Published on 4 June 2026 by Moth Books, this is the second of Iris Wolff’s books to appear in English, and was shortlisted for the 2024 German Book Prize. It tells of the deep, almost lifelong friendship between Lev and Kato, who are in their late thirties when we first meet them. Their story is told in reverse, as Wolff takes us back through their lives to their childhood in a village in the north of Romania, gradually revealing what has made them the people they are today.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/clearing/iris-wolff/ruth-martin/9781917593045

‘A wonderful novel’ Die Zeit Book of the Month

‘A magnificently contemporary book’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

‘Iris Wolff proves to be a superlative storyteller.’ The Times Literary Supplement

Ruth Martin has been translating fiction and nonfiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth to Angela Merkel. Together with Charlotte Collins and Nino Haratischwili, she won the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, for Nino’s epic novel The Eighth Life. Her translation of Shida Bazyar’s The Nights are Quiet in Tehran was shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.

Iris Wolff, born behind the iron curtain in the medieval town of Sibiu, Transylvania in 1977, is a writer whose work carries the reader deep into her former homeland. The fate of those who stay and those who choose to migrate is the constant and powerful theme weaving through her novels. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including the 2025 Uwe-Johnson Prize for outstanding literary works, last awarded to Jenny Erpenbeck in 2022 for her novel, Kairos.

One of a great many poems which will be in my book from Arc Publications. Brecht wrote about 3,000 poems, but priority always went to his plays.

Translator bio
Timothy Adès, rhyming translator-poet with eleven books from French, Spanish, German and four awards, also rewrote Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets without using letter E. He runs a bookstall of translated poetry, his own works and many others. He is a trustee of Agenda magazine, and is on Facebook and YouTube.


Author bio
Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956, the great playwright, was also a very great poet. Son of a pastor, an exile from Nazism in Scandinavia, he crossed Russia, reached Hollywood and eventually returned to East Berlin, running the Berliner Ensemble.


Forthcoming poetry book from Arc Publications: https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/writers/timothy-ades

A part of the series 'Reading the City', the anthology Book of Bratislava: A City in Short Fiction, co-edited by Radoslav Passia and Julia Sherwood, features ten stories by ten different authors set in the Slovak capital in the period from the end of World War II to the present day, translated by ten different translators. The stories i reflect the Slovak capital’s many changing incarnations: from a hopeful city newly liberated from the Nazis; to an outpost of communist Czechoslovakia crawling with informants; to the capital of a new, democratic independent state. Bratislava may be a city still shaping its identity, but it is one where creativity blooms, despite – or perhaps because of – its complex and intricate history. From the dive bars of the infamous Petržalka estate, to the lush tree-lined banks of the Danube, the past and present are in continual conversation with each other, striving to recapture what’s lost, while adjusting to the fast pace of change.

"We are presented with a tapestry of the city no less intricate or impressive than the ones on display in Bratislava’s Primacial Palace" - Sophie Benbelaid, Asymptote blog

"These 10 stories immerse the reader into Bratislava’s everyday and would really serve any traveller to the city well, before, during or after a trip." - Tripfiction.com

'This anthology’s translators are among the best in the game... Comma Press’s criteria result in a volume that... captures the various facets and critical essence of Slovakia’s capital.' - Asymptote Journal

Four of the anthology's translators read from their translations of works by Ján Rozner, Lucia Piussi, Alta Vášová and Richard Pupala.

John Minahane was born in Ireland and has lived and worked in Slovakia since 1996, working as an English language teacher while pursuing his own literary and translation projects

Janet Livingstone is a translator and life coach who spent 16 years living in Slovakia and is now based in Seattle, where she leads her own leadership and learning consultancy

Magdalena Mullek is a literary translator and scholar. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Indiana University and is currently based in Slovakia

Jonathan Gresty is a freelance teacher, translator, and novelist who has been living in Slovakia since 1992


BUY THE ANTHOLOGY: https://commapress.co.uk/books/the-book-of-bratislava

Serge Joncour's panorama of rural life in late 20thC France won the Prix Femina in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award in an English translation by Louise Rogers Lalaurie. It's set at Les Bertranges, a family farm deep in the south-west. Opening with the long hot summer of 1976, and closing with the cataclysmic storm of December 31 1999, the novel takes an affectionate look back at the period - Mitterand's presidential campaign, the eco-protests on the Larzac plateau, Chernobyl - with climate alarm bells ringing in the background. Alexandre is set to inherit the family farm, a yoke he assumes unquestioningly. The route of a new motorway poses an existential threat, but his love for a German student from behind the Wall, and the attentions of her eco-terrorist friends may prove his biggest challenge yet.

BUY THE BOOK: https://guardianbookshop.com/human-nature-9781913547196/

"An outstanding, big, compassionate novel... BY telling the stoery of days gone by, Joncour makes us reflect on those yet to come." Le Figaro.

Translator bio
Louise Rogers Lalaurie is a writer and translator from French, with a focus on art, fiction, and travel.

Author bio
Serge Joncour (b. 1961) is the author of 18 acclaimed novels, including three titles translated into English: Human Nature (2022), Wild Dog (2020) and Lean On Me (2022).

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/

In this latest novel by the prolific Swiss writer Charles Lewinsky, an ageing Jewish film producer, Curtis Melnitz, tries to blag a prescription for sleeping tablets, only to find himself sentenced to regular psychoanalysis instead. What begins as reluctant grumbling turns into something more like pleasure, as Melnitz starts telling his life story on the couch, one session per chapter, with all the gruff asides, punchlines, and evasions of a man who has spent a lifetime performing.

Sheridan Marshall interviewed Lewinsky about the novel for New Books in German here: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/for-me-writing-a-novel-is-a-voyage-of-discovery-an-interview-with-charles-lewinsky/

"Wonderfully told, sophisticated and with a lot of humour." – Young-Sim Song / Watson, Zurich
"A great late work, which is also about storytelling and remembering." – Peter Zander / Berliner Morgenpost, Berlin
"A work with the potential to become a success just as big as Melnitz." – Ellen Presser / Jüdische Allgemeine, Berlin
"An intelligent, entertaining novel, full of spirit and historical depth – worth reading." – Andreas Schröter / Ruhr Nachrichten, Dortmund

About the translator:
Ruth Martin has been translating fiction and nonfiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth to Angela Merkel. Together with Charlotte Collins and Nino Haratischwili, she won the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, for Nino’s epic novel The Eighth Life. Her translation of Shida Bazyar’s The Nights are Quiet in Tehran was shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.

About the author:
Charles Lewinsky, born in Zurich in 1946, has been a freelance writer since 1980. He won international renown with his novel Melnitz (Melnitz, Atlantic Books, 2016), which was awarded numerous prizes. His novel Der Halbbart (‘Halfbeard’) was nominated for both the Swiss Book Prize and the German Book Prize. His works have been published in 16 languages. Charles Lewinsky lives in Vereux (France) in summer, and in Zurich in winter.

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

The Wise Man from the Sea: Time and Place, Spirit and Eternity is a collection of previously unpublished texts, collected from letters, notebooks and excerpts from the novels by the acclaimed Faroese writer and artist William Heinesen. It constitutes a key to his thoughtscape.

He writes on the extensive connections between consciousness and cosmos, poetry and religion, humanity and mankind, the human and the humane. The texts contain observations on childhood, old age, and his own life’s work. Additionally, the texts contain thoughts on science, politics, and acculturated European ideas spanning from antiquity up until modern society, leading finally to how Heinesen worked to address his fight against the cultural polarisation that characterised his time. It is a clarion call to remember our connection with our fellow humans and all the other creatures that share in this cosmos. A life wisdom as relevant as ever.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.ipolari.com/wise-man-1 OR https://www.casemateacademic.com/9798988473275/the-wise-man-from-the-sea/

About the translator:
Marita Thomsen is a literary translator from the Faroes, where the wind often roars, and now lives in Keele, where it whispers. Her love of languages and stories has crystallised into English translations of Faroese, Danish and Spanish language authors, while her work as a conference interpreter satisfies her curiosity and wanderlust. She is also a mentor for emerging translators from Faroese at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, UK. Marita is keen to collaborate across the North Atlantic and further afield with a special interest in queer, marginalised and women's writing. Hearing readings brings her joy, as does taking part in readings.

Published works include: On the Other Side is March by Sólrún Michelsen (Transit Books, US), the first Faroese queer poetry collection The Suntrap by Beinir Bergsson (Francis Boutle Publishers, UK), contributions to the anthology The Dedalus Book of Faroese Literature (Dedalus, UK) the lyrical novel the play Castle of Joy by Búi Dam, which had a sell-out run at the Barbican, and award-winning children’s books by Bárður Oskarsson. Marita has contributed to Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal and anthologies published by Pushkin Press and Dedalus Books, her translation of Dead Men Dancing by Jógvan Isaksen received the 2024 Petrona Award.

About the author:
William Heinesen (born Jan. 15, 1900, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, Den.—died Mar. 12, 1991, Tórshavn) was a Faroese writer of Danish-language poetry and fiction in which he used his remote North Atlantic homeland as a microcosmic setting for universal social, psychological, and cosmic themes. In 1921, while studying in Copenhagen, Heinesen published a volume of lyric poetry, Arktiske Elegier (“Arctic Elegies”). He wrote three more collections of poetry before he returned to the Faroe Islands in 1932. In his novels, beginning with Blæsende Gry (1934; “Windswept Dawn”), he combined elements of tragedy, comedy, satire, allegory, and social criticism to explore such themes as the harshness of nature and the rights of the individual as opposed to the collective good. His other works include the novels Noatun (1938; Niels Peter), De fortabte Spillemænd (1950; The Lost Musicians), Det gode Håb (1964; “The Good Hope”), and Tårnet ved Verdens Ende (1976; The Tower at the End of the World), as well as several volumes of short stories. He was elected to the Danish Academy in 1961.

This reading was contributed as part of the 2026 Association of Danish-English Literary Translators feature week for Translators Aloud.

Translator bio:

Richard Coombes translates from Russian and Ukrainian into English. Recent publications include poetry in the bilingual anthologies ‘Disbelief’ and ‘Dislocation’, Elena Dolgopyat’s short story collection ‘Someone Else’s Life’, and Alexei Ivanov’s novel ‘The Food Block’.

Website: https://richardcoombeslanguageservices.com/
Bluesky: @richtranslator.bsky.social

Currently, Richard is collaborating with the Ukrainian novelist Anna Bugayeva, and translating the Ukrainian poetess Maryna Ponomarenko and other contemporary Ukrainian poets. The ‘Disbelief’ and ‘Dislocation’ team is also preparing a third anthology. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Richard has been teaching English to Ukrainian refugees and running conversation clubs and other language coaching sessions for Ukrainians in the UK, Ukraine, and other European countries.

Author bio:

Maryna Ponomarenko lives and works in Kyiv. She has a degree in Dramatic Writing for Film and Television, and she is a contemporary poetess who gives regular live performances of her work. Her second poetry collection has just been published by Ukraine’s Old Lion Publishing House.

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Neben Fremden by Eva Schmidt takes the form of a series of reminiscences by Rosa, told to us as she sits on her balcony in the autumn of the present day. It is all about Rosa’s encounters with people and the influence these encounters have on Rosa and on the people she comes to know. Her reminiscences begin with a scene on that same balcony that occurred a few months after her partner’s death.

We find out more and more about Rosa through the various stages of personal development she goes through as the novel progresses: meeting and getting to know her partner, Fred; the latter’s death; becoming acquainted with her initially nameless downstairs neighbour; becoming a confidante to the neighbour’s teenage daughter; Rosa’s retirement from working at a senior care home; coming to terms with her own family relationships; and taking in an abandoned dog and having to put her own beloved, elderly dog to sleep, to name just a handful of those experiences. The biggest revelation is that Rosa has an estranged son, born when she was a teenage runaway.

By the time this son, now in his fifties, writes unexpectedly after many years of silence, Rosa has come to realise that there is no need to live a solitary life, with a dog as her closest friend, because people do matter to her – and there are people for whom she is now important as well, who were once strangers with untold struggles and personal histories of their own. After years of coping with personal trauma, she arrives at the conclusion summarised in the novel’s closing line: Mein Leben ist auch ein Leben: My life is a life too.

Press quotes:

Eva Schmidt masters the art of the terse, situative emphasis. In a handful of lines she sketches how wide the chasm is between self-awareness and awareness of the outer world - Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 12 September 2025
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/eva-schmidt-neben-fremden-102.html


Eva Schmidt is perhaps the most brilliant underrated author in the German-speaking literature business. She writes concise books of great linguistic precision. Neither her settings nor her protagonists are spectacular, but her gift of observation, empathy and wisdom are distinctive to an unparalleled degree.

Each of her books is a sensation, regardless of its subject, although the author mainly attends to people's crises of life and loneliness. That was the case in her novel “Ein langes Jahr”, published in 2016. Schmidt celebrated her comeback with it after 20 years. It told of a damaged lives on a desolate housing estate in a roundelay of miniatures and was shortlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis. Neben Fremden is of this tradition. Tentatively, gently tracing her characters’ hurts, Eva Schmidt asks who are we to judge whether or not a life is a fulfilled one. - SWR Bestenliste, 30.12.2025 (94 points)
https://www.swr.de/kultur/literatur/bestenliste-2026-01-02-102.html

Alexandra Cox qualified with a Master's in Translation from German and French in 2001. Her dissertation was on the standard French translation of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Born in the UK, she has been living working as a freelance translator in Germany since 2003. She is a member of ITI and the Translators Association at the SoA. Alexandra has translated multiple publications in the area of literary non-fiction, where she specialises in art and culture. These publications include art catalogues and monographs for exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. When it comes to literary fiction, her interest lies in tales about people and (family) relationships, in stories told with empathy.

Eva Schmidt was born in 1952 and lives in Bregenz. She has written radio dramas, short stories and novels, of which Neben Fremden is her fourth. Her second novel, Ein langes Jahr, was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis.

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A humorous and deeply human short story collection that celebrates outsiders, dreamers, and the queer.

The award-winning Slovak writer Barbora Hrínová’s short stories paint an intimate portrait of people searching for happiness in a world that feels increasingly unstable and uncertain. Across the eight stories in this volume, we meet a rich cast of ordinary yet unconventional people trying to find their place in a society that often prefers conformity over authenticity. Taking us to such settings as a bustling cafe, a small village shack, a rental flat, or a psychiatric ward, Hrínová captures the texture of everyday life with piercing accuracy and a fresh, original voice.

Unicorns is a remarkable debut that resonates across generations. With compassion, wit, and an eye for detail, it shows us that weirdness isn’t rare—it’s a universal human experience.

The story Chemistry follows the (mis)adventures of Bonifác, known as Boni, as he looks for a partner. He is frequently rejected – but the women who are interested in him all have something to hide.

BUY THE BOOK: https://seagullbooks.org/products/unicorns

Isabel Stainsby is a translator (literary/commercial) from Czech, Slovak, German and occasionally French into English. She studied languages and linguistics at Cambridge and Bristol, with a year in the Czech city of Olomouc, then tried out various careers before becoming a freelance translator. She has translated twelve books so far, plus a number of chapters, short stories and articles. Languages are her passion; she also speaks reasonable Russian, a bit of Scottish Gaelic, and is currently learning Hungarian. Translation is her vocation. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband.

Barbora Hrínová studied at the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, where she now teaches in the Screenwriting Department. She has conducted postdoctoral research on contemporary film at Ilia State University in Tbilisi and spent time at a university in California. A three-time finalist for the Poviedka short-story award, Hrínová also produces radio documentaries for Slovak and Czech national broadcasting. Unicorns is her debut short-story collection, marking a powerful entrance for a fresh and original voice in European literature. Unicorns won the Anasoft Litera, Slovakia's most prestigious literary prize, in 2021, and her novel Plachý dom (The Shy House), published to great acclaim in 2025, has been nominated for the Anasoft Litera 2026.

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Distant Signs: A Novel
by Anne Richter, translated by Douglas Irving, published in 2019 by Neem Tree Press.

Distant Signs is an intimate portrait of two families spanning three generations amidst turbulent political change, behind and beyond the Berlin Wall.

In 1960s East Germany, Margret, a professor’s daughter from the city, meets and marries Hans, from a small village in the Thuringian forest. The couple struggle to contend with their different backgrounds, and the emotional scars they bear from childhood in the aftermath of war. As East German history gradually unravels, with collision of the personal and political, acutely observed vignettes quietly reveal their two families’ hidden truths.

“I don't know that I've read a more moving piece of post-war German fiction - and this includes Günther Grass's best efforts.”

Misha, US Online Blog Tour Reviewer

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From the publisher (World Literature Today): “In this story of lengthy quarantine due to an unnamed virus, a woman sneaks into the mountain to collect ferns—many ferns. Simultaneously evoking life under past Chilean political oppression and living under recent worldwide quarantines due to Covid-19, this Cortazarian story marks the author’s English-language debut.”
Catalina Infante Beovic is a Chilean writer, publisher, journalist, and teacher. Follow Catalina on Instagram at @catalinainfantebeovic
Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish to English translator studying at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. Follow Michelle on Instagram at @mirabella_michelle and Twitter at @MirabellaM_

Find the story at:
English translation, published by World Literature Today in 2020: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/fiction/ferns-catalina-infante-beovic
Spanish, published by Neón Ediciones: https://www.librospatagonia.com/library/publication/helechos

Follow World Literature Today on Twitter at @worldlittoday.

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It’s 2007 and we are in Bilbao, worn out by the final blows of Basque terrorism. Gorane and Jokin are twenty-five year old twins and children of ETA militants. Raised without rules, they take opposing and complementary directions: compliant and passive to everything, Jokin, a heroin-addict drummer, seems to follow in his parents’ footsteps, while Gorane, ambiguous and introverted, pulls away seeking refuge in an abstract world. When Jokin runs away and their parents become involved in a tragic event, Gorane finds herself prey to strange hallucinations of her parents. Meanwhile in Paris, Jokin struggles with his attraction to the mysterious Germana, yet, despite the distance, the twins’ lives seem destined to never separate and it will be a French writer’s novel that reconnects them.

The Melee is a polyphonic work; a world that connects reality to our most recondite dreams, a world where the only driving force seems to be blind violence. Can freedom reveal itself to be an instrument of torture, and can empathy that resists absolutism prevail in the face of trauma? Valentina Maini responds in the pages of this provocative debut and its web of stories connecting drug dealers, smugglers, psychiatrists, writers, cleaners and fortune tellers - and she does it with the conviction of Roberto Bolaño and Mathias Énard: looking chaos directly in the eye.

THE MELEE BY VALENTINA MAINI (PUBLISHED IN ITALIAN BY BOLLATI BORINGHIERI, 2020)

FIRST PLACE IN THE L'INDISCRETO QUALITY RANKINGS

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SEVERINO CESARI DEBUT AWARD 2020

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FONDAZIONE MONDADORI DEBUT AWARD 2020

CHOSEN BY KOBO IN THEIR 50 BOOKS TO DEFY AND SURVIVE THE YEAR 2020

“What is great European literature today? The Melee by Valentina Maini has the range and complexity to fit the bill and the ambition to be part of it.”
VERONICA RAIMO (The Girl at the Door)

“There are writers who, more than make their debut, burst onto the scene. By writing novels that play havoc with all the rules. Valentina Maini is one of them.”
ANDREA BAJANI (If You Kept a Record of Sins; Every Promise)

“Redolent of Clarice Lispector and Roberto Bolano, a haunted, captivating, poetic novel that tells the story of two children of ETA and their quest for life and the future under the tight rein of a true artist and her unique, visionary freedom of language.”
MARTA BARONE (Città sommersa)

“In The Melee, Valentina Maini unfurls a notable variety of textual typologies – reports, statements, recordings, a novel within the novel – showing that it is still possible to tell stories in an impressive, original manner.”
WU MING 2 (Q; Manituana; 54)


Valentina Maini was born in Bologna in 1987. She completed her PhD in Comparative Literature between Bologna and Paris and has published short stories in retabloid, TerraNullius, Atti Impuri, Horizonte, and other magazines. Some of her articles have appeared in Poetiche, La Deleuziana, and Classiques Garnier. With her collection of poetry, Casa Rotta (2016), she won the Anna Osti literary prize. She translates from French and from English into Italian.

Sean McDonagh is an emerging literary translator who translates from Italian. He is based in London where he works in publishing, and has been pursuing literary translation projects since participating in the Warwick Translates Summer School 2019. He has had a translation published on Asymptote, and as a poet has also had work published on Allegro, Rockland and Foxtrot Uniform. Sean has a BA in English, has lived and studied in Turin, and has completed an advanced course at the Italian Cultural Institute.

@seanpjamcdonagh (Twitter)
seanmcdonaghtranslator.com

For rights info, contact: Flavia Abbinante - flavia.abbinante@bollatiboringhieri.it
Rights Sold: Portuguese

The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
TO READ A LONGER EXTRACT, please visit: seanmcdonaghtranslator.com/projects-seeking-a-publisher

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