Autumn 2013 Fiction
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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 ac- cidentally 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 pub- lished 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 con- sidered 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 lan- guage. 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 him- self 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.