Rightslist

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. 

»Elsa Koester shows how fascism takes root today. Her book hums with energy, pulling you in. It doesn’t explain why you have to get involved, it makes you feel it. That’s painful, but necessary to grasp the danger.« Daniel Schulz, Author and Journalist

Nana has never been to Saxony before. But now there’s an election coming up, and she’s headed to a town on the German state’s distant edge, the land of wolves, to stop a far-right candidate from becoming mayor.

Nana arrives in Grenzlitz, a town on the outskirts of Saxony, that is heated by the election campaign, filled with returning women, entrepreneurs, and motherless East Germans who were never integrated into this republic by their parents. As a campaign coach, she aims to support Katja Stötzel, the candidate for the eco-progressive Greens. But she’s kept at arm’s length. Instead, she finds understanding with Falk Schlosser, a man from the far-right. In the former East Germany, Nana reconnects with the anger and despair she’s buried for years, frustrated by a society that’s pushed her to the margins. As tensions escalate and candidate Katja faces threats, and everything begins to spiral out of control, Nana must make a choice: Whose side is she really on? Who truly stands for humanity?

In the Land of Wolves is a raw, authentic portrayal of rising fascism in a small town in Eastern Germany. It’s less about party politics and more about the personal battles for recognition and hope, where the wounds of the past thirty years – bitterness, frustration, and hypocrisy – become weapons.

Elsa Koester was born in Berlin in 1984 to a French Pied-Noir mother with a Tunisian colonial background and a North German father with a history of American emigration. She still lives in Berlin, working as a political journalist and Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the weekly newspaper »Der Freitag«. Revived debates on colonialism, identity, and homeland inspired her successful debut novel Couscous mit Zimt (FVA, 2020), where she drew from her diverse cultural identity and experience as both a journalist and activist.

»Laura Vogt vividly, and through shifting perspectives, explores what freedom and dependency can mean in the 21st century. The Reclining Woman is a nuanced, true-to-life novel about life choices, love, and friendship. The Swiss author allows her characters space to grow and evolve.« Martina Läubli, NZZ Books on Sunday

What does freedom mean? What about responsibility? What shapes us, and what do we hope to pass on to others? In her third novel, Laura Vogt delves deeply into the emotional lives of her characters – women in their thirties – and shows us their strengths and weaknesses, their disappointments and hopes. This is a vibrant, life-affirming novel that vividly illustrates how individualism, motherhood, and self-determination must continually be renegotiated.

Romi, short for Romina, is expecting her second child, and recently a second man has also arrived in her life. Szibilla finds the idea of bringing children into the world fundamentally irresponsible, and to her, Romi’s polyamory is just another way to become even more dependent on men. What binds them together is their best friend, Nora. But Nora escapes to her mother’s house in the Swiss Rhine Valley with her young daughter, lays right down in bed, and goes silent. Baffled, Romi and Szibilla travel to visit her, checking into a cheap wellness hotel nearby. While Romi worries about Nora, Szibilla believes this break is exactly what Nora needs to reconnect with herself. Over five days of heated discussions about life choices, the rift between Romi and Szibilla deepens – until Nora finally breaks her silence.

Laura Vogt, born in 1989 in Teufen, Switzerland, studied cultural studies in Lucerne and literary writing in Biel. Her debut novel, So einfach war es also zu gehen (2016), earned her invitations to the Solothurn Literature Days and PROSANOVA – Festival for Young Literature. In 2020, her second novel, Was uns betrifft, was translated into English. In addition to prose, she also writes poetry, plays, and journalistic texts, and works as a live interpreter and mentor. She lives with her family in eastern Switzerland.

»A suspenseful and highly psychological read, it paints portraits of three relationships between women of different generations, examining themes of female
desire, alienation and social expectation. (…) While comparisons could be drawn with Dorothy Bussy and Michelle Tea, Landfried is a distinctive new voice in German literature. Relatable, nuanced and compelling, ›Pasteurgasse 4, täglich‹ offers a fresh and timely addition
to the growing body of queer narratives.« New Books in German
 
»Andrea Landfried's narratively and stylistically powerful recordings of relationships – an encounter with love as a feverish, tumbling search for oneself, haunting, confounding, touching.« Bernhard Schlink
 
 
A young singer in Vienna falls in love with Ruth, a married photographer. Every day, before Ruth picks up her daughter from school, they share exactly two-and-a-half hours together, for two years. At the beginning, Ruth had warned her: the only and at the same time most important thing she could promise her was that she would not deceive her.
 
A woman accompanies her husband on his research fellowship in California. There she meets the much older Angela. Despite the many years and kilometers that separate them, a fragile erotic closeness develops between them.
 
Sarah falls in love with her psychotherapist. As Sarah's behavior becomes more and more obsessive, her therapist has her committed against her will, and a true psychiatric journey to hell begins. During a visit to the sanatorium, she is told, »And now you're going to have a great time.«
 
Andrea Landfried portrays three variations of female desire, each simmering with rebellion against social constraints, accepted psychological patterns, and role expectations. These women's longing to be truly seen and recognized triumphs again and again over fears of falling outside the norms and being socially ostracized. They take the risk of revealing themselves and feeling everything – one of the greatest risks one can take.
 
 
Andrea Landfried, born in 1976, lives with her children in Heidelberg. She studied law in Berlin and Oxford, among other places, and is currently the head of a foundation.

»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.
 

Awarded the Robert Gernhardt Prize and the Licher Literature Prize

In ›Old Girls‹, Julia Wolf lets three generations of women have their say – and sketches a panorama of female life in the Federal Republic that hasn’t been seen before in contemporary German literature.
 

»Julia Wolf’s ›Old Girls‹ resists easy categorisation and refuses to jump on any contemporary literary bandwagons. Its mixture of different literary modes is accessible, inventive and often amusing. Wolf has a knack for hitting all the right generational notes while developing distinct characters and friendships.« New Books in German

»›Old Girls‹ has everything you could want from a contemporary German-language novel: The failure of a petty-bourgeois family, silence, and the experiences of powerlessness in German post-war history, all told as a kaleidoscopic exploration of female subjectivity. Julia Wolf writes a history of consciousness, creating a picture of the postwar milieu that has not been seen before.« Laudatio for the Robert Gernhardt Prize

It's always the daughters who ask! The three ›girls from East Prussia‹, Anni, Else and Hannelore, are asked to model for a photography campaign for their senior citizens’ residence. While Germany's Next Topmodel plays on television, these three women in their mid-nineties negotiate what they want to say about their lives – and what not.

In the car on the way to Poland, Gudrun sends a voice message. She wants her niece to know about her grandmother’s death. But she digresses, talks about her escape at the end of the war, her childhood in the 1950s. Suddenly it becomes clear: she has something she wants to confess.

Undine, Jenny and Thao spend a weekend in Berlin before Jenny has her first child. Along with memories of their childhood and youth in the 1980s and 1990s, social differences come to light again. As they reevaluate their life choices, the contractions begin.

Written in three parts – »Marjellchen,« »New Home, Old House« and »MILF« – Julia Wolf portrays three generations of women, tracing the wounds, values, and experiences of wartime. With this novel, she contributes an important narrative of female subjectivity to German post-war history, opening our eyes to where we come from, where we are going, what we should take with us, and what we should let go.

Julia Wolf is an author and translator. Her debut »Alles ist Jetzt« (FVA 2015) was followed by the novel »Walter Nowak bleibt liegen« (FVA 2017), which won the 3sat Prize and the Nicolas Born Debut Prize, and was nominated for the German Book Prize 2017. She received the Robert Gernhardt Prize and the Licher Literature Prize for »Old Girls«. As part of the author collective »Writing with CARE/RAGE,« Julia Wolf has worked on the topic of care work and artistic production. She lives with her family in Leipzig.

»Atmospherically dense like Marguerite Duras.« DIE ZEIT, reviewing ›Iva Breaths‹

»Her art is political. The fact is: she has something to say, and say it she does it. Amanda Lasker-Berlin is a name to remember.« MDR, reviewing ›Elijah’s Song‹

The skin of ten-year-old Spes is as sensitive as a butterfly’s wing. When will she throw off her gauze cocoon and finally be able to fly?

Mirjam travels to a country in upheaval. How do you tell a story when everything is in ruins?

Paul is on the run from his photo, plastered on front pages. It's only an accusation, but what is the truth?

Achura fears a catastrophe, the end of her political career. But would she take back what she said?

Spes, Mirjam, Paul and Achura are each at a turning point. How do you reinvent yourself without losing yourself? Can enough strength be found for a utopia, for a new beginning? Amanda Lasker-Berlin tells the story of four characters, trying to break free from classifications and overcome a crisis. Rapidly intercut perspectives, colliding points of view and voices form together an energy that gathers its power with each page. »Spes Means Hope« is a novel that is bursting with our present moment, and one that widens our view of what is important.

Amanda Lasker-Berlin, born in Essen in 1994, studied fine arts at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and studied stage direction at the Akademie für Darstellende Kunst Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg, where she lead a production of Herta Müller’s »Atemschaukel« Her drama ICH, WUNDERWERK AND HOW MUCH I LOVE DISTURBING CONTENT premiered in 2021 as part of the Autor:innentheatertage at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and was awarded the Hermann Sudermann Prize. Her first novel »Elijas Lied« (FVA, 2020) was awarded the debut prize at lit.COLOGNE, followed by the novel »Iva Breathes« at FVA in 2021. She lives in Frankfurt am Main.

»Behind every story is a second story that must be told before it can begin to exist.«

»Marie-Alice Schultz writes with great subtlety and arresting accuracy about disappearances. In her crystal-clear view of what is lost and what is added, one always recognizes oneself.« Isabelle Lehn

What happens when someone leaves – but then returns after seven years? Unannounced, Ben bursts back into Pia’s life, and the lives of Vinz, and of Janis, who is his son. Now, suddenly, Janis has two fathers and Pia finds herself wondering why it is that only others can come and go as they wish. Marie-Alice, the narrator, learns the news of her Viennese friends while in Hamburg. There was briefly something with Vinz before, but now there is a new triangle. Marie-Alice is herself a writer and currently in a liminal place: between projects, between plans for the future and the memories of her French mother, who many years ago ate half an apple before she suddenly died. Increasingly, Marie-Alice wonders just what family is, and how responsibility, inheritance, happiness, and identity relate to each other. She begins thinking her way into the lives of her Viennese friends, until something that no one had expected occurs, and one piece of the triangle changes sides.

In »The Half Apple«, Marie-Alice Schultz tells a story of unusual family arrangements and modern life choices, with a playful tone of radical self-interrogation. The novel’s way of reversing the roles and points of view of its characters and weaving them into an exciting plot reveals extraordinary literary skill. The author’s voice is reminiscent of Rachel Cusk's or Lisa Halliday's indirect self-examinations, but reveals how one can sometimes only find oneself in a roundabout way, in a style all her own.

Marie-Alice Schultz was born in Hamburg in 1980. She studied theater and German language and literature in Berlin, and fine arts in Vienna. In 2016, received a scholarship to the Jürgen Ponto Foundation’s writing workshop, and she was a participant in the 20th Klagenfurt Literature Course. For her 2019 debut novel »Mikadowälder«, she was awarded a literature prize by the city of Hamburg. In 2021, she received a working fellowship at the Roger Willemsen Foundation's artist’s house. She lives in Hamburg.

»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.