Author bio
Marina 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.
Marina's second poetry anthology (just out):
https://starylev.com.ua/knyga-putivnyk-po-urvyshhu-y-okolycyax
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marina.ponomarenko

Translator bio
Richard 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/
Blue Sky @richtranslator.bsky.social

Currently, Richard is collaborating with the Ukrainian novelist Anna Bugayeva, and translating the Ukrainian poetess Marina 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.

Translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood

The nine stories comprising the collection The Last Thing depict the rise of fascism and its dangers for the Jewish community in Slovakia through the concentration camps and the partisan fight against the Germans, concluding with a devastating summation of all that had been lost and destroyed in the war. Drawing on his own experience, Leopold Lahola explores moral ambivalences, instead a simple opposition of good versus evil. He punctures the standard historical image of the partisan fighters by depicting their heroism alongside their cruelty and pettiness while also showing how often bravery and madness, kindness and stupidity can coexist. His sequence of compelling World War II stories offers starkly new perspectives on the tragedy and grandeur of that momentous time in history. Virtually uknown abroad and almost forgotten in Slovakia, these stories are finally available in an English translation.
The translation and publication of this work was supported using public funding by the Slovak Arts Council and by Slovak Literature Abroad (SLOLA).

BUY THE BOOK: https://karolinum.cz/en/books/lahola-the-last-thing-31322

Author bio
Leopold Lahola (1918-1968) managed to escape deportation to a concentration camp as a young man and fought in the anti-Nazi resistance. After the war, following the 1949 Communist takeover, his promising career as a playwright was cut short by a vicious campaign accusing him of promoting "existentialist values". In 1949 Lahola emigrated to Israel, where he worked in film before moving to West Germany, where he also worked in film and TV. He emerged from obscurity during the brief thaw of the 1968 Prague Spring, when he was able to return to his homeland and thrive as a playwright and film director. His short story collection The Last Thing finally appeared in Slovakia in early 1968, but sadly, only a few months later, he died of a heart attack just before his 50th birthday. The book was not viewed favourably by the hardline regime that followed the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and this work of Lahola’s fell into obscurity again until it was republished in 1994.

Translator bio
Julia Sherwood is a translator (with Peter Sherwood) from Slovak, Czech, Polish, Russian and German into English as well as into Slovak. She was born and grew up in Bratislava, Slovakia, and studied English and Slavonic languages and literature in Cologne, London and Munich. She was editor-at-large for Slovakia for Asymptote (2013–2023). She co-curates SlovakLiterature.com and is the editor of Seagull Books’ Slovak list. Julia and Peter have translated into English some thirty books by mostly contemporary Slovak and Czech writers. Their most recent translations are The Bonnet by Katarína Kucbelová, Seven Days to the Funeral by Ján Rozner and This Room Is Impossible To Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová.
Peter Sherwood is a translator and scholar. He taught at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, from 1972 to 2007. From 2008 until his retirement in 2014, he was László Birinyi, Sr, Distinguished Professor of Hungarian Language and Culture in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Peter’s translations from the Hungarian include several short collections, as well novels, most recently Krisztina Tóth’s prize-winning Barcode and Krisztián Grecsó’s Vera.

‘Russian Specialities’ is a witty and thought-provoking read about the power of Russian propaganda. Dimitrij Kapitelman’s novel is a timely literary reflection on the contemporary geopolitical landscape that will appeal to fans of Marina Lewycka and Andrey Kurkov.

The novel’s narrator, Dmitrij, was born in Kyiv, but has spent most of his life in Germany. His family left Ukraine as Jewish refugees in the mid-1990s, when he was eight. His elderly parents are from the Soviet generation. They run a Russian delicatessen and wholesale business in Leipzig, making regular trips to Poland and Ukraine to stock up on produce. After scraping through lockdowns, the delicatessen is wound down as Dmitrij’s father slowly succumbs to dementia.

MORE INFO: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/russian-specialities/

Author bio
Dmitrij Kapitelman was born in Kyiv in 1986, and came to Germany with his family at the age of eight, as a ‘quota refugee’. He studied Political Science and Sociology at Leipzig University and graduated from the German School of Journalism (DJS) in Munich. He now works as a freelance journalist. His first book, Das Lächeln meines unsichtbaren Vaters (‘The Smile of my Invisible Father’) was published in 2016 to huge acclaim, earning him the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize. Eine Formalie in Kiew (‘A Formality in Kyiv’) followed in 2021, for which he was awarded the Ravensburger Verlag Family Novel Book Prize.

Translator bio
Rob Myatt is an award-winning translator from German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Russian and Luxembourgish into English. He was the recipient of the Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation 2023 for his translation of an extract from Behzad Karim Khani’s debut novel Dog Wolf Jackal. His literary translations have appeared in journals such as Turkoslavia, Subnivean, MayDay and The Dodge and he has worked with publishers including Granta, Rowohlt, Hanser, Cyranka, Politikens Forlag and V&Q. You can find him on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/robtranslates.bsky.social or his website: https://polyglotliterature.co.uk/

For rights info contact: friederike.barakat@hanser.de

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

‘White Clouds’ is an intimate study of a diverse and extended Black German family that addresses complex social issues. It follows three family members as they grapple with their unique stages in life and their distinct identities.

Zazie is a young Black German woman, a member of Gen-Z. She is the daughter of Ulrike, a white 68er who is as dynamic as she is unreliable, and Papis, a Senegalese academic who has settled in Germany and made a living translating Nietzsche but now often feels his daughters are foreign to him. Zazie is political, embracing her Black Diasporic identity. She feels at times that James Baldwin and Roxanne Gay understand her better than her own sister does. She has just completed her MA thesis and aspires to an academic career, but is not quite sure academia is the right place for her. She is also suffering under the weight of family problems and a white boyfriend who is woke when it comes to pop culture, but doesn’t always understand her struggles as a Black woman in a white-majority society.

Zazie’s older sister, Dieo, is less politically engaged: a child therapist, she has just started a new phase of training to allow her to become self-employed. She is struggling to balance her career with mothering her three biracial sons. She could use more support from her white husband Simon, but he is too wrapped up in his tech bro aspirations to acknowledge her needs.

Simon is the son of an absent father – a documentarian who was more concerned with art and politics than fatherhood, and a vibrant mother interested in intersectional feminism. He may not have any insight into the problems of his marriage, or why Dieo only rarely wants to sleep with him, but he is steadfast and intelligent, and Zazie feels able to confide in him about her worries about their family – especially how generational trauma has them all stuck in pre-determined roles and behaviours that are making them unhappy.

When Papis dies unexpectedly, the laboriously calibrated family structures lose their equilibrium. The sisters travel to their father’s homeland for the funeral, and saying goodbye becomes a new beginning for them. Wise, accessible and subtly humorous, Yandé Seck’s debut novel shows how intergenerational trauma and racist and sexist structures can make people act in ways they may not always be conscious of.

MORE INFO: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/white-clouds/

"Yandé Seck’s début is a loving dissection of a black family in a city … The novel is narrated like a Netflix series about everyday city life; it is pithy and contemporary, full of beautiful dialogue and wise observations." Stern

"For all the weight of her themes – the racism experienced by her protagonist and the oppressive demands of motherhood – Yandé Seck manages to make her writing entertaining, humourous and forgiving. And for all the conflict and struggle, it is a hopeful novel." hr2-kultur

Author bio
Yandé Seck was born in 1986 and lives in Frankfurt am Main with her husband and two children. She works as a psychotherapist for children and teens, teaches at the University of Frankfurt and is studying for a doctorate on motherhood, migration and psychoanalysis. ‘White Clouds’ is her first novel.

Translator bio
Priscilla Layne is Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her book, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, was published in 2018 by the University of Michigan Press. She has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film. She translated Olivia Wenzel’s debut novel, 1000 Coils of Fear, and Rude Girl by Birgit Weyhe from German into English. And she is currently finishing a manuscript on Afro German Afrofuturism and acritical guide to Rainer Maria Fassbinder’s film The Marriage of Maria Braun.

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

This hard-hitting autobiographical novel reflects on the stillbirth of the author’s son, Gustav, and the impact this has on his parents, and on their wider family and friends. The sparing language and concise treatment of this tragic scenario makes ‘I see you everywhere, forever’ an even more poignant read.

Charlotte and Yannic are excitedly awaiting the arrival of their first child. As they prepare for the birth, there is an unexpected medical emergency which results in the stillbirth of their son. Charlotte’s life is also at risk, but she is saved.

During the days that follow the couple undergoes a series of procedures and rituals at the hospital. The healthcare team recognizes the immense grief of both parents and helps them through a structured process of saying farewell. Charlotte and Yannic are given the opportunity to hold their deceased child, touch him, speak to him, and take photographs. During this time, Charlotte begins to recover physically from her ordeal.

The next challenge for the couple is informing their extended family and friends. After Charlotte is released from the hospital, they are encouraged to arrange Gustav’s funeral. They are supported by caring individuals, but are confronted with a confusing range of decisions regarding paperwork, the type of service, and the choice of grave. The situation becomes overwhelming, but Yannic and Charlotte manage to navigate these choices and focus on organizing a service that will offer them a sense of closure.

The narrative is linear, capturing the real-time sequence of events. We witness Yannic and Charlotte’s initial shock and their evolving responses – beginning with confusion, followed by resistance and rejection of the prescribed mourning process, and eventually reaching a place of acceptance and gratitude for the stages of grieving that the hospital staff, their friends and family, and the funeral director have guided them through.

‘I see you everywhere, forever’ is written in a clear, descriptive, non-emotional style, as if the stillbirth is being observed from a distant point of view. This enhances the novel’s impact and gives readers a unique insight into this universally distressing experience.

“The most beautiful, tragic and life-affirming text I’ve read in a long time. How wonderful of Gustav’s parents to tell us his story.”
Daniela Dröscher

Find out more: https://suhrkamp-preview.pim.red/rights/book/yannic-han-biao-federer-i-see-you-everywhere-forever-fr-9783518474822

MORE INFO: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/i-see-you-everywhere-forever/

Author bio
Yannic Han Biao Federer lives and works in Cologne. He writes novels, stories, essays, and reviews, which have been published by outlets such as Deutschlandfunk, WDR, und SWR. He is a member of PEN Berlin and the Junges Kolleg at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. He has received numerous prizes and grants for this work, including the Bayern 2-Wortspiele-Literaturpreis and the North Rhine-Westphalia scholarship award in 2022.

Previous works: Und alles wie aus Pappmaché, Suhrkamp (2019); Tao, Suhrkamp (2022).

Translator bio
Joel Scott translates from German and Spanish into English. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies and has extensive experience in copywriting and editing in a range of fields.

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

Wrestling with her feelings about wanting to have children despite the grim outlook for the planet’s environment, a biologist spends a summer with her partner and other team members in a vast, unspoiled landscape, studying the spawning grounds of salmon on the shores of Kurile Lake.

Anna’s part in annual field trip to the southern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula involves the examination of microscopic organisms. Vova, her partner, is responsible for observing the behaviour of salmon. In this setting, surrounded by bears, eagles and plant life, their specific mission this year is to assess whether feeding the lake’s phytoplankton with chemical fertilizers will be beneficial to the dwindling numbers of fish.

Anna sees the world at a cellular level, and the ecosystem as a set of finely attuned elements – human interference can easily tip the balance. Vova, on the other hand, has a name for every bear, feels an emotional connection to each salmon he touches, and finds the contradiction of their interference easier to cope with.

The differences between them resurface in their personal lives: Anna is grappling with the moral dilemma of having children when the ecological balance of the world has reached a tipping point. While Vova is away for a week counting salmon, she ventures outside of the bear enclosure, becomes lost during a storm and falls ill. While she is recovering, the fertilizer plan is approved although a member of their team uses delaying tactics to postpone it.

By the time she has recovered, Anna has reached a more sanguine state of mind and realizes that she has little control over the fate of the lake or, indeed, the global climate. As the summer draws to an end, the team hastily pour the twenty tons of phosphate into the waters. Anna and Vova make plans to stay at the research centre during the winter to observe how their actions affect the fish.

Sophia Klink’s blend of nature writing, based on her own research in a similar field, and Anna’s moral dilemma features lyrical descriptions of the unique environment in this little-known area of the world. Inspired passages describing the scenery and Anna’s thoughts about her relationship alternate with her analytical, scientific view of the ecosystem of the lake and the workings of the human body and mind. A compelling, evocative debut novel by a winner of the W G Sebald prize.


"Sophia Klink writes about majestic bears and volcanoes, but she also writes about a nature that is invisible to the naked eye, about plankton, proteins, hormones, and she finds a visually powerful language for it."
Marion Poschmann

https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/kurile-lake/

Author bio
Sophia Klink (b. 1993 in Munich) studied Biology and is currently doing a PhD on the symbiosis between bacteria and plants. Her nature writing has earned her a Literary Fellowship from the city of Munich and the Wolfgang Weyrauch Advancement Award at Darmstadt’s Literary March festival; she has also been awarded fellowships from the British Council and the Foundation for Art and Nature. Klink has been a finalist of ‘open mike’, and a visiting fellow at the Roger Willemsen Foundation, the Adalbert Stifter Association and Villa Sarkia in Finland. An extract from her novel Kurilensee (‘Kurile Lake’), which was inspired by a research residency in Russia, was shortlisted for the W. G. Sebald Prize. Kurile Lake will be published in autumn 2025 by the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt.

Translator bio
Eleanor is a committed bookworm with a particular penchant for literature in translation. She makes her living from words in all forms: as a ghostwriter, translator of German, copy-editor and book reviewer, and author of short stories and creative non-fiction. After nine years in Austria, she now lives in Hampshire, where she can usually be found walking the Downs or browsing a local bookshop.

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

Joachim B. Schmidt is a Swiss writer who has lived in Iceland for many years, a land that provides the evocative setting for many of his books. This, his latest novel, is inspired by the life of Jón Ósmann, a ferryman who lived in the far north of Iceland around the turn of the nineteenth century. While transporting people, animals and wares across the waters of the Skagafjord, Ósmann witnesses the increasing changes brought by modernity. He’s also a fisherman, a God-fearing drinker, a poet, and a friend to all mankind, especially those in need. Who is the book's mysterious unnamed narrator, and will Ósmann survive the trials and torments dealt to him by fate? Ósmann is composed in lyrical prose, and the non-linear narrative structure weaves a mythical thread throughout, keeping the reader gripped.

“Joachim B. Schmidt brings this archaic world to life in all its ambivalence – in wild, mystical beauty and harsh reality.” – Babina Cathomen/ Kulturtipp, Zurich

“Schmidt interweaves all these little, delicate stories into a big cosmos, with the man from the Ós at its centre.” – Petra Pluwatsch / Kölnische Rundschau, Cologne

MORE INFO: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/osmann/

Author bio
Joachim B. Schmidt was born in 1981, and grew up in the Swiss canton of Grisons before emigrating to Iceland in 2007. His novels are bestsellers and have won numerous awards, including the Crime Cologne Award and, most recently, the Glauser Prize. Schmidt has dual citizenship, and lives in Reykjavík with his wife and their two children.

Translator bio
Jamie Lee Searle is a literary translator and mentor. She translates German-language and Portuguese-language works into English for publishing houses in the UK and beyond. Her upcoming publications include a translation of Kim de l'Horizon's German- and Swiss Book Prize winning 2022 debut, Blutbuch. A co-founder of the Emerging Translators' Network and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Jamie previously lectured at Queen Mary University of London, and has held residencies in Geneva, New York, and Vienna.

Website: www.jamieleesearle.com

For rights info contact: Susanne Bauknecht
bau@diogenes.ch

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

‘Sprawling Wildly’ is the tale of a city girl in an abusive relationship who reunites with her hermit cousin off-grid in the Alps for a back-to-nature lesson in life.

Marie arrives at her cousin Johanna’s hut in the mountains with a head wound, saying she has escaped from her husband Peter. The cousins grew up together, and Marie has always tried to conform with familial and social expectations; Johanna, on the other hand, struggled to fit in, and now chooses to live alone in the Alps.

The cousins have an argument which results in Johanna asking Marie to leave. But instead of returning to the valley, Marie hides out nearby in the goat pen. After days of rain, Marie is cold and hungry. A helicopter flies over and she wonders if it is searching for her. When the goat knocks over the ladder to the hayloft where she is hiding, Marie hurts herself getting down and ends up back at Johanna’s hut. Johanna reluctantly accepts her back, mentioning that the police were searching for Marie but that she has denied seeing her.

The two women finally start talking properly while sheltering in the hut during a storm. Johanna describes her difficult childhood: her parents had first had another child, Johannes, who died, and Johanna had always felt herself to be a disappointment, wilder and darker than their perfect son. She turned to nature, escaping into the woods at nighttime with the family dogs, until the police found her. After that she was locked in her room overnight and the dogs were put in a kennel, but she jumped out of her first-floor window to see them, breaking her arm. To Johanna’s lasting distress, her father had the dogs shot.

Marie finally divulges that the reason she came to Johanna’s hut is that she has left Peter for dead after hitting him over the head with a crystal vase. She resolves to go to the police, but Johanna persuades her to stay in the mountains with her.

‘Sprawling Wildly’ is a diverting and highly readable novel which explores widely relevant themes of domestic abuse and the tension between our materialistic, capitalist society and the longing for a simpler, rural existence. The novel should be well-received by English-speaking readers, and would appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Marian Keyes.

"Big Little Lies meets Heidi in this entertaining, enigmatic reunion of two very different Austrian cousins." Jo Heinrich

Die Presse: “Köller's colloquial tone provides an insight into Marie's world of thought and creates a narrative pull from the very first page. A gripping and surprisingly humorous variation on a not entirely new theme [...]”

Tagesspiegel: “A furious Alpine drama that immediately draws you in with its suspenseful opening - Marie's escape. ’Wild wuchern' is about conforming and stubbornness, powerlessness and self-empowerment. It is a feminist book that relentlessly exposes domestic violence without resorting to bold role categorisations.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung: “In the case of this powerful novel, sprawling wildly also means finally being allowed to stretch out in all directions.”

BR: “It's about suppressed feelings, the role of women in the family and also in society. It's about learned behaviour to the point of self-abandonment. It's about anger and the liberating effect of becoming aware of it and allowing it. A book like a thunderstorm, not just for women!”

MORE INFO: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/sprawling-wildly/

Author bio
Katharina Köller was born in Austria in 1984. After studying philosophy and acting, she’s worked as a freelance author, actor, and theatre maker since 2011. Her debut novel "Was ich im Wasser sah" ('What I Saw in the Water') was published in 2020 and won the City of Wetzlar’s Fantasy Prize. Katharina Köller lives with her family in Vienna and Innsbruck.

Translator bio
Alexandra Berlina was born in Moscow in 1984. She studied in London and wrote her PhD thesis Brodsky Translating Brodsky in Germany, where she currently lives. Weirdly enough, she translates between all three languages: for instance, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita into German, Kehmann’s Tyll into Russian, and Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader into English. She also works as an interpreter: https://dolmetscher.team

For rights info contact: Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, Gesche Wendebourg, gesche.wendebourg@penguinrandomhouse.de

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

In the 1960s, Knud Petersen sits down to write a personal memoir of his time as a young, gay, working-class man in 1910s Copenhagen. His memories are passed down through the family for a further half a century, until they are finally published in 2022. Where most queer history in Scandinavia is heavily reliant on ‘outside sources’, such as legal, medical, criminological and journalistic documents, Once, When I Was A Girl represents a unique, first-hand account of queer life in the early 20th century. It introduces concepts and aspects of queer life that are entirely new to researchers and interrogates the idea of what is ‘normal’ when it comes to sexuality. Written more like a novel than an autobiography, it is a captivating read and an invaluable historical account of marginalised communities that urgently demands a wider readership.

Knud Petersen (1892-1971) lived and worked in the Greater Copenhagen area. Orphaned as a teenager, he moved to the downtown area where he held a number of different odd jobs and discovered a vibrant, lively queer scene.

Rob Myatt is an award-winning translator from German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Russian and Luxembourgish into English. He was the recipient of the Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation 2023 for his translation of an extract from Behzad Karim Khani’s debut novel Dog Wolf Jackal. His literary translations have appeared in journals such as Turkoslavia, Subnivean, MayDay and The Dodge and he has worked with publishers including Granta, Rowohlt, Hanser, Cyranka, Politikens Forlag and V&Q. You can find him on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/robtranslates.bsky.social or his website: https://polyglotliterature.co.uk/

For rights info, contact:
Jens Pedersen: forlagettivildeheste@gmail.com

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

In Scauri, an end of the line seaside town forty miles or so from Rome, Vittoria dies unexpectedly in her bath. Whilst the townsfolk meet the event with sad but respectful southern Italian silence, Lea, the town lawyer, wants to investigate. Who was Vittoria, what were her secrets, why had she mysteriously arrived in Scauri thirty years earlier? And was her relationship with Lea all that it seemed?

In this unforgettable portrait of a small town and the women who live there, reverberations from the past catch up with present. Through the silences, Vittoria’s story is revealed and everything - passions, emotions, and relationships - changes forever.

Novelist, editor, critic, cultural commentator and mathematician Chiara Valerio is a sensation in Italy and The Little I Knew is a huge bestseller. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Premio Strega.

“Enigmatic and beguiling, precise and unsettling, this seductive novel opens with a mysterious death, asking compelling questions about desire, knowability and the still limited possibilities of freedom for women. Chiara Valerio is a major talent.” OLIVIA LAING

“With wit, subtlety and charm, Valerio captures the complex currents of secrecy and desire that is just under the surface of small-town and family life. A beguiling, atmospheric story of female fascinations.” SARAH WATERS

“The writing is nimble and on point. The structure is tight. With a death at the beginning, it reminds me of Ginzburg or Sciascia.” JHUMPA LAHIRI
“The narrative is an enchantment of phantasmagorical goings-on and the small realities of provincial life.” DACIA MARAINI

“In the story Chiara Valerio tells, there is something of the relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, something of that elegance and of those gardens, of gentle slowness and ancient bonds.” VALERIA PARRELLA, GRAZIA

“Chiara Valerio plays with the noir genre and transforms it; rather she reveals what is at its heart. Yes of course we need to find out how Vittoria died. But maybe it’s more crucial to find out how Vittoria lived.” PAOLO DI PAOLO, LA REPUBBLICA

Author bio
CHIARA VALERIO was born in Scauri in 1978 and lives in Rome. She has published essays, novels, short stories, including: La gioia piccola d’esser quasi salvi (2009), Spiaggia libera tutti (2010), Il cuore non si vede (2019), La matematica è politica (2020), Nessuna scuola mi consola (2021), Così per sempre (2022), La tecnologia è religione (2023)

Translator bio
AILSA WOOD is a translator from Italian and French. Her work on Stefano Benni’s monologues from Le Beatrici was the winner of the prestigious John Dryden Translation Prize in 2022. Besides her work as a literary translator, she works across various related sectors including wine and tourism. Ailsa has an M.A. in Literary Translation (with Distinction) from the University of East Anglia and lives in Italy.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.foundryeditions.co.uk/thelittleiknew

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‘Sprawling Wildly’ is the tale of a city girl in an abusive relationship who reunites with her hermit cousin off-grid in the Alps for a back-to-nature lesson in life.

Marie arrives at her cousin Johanna’s hut in the mountains with a head wound, saying she has escaped from her husband Peter. The cousins grew up together, and Marie has always tried to conform with familial and social expectations; Johanna, on the other hand, struggled to fit in, and now chooses to live alone in the Alps.

The cousins have an argument which results in Johanna asking Marie to leave. But instead of returning to the valley, Marie hides out nearby in the goat pen. After days of rain, Marie is cold and hungry. A helicopter flies over and she wonders if it is searching for her. When the goat knocks over the ladder to the hayloft where she is hiding, Marie hurts herself getting down and ends up back at Johanna’s hut. Johanna reluctantly accepts her back, mentioning that the police were searching for Marie but that she has denied seeing her.

The two women finally start talking properly while sheltering in the hut during a storm. Johanna describes her difficult childhood: her parents had first had another child, Johannes, who died, and Johanna had always felt herself to be a disappointment, wilder and darker than their perfect son. She turned to nature, escaping into the woods at nighttime with the family dogs, until the police found her. After that she was locked in her room overnight and the dogs were put in a kennel, but she jumped out of her first-floor window to see them, breaking her arm. To Johanna’s lasting distress, her father had the dogs shot.

Marie finally divulges that the reason she came to Johanna’s hut is that she has left Peter for dead after hitting him over the head with a crystal vase. She resolves to go to the police, but Johanna persuades her to stay in the mountains with her.

‘Sprawling Wildly’ is a diverting and highly readable novel which explores widely relevant themes of domestic abuse and the tension between our materialistic, capitalist society and the longing for a simpler, rural existence. The novel should be well-received by English-speaking readers, and would appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Marian Keyes.

"Big Little Lies meets Heidi in this entertaining, enigmatic reunion of two very different Austrian cousins." Jo Heinrich

Die Presse: “Köller's colloquial tone provides an insight into Marie's world of thought and creates a narrative pull from the very first page. A gripping and surprisingly humorous variation on a not entirely new theme [...]”

Tagesspiegel: “A furious Alpine drama that immediately draws you in with its suspenseful opening - Marie's escape. ’Wild wuchern' is about conforming and stubbornness, powerlessness and self-empowerment. It is a feminist book that relentlessly exposes domestic violence without resorting to bold role categorisations.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung: “In the case of this powerful novel, sprawling wildly also means finally being allowed to stretch out in all directions.”

BR: “It's about suppressed feelings, the role of women in the family and also in society. It's about learned behaviour to the point of self-abandonment. It's about anger and the liberating effect of becoming aware of it and allowing it. A book like a thunderstorm, not just for women!”

MORE INFO: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/sprawling-wildly/

Author bio
Katharina Köller was born in Austria in 1984. After studying philosophy and acting, she’s worked as a freelance author, actor, and theatre maker since 2011. Her debut novel "Was ich im Wasser sah" ('What I Saw in the Water') was published in 2020 and won the City of Wetzlar’s Fantasy Prize. Katharina Köller lives with her family in Vienna and Innsbruck.

Translator bio
Alexandra Berlina was born in Moscow in 1984. She studied in London and wrote her PhD thesis Brodsky Translating Brodsky in Germany, where she currently lives. Weirdly enough, she translates between all three languages: for instance, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita into German, Kehmann’s Tyll into Russian, and Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader into English. She also works as an interpreter: https://dolmetscher.team

For rights info contact: Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, Gesche Wendebourg, gesche.wendebourg@penguinrandomhouse.de

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

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‘White Clouds’ is an intimate study of a diverse and extended Black German family that addresses complex social issues. It follows three family members as they grapple with their unique stages in life and their distinct identities.

Zazie is a young Black German woman, a member of Gen-Z. She is the daughter of Ulrike, a white 68er who is as dynamic as she is unreliable, and Papis, a Senegalese academic who has settled in Germany and made a living translating Nietzsche but now often feels his daughters are foreign to him. Zazie is political, embracing her Black Diasporic identity. She feels at times that James Baldwin and Roxanne Gay understand her better than her own sister does. She has just completed her MA thesis and aspires to an academic career, but is not quite sure academia is the right place for her. She is also suffering under the weight of family problems and a white boyfriend who is woke when it comes to pop culture, but doesn’t always understand her struggles as a Black woman in a white-majority society.

Zazie’s older sister, Dieo, is less politically engaged: a child therapist, she has just started a new phase of training to allow her to become self-employed. She is struggling to balance her career with mothering her three biracial sons. She could use more support from her white husband Simon, but he is too wrapped up in his tech bro aspirations to acknowledge her needs.

Simon is the son of an absent father – a documentarian who was more concerned with art and politics than fatherhood, and a vibrant mother interested in intersectional feminism. He may not have any insight into the problems of his marriage, or why Dieo only rarely wants to sleep with him, but he is steadfast and intelligent, and Zazie feels able to confide in him about her worries about their family – especially how generational trauma has them all stuck in pre-determined roles and behaviours that are making them unhappy.

When Papis dies unexpectedly, the laboriously calibrated family structures lose their equilibrium. The sisters travel to their father’s homeland for the funeral, and saying goodbye becomes a new beginning for them. Wise, accessible and subtly humorous, Yandé Seck’s debut novel shows how intergenerational trauma and racist and sexist structures can make people act in ways they may not always be conscious of.

MORE INFO: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/white-clouds/

"Yandé Seck’s début is a loving dissection of a black family in a city … The novel is narrated like a Netflix series about everyday city life; it is pithy and contemporary, full of beautiful dialogue and wise observations." Stern

"For all the weight of her themes – the racism experienced by her protagonist and the oppressive demands of motherhood – Yandé Seck manages to make her writing entertaining, humourous and forgiving. And for all the conflict and struggle, it is a hopeful novel." hr2-kultur

Author bio
Yandé Seck was born in 1986 and lives in Frankfurt am Main with her husband and two children. She works as a psychotherapist for children and teens, teaches at the University of Frankfurt and is studying for a doctorate on motherhood, migration and psychoanalysis. ‘White Clouds’ is her first novel.

Translator bio
Priscilla Layne is Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her book, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, was published in 2018 by the University of Michigan Press. She has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film. She translated Olivia Wenzel’s debut novel, 1000 Coils of Fear, and Rude Girl by Birgit Weyhe from German into English. And she is currently finishing a manuscript on Afro German Afrofuturism and acritical guide to Rainer Maria Fassbinder’s film The Marriage of Maria Braun.

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

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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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