FRANKFURTER
VERLAGSANSTALT “A SOLID REPUTATION FOR LITERARY GEMS.“ SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
L ondon R ights 2015
fr ankfu r ter verlagsansta lt
“A SOLID REPUTATION FOR GEMS.“ SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
LITERARY
Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt Independent Publisher The Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, headed by Joachim Unseld, publishes the latest contemporary literary voices. Our programme has successfully provided an important forum for significant new discoveries since we started in 1994. Outstanding contemporary writers, such as Bodo Kirchhoff and Nino Haratischwili, as well as Thomas von Steinaecker, Nora Bossong, Marion Poschmann, Ulla Lenze and Claire Beyer, have all been published by the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt. In the past fifteen years three of our authors, - Thomas von Steinaecker, Christoph Peters and Zoë Jenny - have been awarded the Aspekte Prize, for the best literary debut in Germany. The Pollen Room, Jenny’s first novel, was translated into 27 languages and became an unprecedented literary and commercial success. In autumn 2012 the novel Love in Broad Strokes by our well-known author Bodo Kirchhoff, a great narrative panorama of marriage as a life project, was celebrated by critics and nominated for the German Book Prize. For Nino Haratischwili’s brilliant and highlyacclaimed second novel My Gentle Twin the FVA was awarded the 2011 Hotlist Prize for Independent Publishers. The book has been translated in several languages. Her actual novel The Eighth Life (For Brilka), an outstanding novel about six generations of a georgian family, has already been sold to several countries. “With a clear profile in international and German fiction, Unseld personifies the kind of publisher who has become a rarity in his generation: one who combines a nose for literary discoveries with savvy business sense. Here, the editing is still done by the boss.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Authors List German authors J.R. Bechtle • Claire Beyer • Silvio Blatter • Britta Boerdner • Nora Bossong • Hans Christoph Buch • Marc Buhl • Stephan Goetz • Dieter M. Gräf • Günter Hack • Nino Haratischwili • Ernst-Wilhelm Händler • Joachim Hammann • Christa Hein • Zoë Jenny • Stephan Kaluza • Fee Katrin Kanzler • Matthias Karow • Tanja Kinkel • Bodo Kirchhoff • Chris Kraus • Sabine Kray • Helmut Kuhn • Heike Kühn • Thomas Kunst • Ulla Lenze • Gert Loschütz • Marcel Maas • Thomas Martini • Alfred Neven DuMont • Christoph Peters • Marion Poschmann • Minka Pradelski • Jörg Reckmann • David Schönherr • Corinna T. Sievers • Hannah Simon • Stefanie Sourlier • Thomas Strittmatter • Thomas von Steinaecker • Julia Wolf • Peter Zingler Francophone authors Geneviève Brisac • Paule Constant • Laurence Cossé • Nicolas Dickner • Marc Dugain • Tristan Garcia • Yann Queffélec • Jean-Philippe Toussaint Hispanophone autors Juan Bas • Mario Bellatin • Javier Calvo • Vilma Fuentes • Quim Monzó • Sergi Pàmies • Fernando del Paso • Ana Maria del Rio • Isaac Rosa • David Trueba • Pablo Tusset • Angela Vallvey English and American authors Margaux Fragoso • Stuart Evers • Dagoberto Gilb • Ted Hughes • Sylvia Plath • Steven Sherill and Christian Frascella • Pavel Lembersky • Guðmundur Óskarsson • Margaret Mazzantini • Menis Koumandareas • Juliana Matanovic • Besnik Mustafaj • Maja Rasker
Publisher Joachim Unseld Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt • Arndtstrasse 11 • 60325 Frankfurt am Main • Germany Tel +49 69 74 30 55 90 • Fax +49 69 74 30 55 91 literatur@frankfurter-verlagsanstalt.de • www.frankfurter-verlagsanstalt.de
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The Endless City by
Ulla Lenze
© Julien Menand
Die endlose Stadt Novel. German. 256 pages Published in march 2015 Rights held: World Rights
Holle is an artist from Berlin; she takes pictures of cities, of empty spaces, to capture their hidden energy. With a fellowship program she lives in Istanbul, an achingly beautiful city she tries to understand in a new way, leaving dividing terms like Occident and Orient behind her. However she cannot keep her distance when a handsome Turkish man, Celal, seduces her with his modesty and naive talks. But it is the encounter with Christoph Wanka, whose firm not only sponsors her fellowship but also several construction projects in Mumbai, that causes her to sway. Although Wanka represents everything Holle is opposed to in her life and art, this silky and successful businessman fascinates her. When Wanka offers to finance her next project in Mumbai, Holle, in an endless trial of strength, has to bring her whole life script and concept of art into question. On the spur of the moment she flees to Istanbul, where she would love nothing better than to get lost in the labyrinthine body of the city. When the demonstrations of Gezi Park make the city stagger, it seems to be the perfect opportunity ...
The Endless City tells the story of two women in two adventurous cities, Istanbul and Mumbai, and their search for an existence in accordance with their values. An eclectic and outstanding novel about art, power and the fragile construction of identity.
“Narrated in tremendously subtle and precise prose. Masterful!” Hubert Winkels, Börsenblatt (About The Small Remains of Death)
About the author Ulla Lenze, born in Mönchengladbach in 1973, studied music and philosophy in Cologne. In 2003 her debut novel Schwester und Bruder was published by DuMont and awarded the Ernst Willner Prize at the Klagenfurt Bachmann Competition, the Jürgen Ponto Prize for best debut novel, and Cologne’s Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Scholarship. Her second novel, Archanu, was published by Ammann Verlag in 2008. She lived as a writer-inresidence in Mumbai, Venice and Istanbul, travels has taken her to Lybia, Syria and Iran. Her novel The Small Remains of Death was published by Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt in 2012.
Please contact: Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt/ Nadya Hartmann Tel +49 69 74 30 55 97 • Fax +49 69 74 30 55 91 hartmann@frankfurter-verlagsanstalt.de
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Desire and Melancholy by
Bodo Kirchhoff
© Laura Gerlach
Verlangen und Melancholie Novel. German. 448 pages Published in september 2014 Rights held: World Rights
One sunny day in may, Hinrich finds a letter with a black edging in his postbox. Who may has died? Hinrich does not dare to open the envelope. Since his wife passed away nine years ago after a fall of 43 meters, he lives alone. He wallows in memories of Irene, the beloved mother of his daughter Naomi, the translator of high Italian literature. He remembers the summers in Italy, their journeys to Rome and Pompeji, where they stood still in front of the frescoes of Villa dei Misteri for hours to understand their meaning. They loved cinema, the melancholy of the monochrome pictures, but were also seduced by something light. But what has really happened nine years ago, before she fell? And what does the letter with the black edging contains? Only a journey to Warsaw brings finally enlightenment. Hinrich is catched up by the life with Irene as well as by the time with a previous mistress in a way, that inverts everything he believed in.
Desire and Melancholy is charged with subtle emotionally suspense, a novel which takes the reader on a search for traces. Slowly but relentless, the protagonist discovers the truth about his wife’s death. Bodo Kirchhoff tells about a person growing older with desires staying eternally young and melancholy that turns out most helpful. „Bodo Kirchhoff is a great writer, comparable to John Updike.“ Denis Scheck, Druckfrisch (TV)
“Love in its finest facets” Martin Lüdke, SWR
“Only a few writers are able to write about the essence of pain, desire and love like Bodo Kirchhoff“ Christoph Schröder, Kulturspiegel
About the author Bodo Kirchhoff, born in 1948, divides the time between Frankfurt and at Lake Garda in Italy. He has won several prestigious literary prizes, including the Kritikerpreis für Literatur, Preis der LiteraTourNord and the Carl-Zuckmayer-Medaille of Rhineland Palatinate. His last novel Love in Broad Strokes/ Die Liebe in groben Zügen was nominated for the German Book Award 2012. Please contact: Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt/ Nadya Hartmann Tel +49 69 74 30 55 97 • Fax +49 69 74 30 55 91 hartmann@frankfurter-verlagsanstalt.de
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The Eighth Life (For brilka) by
Nino Haratischwili
© Danny Merz/Sollsuchstelle*
Das achte Leben (Für Brilka) Novel. German. 1278 pages Published in september 2014 Rights held: World Rights Sold to United Kingdom - Scribe Netherlands - Meridiaan France - Piranha Turkey - Aylak Adam Poland - Otwarte Bulgaria - Black Flamingo
1900, Georgia: Stasia, daughter of a chocolate factory‘s owner, and her three sisters grow up in the upper echelons of Georgian society. She dreams of a life in Paris and a career in ballet, but at 17 she marries a White Guard soldier, Simon Jaschi, who is transferred to Moscow on the eve of the October Revolution. When Stalin becomes the sole leader of the Soviet Union, the socialist squads enjoy the good life, whilst the country’s impoverished population suffers. Stasia and her children Kitty and Kostja seek shelter in the house of Stasia’s sister Christine in Tbilisi. But when Stalin’s right-hand man Lawrenti Beria take notice of Chistine’s astonishing beauty and unworldly manner, it has disastrous consequences … 2006, Germany: After the Fall of the Iron Curtain Niza, Stasias brilliant great-granddaughter, has broken with her family and moved to Berlin. When her twelve-year-old niece Brilka runs away during a trip to the east, Niza has to care about her. In search for her own identity, she will tell Brilka the whole story: about Stasia, silently affronting history, about Christine, who pays dearly for her beauty, about Kitty, who looses everything and still finds a voice in London, and Kostja, controlling the family’s fate. About their children. And about the secret recipe for the family’s Hot Chocolate, which offers both salvation and misfortune for six generations.
The Eighth Life (For Brilka) is an epochal novel about a family, a powerfully written epos about eight exceptional lives in the vicissitudes of Georgian-Russian War and Revolution. “The novel of the year“ SPIEGEL
“A book that is highly addictive: 32 years old, she is already one of the most powerful and haunting voices in German literature.“ TTT (TV-Show)
About the author Nino Haratischwili, born in Georgia in 1983, is an award-winning novelist, playwright and director. At home in two worlds, each with their own language, she has been writing in both German and Georgian since the age of twelve. In 2010 her debut “Juja” was nominated for the German Book Prize. The following year, “My Gentle Twin” won the Independent Publishers’ Hotlist Prize. It has been sold to Italy, France, Poland and Greece. Please contact: Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt/ Nadya Hartmann Tel +49 69 74 30 55 97 • Fax +49 69 74 30 55 91 hartmann@frankfurter-verlagsanstalt.de
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