Wenger doesn’t know, is that Zoey is also reading the letters. She has experienced something that she finds reflected in those furious words. Both father and daughter are being lead toward a crossroads at which something old ends and something new begins.

With intelligence, adroit humor, and great empathy, Mareike Fallwickl writes about the ups and downs of love, friendship, and family; illusory worlds, both digital and analog; abuse of power, and female self-empowerment, unleashing a maelstrom that thrills until the very end.

A mesmerizing book about how relationships succeed and fail, about power and how it is abused, and about men and women and all that passes between them.

»This is a book as relevant as can be. This is a book that will and must be spoken about.
Mareike Fallwickl dissects humanity, love, and life itself with her razor-sharp words, fascinating deeply in the process.« Florian Valerius, bookseller and bookstagrammer @literarischernerd

Mareike Fallwickl was born in Hallein bei Salzburg in 1983. She currently lives in the Salzburg region where she works as a freelance writer, pens a weekly column for a Salzburg newspaper, and, since 2009, runs her own literature blog. Her debut novel »Dark Green Almost Black«, published by FVA in 2018, was celebrated by readers and nominated for both the Austrian Book Prize and the »Favorite Book of Independent Booksellers« Award. 

»Right about noon on March 10th in 1902, nobody suspected that the downfall of the Kohanim family was about to begin.«

Samuel Kohanim, the head of one of the oldest Jewish families in Western Prussia, is used to a more than average share of sorrow. His wife Mindel, harsh and taciturn, bore him seven daughters. Each of »seven biblical plagues«, as they are known in the village, tests his patience: Selma gets everyone meschugge with her religious quirk; Martha constantly makes up new ludicrous lies; Fanny proves particularly hard to marry off; Elly is a wild child ... – and finally Franziska who is ravishingly beautiful, proud, stubborn and »delivers catastrophes at the flick of a switch«. Yet, there is no heir – their only son dies just after his birth on March10th.
At the end of the First World War the family seeks refuge in Berlin. While Martha marries into the upper class of the city, with her husband converting to Christianity, Franziska gets into a relationship with the Jewish collier Willy Rubin who is just as charismatic as he is unreliable. Together they move into the working class »Red Wedding«. And then there is the protestant Oda, a friend of the family who also ends up in Berlin. Throughout the difficult 1930s, Oda's fate becomes completely intertwined with that of the Kohanims, whose family tree is putting out various new shoots: Jewish, National Socialist, as well as communist.

Marcia Zuckermann has created an amazing Jewish family saga that refrains from going into epic territory. It is catchy, exciting, rich in plot and surprising up to the very last page, claiming its place in the tradition of Jewish storytelling. The line between tragedy and comedy is blurred as its protagonists survive and outwit the bitter blows of fate with unconditional irony towards themselves and that liberatingly sly humor.

Marcia Zuckermann was born in 1947 in East Berlin. Her Jewish father survived the Holocaust despite being interned as a political prisoner in the concentration camp Buchenwald, while her protestant mother was a communist, active in the resistance. Nevertheless, in 1958, the family had to flee from East Berlin since they were considered dissidents there. Today, Marcia Zuckermann lives and works in Berlin as a freelance journalist and writer.

In his early forties, Dave is married, a father of three children and living in Vienna. While his older son Max gets lost in the virtual worlds of computer games, smokes marihuana and neglects school, his daughter becomes ever more alienated from him as she hits puberty. His marriage is also falling apart. Dave feels isolated, he is haunted by nightmares and he worries about his youngest who spends his nights dreaming about a robot friend on an alien planet. Trying to understand his own dream world, Dave seeks the advice of a therapist. In the process, he becomes familiar with the concept of lucid dreaming and begins to experiment with this technique. His reality becomes more and more porous and the dream images become increasingly overwhelming. They take him back into his childhood, which he spent in New York City in the 1970s, and he immerses deeper and deeper into his parent’s stories. His father, with whom he has a difficult relationship, was an American businessman while his mother’s parents had to flee from the Nazis. The story that begins to emerge from these excursions becomes ever more puzzling, so Dave decides to talk to his only remaining relative in New York. It is this relative who reveals a well-kept family secret that ends up shedding a completely new light on his dreams.

Ruth Cerha’s hero of »Dream Rocket« follows the traces that his parent’s lives have left in his own by exploring the fascinating possibilities of dreams – enabling the dreamer to craft a bridge between the conscious and the subconscious. It is this bridge that provides him with the key to a chapter of his family history that was kept in the dark for so long.

Ruth Cerha, born in Vienna in 1963, studied psychology and was a musician and composer with a number of bands before starting to write prose in 2004. Following her novels »Head Out of the Clouds« (2010) and »One-Tenth Brothers« (2012 / 2018 FVA), Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt published »Bora. A Story of the Wind« (2015), for which she was awarded the Austrian State Scholarship for Literature.

Rights sold to: The Netherlands (Nieuw Amsterdam)

Moritz, Raffael and Johanna are best friends. But their friendship is toxic and soon reaches a breaking point. Sixteen years later they meet again and get caught in the old web of love, jealousy and dependency – there is no way back, they have to tell each other the truth.

Moritz and Raffael are complete opposites: Raffael is confident with a disarming smile and piercingly blue eyes. Moritz is gentle, he tends to hold back – a mere boomerang in Raffael’s hands. Their friendship goes back to their childhood and even then Raffael always took the lead. Since Moritz and his mother Marie have only recently moved to the secluded village in the mountains, Marie should probably be glad that her son has made a friend but she senses the destructive force that lurks behind Raffael’s steely blue eyes. Then a girl enters the picture. Her name is Johanna, she is the ›new one‹ at school. Moritz is fascinated by this girl who is so unlike all the others. Johanna ends up stretching the emotional cord that binds the two boys to each other, she turns it into a triangle whose sharp edges will end up wounding everyone involved. The friendship falls apart. Sixteen years later, out of nowhere, Raffael shows up on Moritz’s doorstep. Immediately the past renews its grip on him and he is ready to jeopardize everything he’s built for himself. On top of it all, Johanna also returns and the fatal triangle is once again complete. The moment of truth has finally arrived: For the very last time, they will tear open these old wounds together.

Mareike Fallwickl’s literary debut is gripping and addictive: She tells the tale of a friendship filled with light and darkness, courage and weakness, longing and despair, betrayal and forgiveness. »Dark green, almost black« brings out all facets of friendship – its passion, its gentleness and love in all its healing yet also blindingly cruel glory.

Mareike Fallwickl, born in Hallein near Salzburg in 1983, is working as a freelance writer and editor, and has a weekly column in an Austrian newspaper. Since 2009, she hosts the literary blog. For her literary debut »Dark Green Almost Black«, which will be published in spring 2018 by FVA, she has been offered a scholarship from The Federal Chancellery Austria. Mareike Fallwickl is living in Salzburg. »Dark Green Almost Black« has been longlisted for the Austrian Book Prize 2018.

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.

Sold to: France (Libella), Italy (Mondadori), Greece (Metaichmio), Poland (Muza), Georgia (Intelekti)

The intense, compelling story or two people bound together by an impossible love.

The love Ivo and Stella have for each other is as passionate as it is destructive. Again and again they struggle to escape their vicious circle of wild, erotic encounters and hate-filled fights, but always they are driven back into each other’s arms.
Nino Haratischwili tells the story of this great love, at the heart of which lies a terrible family tragedy that has forged these two people into two sides of the same, damaged coin. In a series of flashbacks Stella describes how Ivo first entered her life when her father began an affair with Ivo’s mother. She tells of long afternoons in the remote house near the harbour, where the two children are left to their own devices while the lovers retire to the bedroom. Ivo and Stella become like brother and sister, sworn to keep their parents’ secret from the rest of their families. But when Ivo’s father comes home unexpectedly from a business trip, their lives change forever.

Nino Haratischwili, born in Georgia in 1983, is an award-winning novelist, playwright and director. In 2010 her debut »Juja« was nominated for the German Book Prize. The following year, »My Gentle Twin« won the Independent Publishers’ Hotlist Prize and has been sold to several countries. »The Eighth Life (For Brilka)« has been awarded 2015 the prestigious Literature Prize of the Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy and the Anna Seghers Literature Prize, the English translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Scribe) has been selected for PEN Translates award 2016.