Autumn 2013 Fiction

Rights List

Autumn 2013 fiction

Birgit Vanderbeke The Mussel Feast Novel

Birgit Vanderbeke’s first, award-winning novel „The Mus- sel Feast“ becomes a modern German classic that shaped an entire generation. A mother and her two teenage children sit at the dinner table. In the middle stands a large pot of cooked mussels. Why has the father not returned home? As the evening wears on, we glimpse the issues that are tearing this family apart. A few hours are enough to tear a carefully balanced nu- clear family to pieces. This minor shift in a familiar set-up unearths an oppressive atmosphere and petty-bourgeois am- bitions, but it likewise reveals a hidden love. By not showing up for dinner, the patriarch brings about his own downfall.

»I wrote this book in august 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I wanted to understand how revolutions start. It seemed logi- cal to use the figure of a tyrannical father and turn the story into a German family saga.« BIRGIT VANDERBEKE

Recently published in Spain, Germany and UK:

Rights sold to: Denmark (Politisk Revy), Finland (Lurra Editions), France (Editions Stock), Italy (Feltrinelli), Netherlands (Uitgeverij de Geus), Spain (La Galera), Spain / Basque (Pasazaite Liburuak), Spain / Galician (Rinoceronte Editora), United Kingdom (Peirene)

Birgit Vanderbeke, born in 1956 in Dahme/Mark, lives in Birgit Vanderbeke southern France. She was awarded the 1990 Ingeborg Bach- The mussel feast mann Prize for »The Mussel Feast«. In 1997 she received the Novel Kranichstein Literature Prize, in 1999 the Solothurn Literature Prize for her complete fiction, and in 2002 the Hans Fallada 112 pages Prize. Rotbuch has published her works »Missing Pieces« ISBN 978-3-86789-180-6 (1992), »Good Enough« (1993) and »Peaceful Times« (1996). First published in 1990, 24th paperback edition 2013 Anniversary Edition february 2013

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de fiction

Thomas Brasch The Sons Die before the Fathers Novel

The longest story of the collection tracks the travels of a group of young people, two men and one woman. Three young East Germans meet, spend some time together, and then seperate again. The male narrator meets Robert, a stu- dent, at a rare screening of a controversial, prohibited film. After getting into a fight with what are probably undercover secret police agents sent to intimidate the audience, the two escape and leave the city on a motorbike. They travel to the East German coast and stay on the beach for a while. While there, Robert persuades Sophie, a young female nursing stu- dent working in a pub, to join them. The three of them share intimate stories, bicker, go bathing, have sex, and attend the American Folk Blues Festival in the capital. After a few days, the group breaks up. Sophie must return to her child and start her hospital work. The narrator works in a factory and cannot extend his sick leave. And Robert tries illegally to cross the German-German border and dies. In their final heated discussion about what to do next — get back to work routines or somehow continue their marginal existence — Robert accidentally smashes the motorbike: there will be no more travelling. Towards the end of the story, the three friends are in Ber- lin for a blues concert and make their way to the Wall, an episode Brasch renders with absolute terseness: »After the concert we went to the Wall. I thought it was higher than Rights sold to: France (diaphanes) that, Sophie said. « Unlike Brasch, the characters never cross over to the West. Brasch had written the stories in the GDR but taken the manuscript with him to West Berlin and published it in 1977 with Rotbuch, a left-wing publisher there.

Thomas Brasch was a German playwright, novelist, poet, Thomas Brasch translator and director. Although born in Yorkshire, England, The Sons Die before the Fathers (19.02.1945) as the son of Jewish immigrants, his childhood and Novel young adult life was spent in East Germany, where his father served on the Central Committee of the ruling Socialist Unity 144 pages Party. In 1976, shortly after the publication of his first major ISBN 978-3-86789-181-3 prose work »Vor den Vätern Sterben die Söhne« (The Sons Die First published in 1977, before the Fathers) was forbidden in the GDR, he moved to Anniversary Edition february 2013 West Berlin, where he lived until his death in 2001. Though considered a dissident writer, he never felt truly at home on either side of the wall. He was awarded the Ernst Reuter Prize in 1978, the Bavarian Film Prize in 1982, and the Kleist Prize in 1983.

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de fiction

Emine Sevgi Özdamar Mother Tongue Stories

In 1965, Emine Sevgi Özdamar left Turkey for Germany to work as a Gastarbeiter (guest-worker), beginning first as a cleaning lady in a factory, then becoming a stage hand in Berlin, an actress, a playwright, a director and eventually a prize-winning German author. This collection of pieces evokes the hazy hell of a displaced person trying to make ends meet in an unfamiliar, often hos- tile culture, learning a tongue-twistingly forbidding language. Eventually, all cultural forms and norms – inherited as well as adopted – seem increasingly strange. In »Mother Tongue« Özdamar tells about the awakening of political behaviour of a naive but at the same time eager of knowledge Turkish girl. She describes in detail the Turkish society with all its contradictions. In Germany her own language, language of her mother, sounds strange like a fragment of a foreign language. To find back to her own way of speaking she starts to learn Arabic, language of her grandfather and of the Koran. This is being for her the language of love. »Stay behind. Stay crazy.« is a singsong saying on one seg- ment of the book (»Blackeye in Germany«), written originally as a theatre piece, in which a Turkish donkey recounts stories of his farmer’s adventures as a Gastarbeiter. A fusion of wildly fantastical Scheherazade stories with the nightmarish surrealism of Franz Kafka suggests the book’s overall tone. Özdamar plays with the German lan- Rights sold to: Italy (Palomar), Turkey (Iletisim guage as with a dangerous weapon, using words like a circus Yayınları) performer juggles knives.

Emine Sevgi Özdamar, born in 1946 in Malatya, Emine Sevgi Özdamar Turkey, is a writer, actress and director. She has received Mother Tongue numerous awards for her work, including the Ingeborg Bach- Stories mann Prize, the Walter Hasenclever Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize and the Kleist Prize. Emine Sevgi Özdamar 128 pages lives in Berlin. ISBN 978-3-86789-177-6 First published in 1990, Anniversary Edition february 2013

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de Feridun Zaimoğlu Kanak Sprak 24 Discords from the Margins of Society

Pioneering in the nineties and topical as ever. Feridun Zaimoğlu’s »discords from the margins of society« was a sound unheard of in German-language literature and estab- lished the reputation of an author who now ranks among Germany’s most important novelists. How is it being a Kanake, a »dirty foreigner,« in Germany? This is the question that drives the interviews in Kanak Sprak and its sequel »Koppstoff« which author Feridun Zaimoğlu has transformed into provocative portraits of men and women of Turkish descent living on the »margins of society« in Germany. The field researcher Zaimoğlu immersed himself in the world of Kanakes and succeeded in earning their trust. They talked about their existence and their philoso- phies of life: the rapper and the Islamic fundamentalist, the sociologist and the fence, the poet and the hustler, the auto mechanic and the unemployed, the transsexual and the resi- dent of a psychiatric clinic. His »discords« don’t mince words in their acerbic criticism of the state of affairs in Germany and consciously offer a po- litically incorrect counterpart to the cliché of liberal and tol- erant »granola« Germans. These wild and radically authentic confessions of young Turks are delivered in a mixture of na- tive dialect and street German, so-called »Kanak-Sprak« (Kanak-Speak). »Kanak Sprak«, Feridun Zaimoğlu’s debut work, ushered in an entirely new sound in contemporary German literature. »Big-beat, big-mouthed, voluble, powerful and angry« taz

Feridun ZaimoG˘ lu was born in 1964 in the Anatolian Feridun ZaimoG˘ lu town of Bolu, Turkey. He has lived in Germany for more than Kanak Sprak 30 years, since 1985 in Kiel. He studied art and medicine 24 Discords from the Margins of Society and now works as an author, screenwriter and journalist. Zaimog˘lu is the »founder« and spiritual leader of »Kanak 156 pages Attack.« Kanak Attack, the movie version of his book »Lowlife« ISBN 978-3-86789-176-9 (Rotbuch, 1997), was released in November 2000. In 2002 he First published in 1995, received the Hebbel Prize, in 2003 the Jury Prize of the Bach- Anniversary Edition february 2013 mann Competition in Klagenfurt. Rotbuch has also published »Koppstoff« (1998) and »Love Marks, Scarlet Red«.

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de fiction

György Dalos The Economist’s Downfall Novel

A destitute failure, Gábor Kolozs stands at his father’s grave- side. Things had started off so hopefully, back in the early six- ties when he had an economy scholarship in Moscow. But his work on the 1968 Hungarian reforms doesn’t free him from his parents’ house as he’d hoped, his stormy marriage col- lapses, and finally Kolozs is defamed as a dissident. At least the end of communism in 1989 grants him professional suc- cess as a politician, but only briefly. Upon the death of his father, who as a Holocaust survivor had received a special monthly pension, Kolozs seems to have lost his final foothold. Through a mix-up, Gábor Kolozs accidentally receives his father’s identification card, and the only escape he sees from his terrible predicament is to conceal his father’s death and continue taking the monthly support. When the press wants to celebrate the hundredth birth- day of the »last survivor« of the Holocaust on December 23, 2006, the whole fraud threatens to come to light. In his characteristic laconic and humorous style, György Dalos’s seventh novel, »The Economist’s Downfall«, describes what’s left of a life after the death of a parent.

»György Dalos (...) wrote a humorous and entertaining novel with a deeper meaning. He tells about a moralist and intellectual, who consciously breaches ethical values.« buchjournal Rights sold to: Italy (Keller Editore), Slovenia (Kalligram)

Book club edition in Germany

György Dalos was born in 1943 in Budapest and now lives György Dalos as a freelance writer in Berlin. He is the recipient of numerous THE ECONOMIST‘S DOWNFALL awards, including the 2000 Presidential Gold Medal of the Novel Republic of Hungary and the 2010 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding. Rotbuch has also published his 192 pages works »The Lay of the Land« (1979), »1985« (1982), »Short ISBN 978-3-86789-153-0 Training, Long March« (1985), the story »Balaton Brigade« Published MARCH 2012 (2006) and the novel »Jugendstil« (2007).

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de fiction

Rob Alef Always Stay Greedy Crime Novel

Rents that are skyrocketing into oblivion, organic super- markets that shoot out of the ground like mushrooms, tour- ists that populate the city by the thousands – Berlin has turned into one huge investment, and is simultaneously de- scending into a dump. A broker is found dead in the middle of this chaos: it soon becomes clear that she was strangled. Was the culprit a neighborhood activist,a customer or an op- ponent? And why on earth did the murderer put makeup on the corpse? Detective Pachulke takes on the case; at the same time, he’s on the lookout for a new and affordable home for himself and for his record collection. It’s no easy undertaking, as he soon realizes. During his odyssey from Mitte to Kreuz- berg, from Friedrichshain to Neukölln, he ultimately remem- bers a similar case from ten years ago – and comes danger- ously close to the culprit … Rob Alef sounds out in his new thriller the borders between the fantastic, satire and suspense, and takes on societal outgrowths with a satirical twist. The yuppification of our society has rarely been written about in such a spot on and entertaining way. No other author writes such fantastic thrill- ers as Rob Alef.

Captivating, wild, fantastic – Pachulke is back again!

Rob Alef, was born in 1965 in Nuremberg and works as a Rob ALEF freelance legal historian. He also writes satire, for taz newspa- Always Stay greedy per among others. Rob Alef is registered with the authorities in Crime Novel Berlin-Friedrichshain, where he sleeps, cooks and dreams up characters that sometimes have to die. His most recent publi- 320 pages cation with Rotbuch was the crime novel »The Little Beasts« ISBN 978-3-86789-184-4 (2011). To be published in november 2013

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de crime

Rob Alef Little Beasts Crime novel

Children are disappearing in Berlin. Or to be more precise, they are falling into giant craters that suddenly open up underneath them. Hysteria is spreading. The missing children all have one thing in common: all of them were on the waiting list for a nearby college-prep school. It is the second case of inspector Pachulke and his female colleague Zabriskie, who investigate the parent com- munity and find themselves in a world of supermoms where achievement is the order of the day and where school massacres go hand in hand with »PISA shock.« Parents always want the best for their children – the best schools, the best education – and rob their children of their childhood and individuality in the process. Pachulke learns from a giant, monstrous insect what was disregarded at first as the product of agitated child minds. A research project about ants is going on at school. The ants of one of the school boys have died. His classmates reproach him, fearing for their chances in a competition. But the boy fights back and secretly begins to breed ant-li- ons with the help of steroids from his parents’ gym. Indeed, it works so well that one day they escape from him and settle in the sewers of Berlin. Afraid of being laughed at, he tells neither his classmates nor his parents about it, who aren’t particularly concerned about their son’s well-being anyway. And now, one by one, children begin disappearing …

Rob Alef was born in 1965 in Nuremberg and works as a Rob Alef freelance legal historian. He also writes satire, for taz newspa- Little Beasts per among others. Rob Alef is registered with the authorities Crime novel in Berlin-Friedrichshain, where he sleeps, cooks and dreams up characters that sometimes have to die. Rotbuch has also 352 pages published his crime novels »The Magic Year« (2008) and ISBN 978-3-86789-136-3 »Always Stay Greedy« (2013). Published November 2011

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de non-fiction

Thomas Ammann / Stefan Aust Hitler’s Human Traffickers The Fate of the »Exchange Jews«

Budapest, 1944: The painful climax of the Holocaust begins, the murder of the Hungarian Jews. The lawyer Rudolf Kasztner desperately offers Adolf Eich- mann and his staff »material important to the war« in the name of Jewish organizations, in exchange for as many lives as possible being spared. His collaborator in this cynical exchange of »blood for goods« was of all people the SS officer Kurt Becher, who was sent personally by Heinrich Himmler to handle the transaction. The Jewish lawyer and the SS careerist forged a peculiar alliance, which was supposed to ultimately save 1,700 people from dying in Auschwitz. Their relationship, beginning with a tradeoff of life and death and ending with a kind of friend- ship, is the story of a selfless conspiracy and an unbelievable escape. They haggled for months with Eichmann while the death toll rose. Often, the two wrongly believed they had achieved their goal. Only with wits and cunning was the last- minute departure of 1,700 concentration camp prisoners successful. Thomas Ammann and Stefan Aust tell this dramatic episode for the first time from the perspective of these unequal partners. A suspenseful story, a moving book about crime and punishment, wits and courage.

Thomas ammann, born in 1956, worked for the thomas ammann / stefan aust public television station NDR from 1983 until 1992. hitler´s human treffickers He was the chief reporter for Spiegel TV beginning in 1993. The Fate of the »Exchange Jews« Since 2008, he has been the head of the editorial department and reporter for the television production company Agenda 304 pages Media. numerous illustrations ISBN 978-3-86789-186-8 Stefan Aust, was editor-in-chief of the news magazine To be published in October 2013 Der Spiegel for many years and is one of the founders of Spiegel TV. He is director of the news station N24, and is also the author of numerous books, including »Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.«.

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de Klaus Blume Crime Scene Fan Block Football, Violence and Right-wing Extremism

In the professional, amateur and youth leagues: violence is growing in German football. Fans, players, and football offi- cials are assaulted in the stadium or on the way there and large brawls at highway rest stops are business as usual. Ref- erees are threatened, spit on, beaten. In many of the federal states, up to 60 percent of games are ended early. Klaus Blume gives a pointed overview of this phenome- non. He shows which fans are considered violent and why. He illustrates how powerless politicians are. He analyzes what the German Soccer Federation is and can be doing against it. He explains why the radicalization of one fan group in par- ticular – the »ultras« – makes stadiums unsafe. And he proves that the earlier distance between ultras and neo-nazis no longer exists: BVB, Eintracht Braunschweig, Schalke 04 – the right-wing extremists are successfully latch- ing onto the fan clubs. Not to mention the youth teams: In Thuringia alone, well-known NPD members have founded 26 new football clubs for children in the last four years. Smart, knowledgeable and well-researched: a book for eve- ryone who is crazy about football who wants to enjoy it in the future as well.

klaus blume, born in 1940, has been doing journalistic Klaus Blume work on football and its contexts since 1964, first as a crime scene fan block Bundesliga and World Cup reporter for the Abendpost/Nacht Football, Violence and Right-wing Extremism ausgabe, Welt and WamS. He wrote a regular Bundesliga column for the NZZ. From 1995 until 2010, he had a weekly 256 pages satirical football show on DeutschlandRadio Kultur. He is the ISBN 978-3-86789-188-2 author of multiple books; the latest with Rotbuch is Die To be published in October 2013 Dopingrepublik (2012).

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de Laura von Wangenheim In the Clutches of History Inge von Wangenheim: Photographs from Soviet Exile, 1933–1945

Motivated by the accusations of denunciation against her grandfather, the famous actor and director Gustav von Wan- genheim (1895–1975), Laura von Wangenheim set off in search of traces of him in 2010. She had a sensational discov- ery in Thuringia’s State Archive in Rudolstadt: hundreds of photographs taken by her grandmother, the actress and writer Inge von Wangenheim (1912–1993), in Soviet exile, but that were never published during her lifetime. These photos open up a raw and previously unknown view of daily life in the 1930s and 40s in the Soviet Union. In the Clutches of History illustrates the societal upheaval and the belief in industrial progress that came along with it. It also shows the dark sides of the absurd dream of a better life in a new society. The example of the von Wangenheims stands for the fate of thousands of emigrants of those years.

Laura von Wangenheim, born in 1968 in Berlin, is the Laura von Wangenheim granddaughter of the actor couple Inge and Gustav von Wang in the clutches of history enheim. She is a graphic designer in Berlin. Inge von Wangenheim: Photographs from Soviet Exile, 1933–1945

112 pages numerous illustrations ISBN 978-3-86789-190-5 Published september 2013

Rotbuch Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany · rights @ rotbuch.de non-fiction

Gabriele Anderl »9,096 Lives« Berthold Storfer, Forgotten Rescuer of Thousands of Jews

Berthold Storfer, Vienna businessman and himself of Jew- ish heritage, saved nearly ten thousand Jewish people from the National Socialists. Following the annexation of Austria in 1938, the Nazi regime intensified the persecution of Jews and expropria- tion of their property, carrying out a policy of violent expulsion. Storfer approached Adolf Eichmann, the man in charge of the expulsion and annihilation of millions of people, and offered to coordinate Jewish emigration. Storfer organized »illegal transports« to Palestine, in which Jewish refugees were smuggled into the then British-controlled territory, circumventing immigration restrictions. Ships on the Dan- ube River carried them to the Black Sea, and from there oceangoing steamships brought them to the Palestinian coast. In 1941 the National Socialists set their course for systematic annihilation and prohibited Jewish emigration. Berthold Storfer missed the opportunity to flee himself and was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. The journalist Gabriele Anderl retraces the steps of this simultaneously militant and controversial person who po- larized people then as well as now. What were his motives for offering his services to National Socialism on the one hand, and for supporting the rescue of Jews on the other? With her moving biography, Gabriele Anderl has cre- NBG grant for a translation into English ated a monument to this previously unrecognized rescuer of Jews, Berthold Storfer.

GABRIELE ANDERL was a collaborator on the Austrian His- GABRIELE ANDERL torical Commission and has engaged with the Nazi era, the »9,096 Lives« politics of »Aryanization« and Nazi art theft, as well as Berthold Storfer, Forgotten Rescuer of aspects of Jewish history, in many contemporary historical Thousands of Jews publications. She lives as a freelance journalist and author in Vienna. Among other titles, she wrote »Failed Escape: The 416 pages Kladovo Transport and the Path to Palestine« together with numerous illustrations W. Manoschek, and with A. Caruso she edited »Nazi Art Theft ISBN 978-3-86789-156-1 in Austria and Its Consequences«. Published MAY 2012

BEBUGRotbuch mbh Verlag / Rotbuch · Alexanderstraße Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin 1 · 10178· Germany Berlin · rights· Germany @ rotbuch.de · rights @ rotbuch.de non-fiction

Yury and Sonya Winterberg Children of War How the children saw it

»Children of War« tells the story of World War Two from the perspective of those who were then children. It is starting on the eve of war and ending in the immedi- ate post-war period, when families are trying to put their shattered lives back together. It uses eyewitness accounts (as recalled by adults today) of German, Polish, British, French and Russian contributors. The text is illustrated with archive photos, family photos and children’s drawings and the book works brilliantly on its own. The narrative style is unadorned, letting the facts speak for themselves. And speak they do in an extraordinary, fascinating, shocking and gripping style. There is a fascinating insight into how Nazis used terror to make German citizens their own gaolers, but not always were they successful. The reader learns of a working class district in Stuttgart where no one hung a swastika flag from their window. A handicapped young girl is threaten of Nazi euthanasia but her family refused to give her away and her mother tells the official she would rather drown her daugh- ter in the Rhine and jump in after her, »and you can tell that to your fucking Führer!«. Remarkably, she goes unpunished. The last letters sent to their children by two resistance fighters on the eve of their execution cannot be read without tears. But then that is true of much of this essential book which provides an illuminating and frank perspective on that war, with reflections applicable to many other conflicts as well.

Sonya Winterberg was born in 1970 and has an MA in Yury and Sonya Winterberg European Media Studies. Her work focuses on the themes of Children of War war and trauma. After periods in Belgium and the USA she is How the children saw it now based in Berlin and in her country of birth, Finland. 256 pages Yury Winterberg was born in 1965. He read Psychology 38 illustrations at the University of Dresden. He is the co-founder of a film and ISBN 978-3-86789-071-7 television production company and has written prize-winning Published March 2009 documentaries. Rights sold to: Spain (Aguilar)

BEBUGRotbuch mbh Verlag / Rotbuch · Alexanderstraße Verlag · Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin 1 · 10178· Germany Berlin · rights· Germany @ rotbuch.de · rights @ rotbuch.de For foreign rights inquiries please contact

Maria Oehlschlegel Rights Manager e-mail: [email protected]

Bebug mbH / Rotbuch Verlag Alexanderstraße 1 · 10178 Berlin · Germany