Translation

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019

“He walked into the hallway, dropped his briefcase theatrically, and confronted his wife. She denied everything. This only confirmed his suspicions. Mathilda seemed different. Unusually fervent. Agitated. Ashamed. She accused him of slipping out early in the morning without saying goodbye. I. Was. Worried. How. Could. You. Endless accusations. A flimsy deflection tactic. As if the blame suddenly lay with him. She had gone too far. He wouldn’t allow it.”

Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2020

A child attacks Loribeth with an iron while she is sleeping. In retaliation Loribeth throws the iron onto the child from an upstairs window, packs the damaged body into a suitcase and sets off on her travels.

Thus starts Steinbeck’s unusual, poetic novella about a young woman’s transition from childhood to adulthood. Loribeth and her suitcase begin an odyssey through nightmarish locations in search of her absent father. What ensues is a Freudian adult fairytale in this exciting debut by young Swiss author Michelle Steinbeck.

Michelle Steinbeck’s novel is a surreal and giddying tour through an off-kilter world. Verging from comic to nightmarish and back again, often within sentences, it’s absurd, brilliant, and completely unique – a coming-of-age fairytale unlike any you’ve read before.

The Pixels of Paul Cezanne is a collection of essays by Wim Wenders in which he presents his observations and reflections on the fellow artists who have influenced, shaped, and inspired him. “How are they doing it?” is the key question that Wenders asks as he looks at the dance work of Pina Bausch, the paintings of Cezanne, Edward Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth, as well as the films of Ingmar Bergman, Michelanelo Antonioni, Ozu […]

Shortlisted for the Schlegel-Tieck Prize 2018

Gabriela grows up in the East German town of Leibnitz. Her father is a famous surgeon, her mother a respected society hostess. The girl, however, struggles to fulfil their expectations. She shows no talent as a violinist and, worse, she fails to choose the right friends at school. When her father falls out of favour with the communists, Gabriela drops out of school. Eventually she ends up living beneath a canal bridge. Then the Wall falls. Can Gabriela seize a second chance in the new, united, Germany?

A pitch-perfect English translation … the book’s rich, complex treatment of unstable borders – a vanishing geopolitical line between East and West, shifting socioeconomic categories, and above all the violated boundaries of Gabriela’s psyche and body – makes it a brilliant choice for the series.

Shortlisted for ICA Bookshop Book of the Year 2016

Written with the passion of an obsessive, Nicotine addresses a life of addiction, from the epiphany of the first drag to the perennial last last cigarette. Reflecting on his experiences as a smoker from a young age, Gregor Hens investigates the irreversible effects of nicotine on thought and patterns of behaviours.

If Nicotine has a literary progenitor I would say that it is In Search of Lost Time … an extraordinary act of literary finesse … [with] tinkling little notes of comedy … [a] dark, lovely, funny book.

The diary of guitar player Marlene Marder recounts the life of Zurich’s first all-female band, lavishly illustrated and documented with photographs, posters, covers, interviews, reviews, fan mail, fanzines, lyrics from 1978 to 1983.

Image from the out of print 1986 Edition Patrick Frey