Recommendations Spring 2021

Our spring recommendations are here to read! There are twenty-three books - non-fiction, debuts, short stories and novels from a host of talented writers. Each book here benefits from guaranteed funding for translation into English, if the rights are bought by an English language publisher.

Welcome to our spring recommendations! The books here have been selected by our juries for their brilliance, as well as their potential for wider success if translated into English.

After an extraordinary year in which our lives have been transformed beyond recognition by the Covid-19 pandemic, some of the German-language titles we have selected for you this spring respond – both directly and indirectly – to people’s varied experiences of the pandemic. Our two non-fiction titles each consider diverse aspects of this immense social upheaval. Igor Levit and Florian Zinnecker’s Home Concert follows a tumultuous year in the concert pianist’s life as he relocates his piano recitals to his living room, and Eva von Redecker’s Revolution for Life proposes a radical rethinking of the power structures in society as she reimagines a more sustainable way of living in response to the environmental crisis and Covid-19.

Our fiction selection includes insightful reflections on different sorts of experiences of social isolation in Yulia Marfutova’s stunning debut, The Sky A Hundred Years Ago, and Eva Schmidt’s stand-out short story collection, The World Over There. It also feels like a serendipitous moment to be recommending four magnificent titles set in the former East Germany, each with their own take on living in a society with limits on individual freedoms: Björn Stephan’s debut The World is Only Blue from Space, Matthias Jügler’s striking novella, The Forsaken, Katharina Höftmann Ciobotaru’s fascinating portrait of German-Jewish history, Alef, and Alexander Osang’s thought-provoking novel, Almost Light.

We hope these titles – along with the rest of our spring recommendations – bring you literary solace and inspiration, as we navigate our way through the ongoing challenges of the pandemic.

All books here are guaranteed financial support for their translation into English, if the translation rights are bought by an English-language publisher.