Sophia Merwald’s award-winning debut (Alfred Döblin Prize 2025) is a fiercely idiosyncratic novel about queer kinship, anti-establishment homemaking, and the precarious construction of safety. With fairy-tale logic and postmodern mythmaking, it creates a world where utopia and threat sit side by side, and where the most intimate forms of care are constantly tested by memory, violence, and the pressure of the outside world. ‘Outsize’ is not a straightforward realist narrative. It is stranger than that, deliberately surreal, and committed to building its own language. Its voice-led fiction, queer domestic mythologies, and playful forms carry real emotional weight and make it a distinctive, unsettling, and oddly tender read.

Translator bio

Rob Myatt translates into his native English (UK and US) from German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, Polish and Luxembourgish, specialising in legal, ESG, finance, marketing, culture and literary texts.
He is a Qualified Member (MITI) of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, an Intermediate Member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, and a member of DELT (the Association of Danish-English Literary Translators). His work was recognised with the Goethe-Institut Translation Award 2023. His website is https://polyglotliterature.co.uk/.

Author bio
Sophia Merwald studied Journalism and Film and Media Culture and works as a freelance journalist. Sperrgut (‘Outsize’) is her first novel, and received several awards before even being published, including the Alfred Döblin Prize. She lives and works in Munich.

For rights info contact: Contact: Annemarie Blumenhagen // rights@ullstein-buchverlage.de // Phone +49 (0)30 23456 450

The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.

THE POWERLESSNESS OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE - THE RETURN OF WAR AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/the-powerlessness-of-international-law/

With the Nuremberg Trials, a new chapter in the history of international law began after the Second World War. And after the Cold War, a rule-based world order appeared realistic.
However, this is not the reality of the early 21st century – international law appears to be in ruins, brute force seems to prevail, and the global community seems to be settling into cynicism or resignation. Safferling’s treatise is concise, competent, personal, and passionate.
Despite its seemingly sombre title, the book ultimately offers an optimistic outlook:
Safferling argues convincingly that international law should not be written off as a regulatory framework for global relations. In the author’s firm belief, it will ultimately assert its relevance and force. As readers move through the book, it becomes increasingly clear that
there are compelling reasons to share this hope.

"An impressive and simultaneously disquieting book about the capabilities and limitations of the international legal order […] Equal parts analysis, diagnosis and warning cry."– Peggy Fiebig, Deutschlandfunk (Andruck)

"International law has seen better days, and Christoph Safferling does not pretend to his readers that all is well. But it is precisely this realism that makes his book so well worth reading." – NZZ Geschichte

"Safferling skilfully reconstructs the debates on peace and international law from 1945 to the present day, including the very latest developments." – Hendrik Simon, FAZ

Author/translator bio
Christoph Safferling, born in 1971, is Professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, International Criminal Law and International Law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
He is the director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy

https://www.dtv.de/autor/christoph-safferling-7908

Translation funding guaranteed by New Books in German. https://www.new-books-in-german.com/

Lilli Tollkien's debut, Two Hands Lifting the Sky, is a 2026 New Books in German pick, and has been published in Germany to great acclaim. Jamie Lee Searle's sample translation can be found on NBG's website: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/two-hands-lifting-the-sky/

Lale’s childhood in West Berlin in the 1980s is unlike most others – she grows up in a left-wing male flatshare. Her drug-addicted mother loses custody of her, while her father is in prison for attempting to rob a bank in order to redistribute capital. A friend of her father’s takes Lale out of the children’s home and into his shared apartment in Neukölln. Her guardians vacillate between drug binges and political ambitions, between parties and aid projects in Nicaragua. Women are changed like clothes, and those who complain are dismissed as crazy and bourgeois. While the adults politicize, plan the revolution, and sell hashish in the living room, Lale is left to her own devices – and becomes a victim of the abusive men in her environment. As an adult, she pulls herself out of the mire, fighting her own way as a woman, artist, and mother, driven by her insatiable thirst for a better life. A childhood and youth in left-wing Berlin in the 1980s, in the shadow of the excesses of those who tried their hand at parenting and failed. An outstanding debut which is haunting, but never sentimental.

"After the first page I was shaken, but after the first chapter I was captivated. A novel of improbable gravity, a rare gem." EDGAR RAI

"Lilli Tollkien writes with a ferocity that is almost unbearable – and that is precisely why you have to read her." MAREIKE FALLWICKL

Jamie Lee Searle translates German-language and Portuguese-language works into English. Before becoming a translator, she worked for Reuters and did an MA in Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary University in London. Her most recent publications include a translation of Kim de l'Horizon's Blood Book, which won the German and Swiss national book prizes in 2022, and a co-translation of Angela Merkel’s memoirs, Freedom. Jamie is a co-founder of the Emerging Translators' Network, a mentor with the National Centre for Writing and a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow.

Lilli Tollkien, born in Berlin in 1980, studied Directing and Music Therapy in Berlin and Heidelberg, among other things. She worked in a wide variety of professions, including as an addiction counsellor in a prison, a job coach, and a set designer. In addition to her current profession, she is a photographer and has published in anthologies. She lives with her children in Leipzig. Two Hands Lifting the Sky is her first novel.

Translation funding guaranteed by New Books in German. https://www.new-books-in-german.com/