BOOKS FIRST new in German soon in English Fiction 1 BACK TO CONTENTS Contents Preface..........................................................................................................................3 Fatma Aydemir: Ellbogen [Elbow]..........................................................................................................................5 Lukas Bärfuss: Hagard..........................................................................................17 Shida Bazyar: Nachts ist es leise in Teheran [At Night All Is Quiet in Tehran]..........................................................................30 Milena Michiko Flašar: Herr Katō spielt Familie [Herr Katō Plays Family].......................................................................................44 Lucy Fricke: Töchter [Daughters]................................................................................................................58 Sandra Hoffmann: Paula......................................................................................71 Felicitas Hoppe: Prawda. Eine amerikanische Reise [Pravda. An American Trip].................................................................................84 Angelika Meier: Osmo..........................................................................................96 Terézia Mora: Die Liebe unter Aliens. Erzählungen [Love Among Aliens. Short Stories]..................................................................112 Melinda Nadj Abonji: Schildkrötensoldat [Tortoise Soldier]....................................................................................................128 Ulrich Peltzer: Das bessere Leben [A Better Life].........................................................................................................140 Julia Schoch: Schöne Seelen und Komplizen [Kindred Spirits and Accomplices]...................................................................152 Matthias Senkel: Dunkle Zahlen [Dark Figures]..........................................................................................................166 Antje Rávik Strubel: In den Wäldern des menschlichen Herzens. Episodenroman [Into the Woods of the Human Heart]............................................................178 Uwe Timm: Ikarien [Icaria]....................................................................... ...............................................194 Bettina Wilpert: nichts, was uns passiert [That kind of thing doesn’t happen to us]...................................................208 Recommended Books in EnglishTranslation.............................................224 2 BACK TO CONTENTS Preface Dear book lovers, Hurrah, it’s in the bag at last! We are now able to offer you this selection of current German, Austrian, and Swiss books, all of which fill us with great enthusiasm. We are convinced that they not only make significant contributions to a wide range of contemporary issues, but do so with a literary flair that make them well worth translating into other languages. Think of this as a kind of shop window: the sixteen books presented will give our anglophone readers the opportunity to enter new worlds and make new discoveries, while also opening up the way for publishers and editors to publish these titles in English, and to take advantage of attractive levels of financial support. The English-language rights to all of these titles are still available (unlike those recommended in the appendix, which have already appeared, or will soon appear, in English). Contemporary German-language fiction doesn’t in any way correspond to the stuffy image of it that commonly prevails. It is young at heart, entertaining, multifaceted, and intercultural. It tackles current problems and issues, but rather than doing so in a brooding or self-referential way, it approaches them from multiple vantage points and challenges “absolute truths.” Images of masculinity, the roles of women, visions of the future, dystopias, reflections on history, depictions of an author’s Heimat – all of these are to be found within this reader, conveyed in styles that are sometimes enjoyably straightforward, sometimes teasing as a result of the interplay of different narrative techniques, but never boring. Heimat (home or homeland) is indeed a key concept, as it pops up again and again in one form or another. What is my intellectual, political, or geographical Heimat? Who is it that decides where I truly belong? Why do you feel threatened when I tell you that your Heimat is also mine? For how many generations does an immigrant family continue to be regarded as an immigrant family? Does the same rule apply to everyone, regardless of where they originally came from? The books presented here amount to a plea for multiplicity, for thought and reflection as well as empathy and indignation, just as all good literature should. We at BOOKS FIRST team are delighted – and also a touch proud – to offer you this selection. 3 BACK TO CONTENTS We offer our special thanks to Angelika Salvisberg of the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia, which supports the project both financially and editorially. We should also like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Kristina Maidt-Zinke and Walter Schlect for their expert advice. We hope that our choices meet with your approval, and that you enjoy reading them. Heike Friesel, Hannah Brennhäußer and the BOOKS FIRST team www.goethe.de/booksfirst 4 BACK TO CONTENTS Fatma Aydemir Fatma Aydemir, born in 1986 in Karlsruhe, completed her degree in German and American studies in Frankfurt am Main. She has lived in Berlin since 2012, working as an editor for the Tageszeitung (taz). She writes for various publications such as Spex and Missy Magazine. Her debut novel, Ellbogen, was awarded the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize at Hamburg’s Harbour Front Literature Festival. Publications: Ellbogen, Carl Hanser Verlag, 2017 5 BACK TO CONTENTS Fatma Aydemir, Ellbogen [Elbow], novel Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2017, 272 pages Cool and passionate Fatma Aydemir’s debut novel Ellbogen takes a big risk ­­­– and it pays off. Hazal is a Turkish-German girl from Berlin’s trendy but problem-ridden Wedding district, who, late on the night of her eighteenth birthday, kills a drunken German student. During an altercation in a U-Bahn station between him, Hazal, and two of her girlfriends, she pushes him from behind and he falls head-first on to the tracks to his death. Hazal has no intention of giving herself up to the police, even though the incident was caught on CCTV. She flees to Istanbul to stay with her drug-addicted Skype friend Mehmet. Hazal, born in Germany, has never been to Turkey before. Fatma Aydemir’s sleight of hand is to present her protagonist’s extreme behavior and thought processes for discussion without adding her own moral commentary. The reader is never made aware of any pedagogical intent. Hazal’s stubborn refusal to listen to reason, which Aydemir supports aesthetically by permitting the perspectives of others only from the sidelines, holds firm until the end of the novel. Aydemir challenges her readers to make their own judgments, offering them the uncomfortable temptation to draw a more moralizing conclusion than the book itself does, while persuading them that such judgment could be problematic. Aydemir’s literary skill provokes this confusing feeling. The language of the novel imparts a convincing proximity to the milieu of Hazal and her girlfriends. Precisely researched, the novel has no reason to pander to the reader. No word is out of place. Aydemir remains linguistically cool and concentrated. This puts the action centre stage and creates space for the girls and their frustrating existence – shaped by close-knit families and foreignness in the country of their birth – the kind of life, in other words, that is not just characteristic for Turks in Germany, but true to emigrant experiences elsewhere. Treated by her parents like a maid and regarded as an outsider in Germany, Hazal is also viewed as foreign in Turkey, where she is “the German.” Aydemir shows, with a situation as exemplary as it is realistic, 6 BACK TO CONTENTS Fatma AyDEMIR how the non-integration of emigrant children can turn out. Hazal’s sudden propensity for violence is inextricably linked to her complete lack of trust in the authorities of her country of residence ­­– a topic that will likely provoke debate in the US too. Also of international interest are the passages set in Erdoğan’s Turkey. Aydemir, who co-founded the website taz.gazete for Turkish journalists, to protest against the lack of press freedom, avoids didacticism in this context too. When Hazal ends up in riots against the current Turkish government in Istanbul and is almost run over by a tank, Aydemir’s representation is not labored. By maintaining Hazal’s perspective, Aydemir avoids touristic or journalistic viewpoints. By presenting her themes in a way that remains open to new insights, she shows how literature can contribute to the exploration of reality. By Hans-Peter Kunisch, translated by Jamie Lee Searle 7 BACK TO CONTENTS Sample Translation: Ellbogen (pp. 7-21) PART ONE ONE Had Desiree with her long clean fingers not modeled each and every lipstick and nail polish for me I would never have hit on the idea to steal. It was summer; I remember exactly because Desiree wore sky blue hot pants and on her legs the gleaming little hairs stood erect because the air conditioning had transformed the supermarket into an enormous refrigerator. I was only seven, but I knew I would