Diogenes Rights News: First rights sale of Takis Würger's FOR POLINA ...

January 2025

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

January is cold and boring? Not with us! We have just signed the first foreign rights sale of Takis Würger's For Polina one month before publication, as well as French rights to the much-praised Flight or Fight by Micha Lewinsky.

Furthermore, our timely books by Sasha Filipenko, Norman Ohler, Leon de Winter and Bernhard Schlink are being praised by the press. Read on and discover more than The Two Faces of January.

Best wishes,
Susanne, Suzanne, Andrej, Jana and Claudia

Catalan rights to For Polina by Takis Würger sold

We are thrilled to share that we struck a first deal for Catalan rights to For Polina by Takis Würger with Editorial Les Hores. Publisher Maria Sempere has fallen in love with Takis Würger's enchanting novel, and she's in good company: Here are a few quotes from fellow authors and booksellers.

»Perhaps for the first time in my life, I had tears in my eyes while reading, and I swear, not even one of them out of sadness. I fell hopelessly in love with Polina.«
Martin Suter

»Last night I read the last pages, and today I feel expelled from paradise.«
Brigitte Gode, bookseller in Gollenstein

»30 pages into the book, I suspected I may be reading the best book of 2025, already now in November 2024.»
Sabine Levi, bookseller in Niederursel

»This book has it all – characters, pace, longing, music, grief, language, the intricacies of human life, joy, friendship, belonging, chosen family...«
Tina Seelandt, bookshop Heymann, Hamburg

»After the first few lines, my arms began to tingle with goosebumps, as they rarely do - I felt a little like a gold-digger might, stumbling upon a sparkling treasure.«
Daniela Kösters

For Polina is one of our top titles, to be published in March 2025.

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French rights for Micha Lewinsky's Flight or Fight sold to Phébus

French rights to Micha Lewinsky’s literary debut Flight or Fight have been sold to Éditions Phébus.

We’d also like to mention the latest feature of the author and his book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (snippets here). In her critique, Katharina Teutsch praises the balancing act between a humorous description of Jewish life and the sincere discussion of antisemitic clichés.

Hitting #8 on the Swiss bestseller list, Flight or Fight was an instant bestseller.

Film rights optioned and US press for Bernhard Schlink’s The Granddaughter

Rights for Bernhard Schlink's The Granddaughter have been optioned for a TV/Streaming series.

Furthermore, upon publication of the US edition by HarperVia, the press was raving:

»Compelling [...] Schlink does a superb job of character development and sensitively charts the evolving relationship between Kaspar and Sigrun [...] well plotted and unfailingly interesting, building suspense as readers wonder what will happen to Sigrun as she becomes a young woman.«

Booklist (starred review), Chicago

»The weight of the past hasn’t disappeared, it has shape-shifted. Perpetrators are dead, but the record of their evil deeds lives on. How best to cope? Schlink has his doppelgänger provide an answer.«

Clare McHugh / The Washington Post

»[The Granddaughter's] premise will feel familiar to readers of Schlink's previous novels – including the best-selling The Reader (1995) [...] – many of which use individual relationships as proxies for examining the ongoing legacies of World War II and the Cold War in his native country [...] [Schlink] writes instructive tales that adeptly raise difficult questions and propose appealing answers.«

New York Times Book Review

»Schlink offers an unflinching look at the neo-Nazi movement and the compromises people make out of love. It’s a powerful story of loss and the desire to move forward.«

Publishers Weekly, New York

»A brilliant dissection of a fragmented nation in which a glimmer of hope relieves a somber but wholly memorable tale.«

Kirkus Reviews (starred review), New York

»Mr. Schlink’s timing is [...] astute. The rise of antisemitism and right-wing nationalism across Europe and the U.S. imbues The Granddaughter with a wider, more profound resonance.«

Julia M. Klein / Wall Street Journal, New York

Rights sold:

Albanian (Dudaj)
Bulgarian (Kryg)
Chinese (simplified characters, Shanghai Translation)
Croatian (Petrine Knjige)
Czech (Euromedia)
Danish (Silkefyret)
Dutch (Cossee)
English/UK (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
English/US (HarperVia)
Finnish (WSOY)
French (Gallimard)
Georgian (Intelekti)
Greek (Kritiki)
Italian (Neri Pozza)
Japanese (Shinchosha)
Korean (Sigongsa)
Macedonian (Ili-Ili)
Portuguese/PT (Leya/ASA)
Romanian (Polirom)
Russian (Azbooka-Atticus)
Serbian (Plato)
Spanish/world (Anagrama)
Turkish (Dogan)

Glowing press for Sasha Filipenko's The Shadow of an Open Door

Sasha Filipenko’s remarkable new novel The Shadow of an Open Door (winner of the 2020 ›Yasnaya Polyana‹ award, ›Reader’s Choice‹ category) has been out for almost four months now, and glowing reviews keep coming:

»There is something unshakeable to Sasha Filipenko's literature – impressive.«

Nora Zukker / Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich

»Sasha Filipenko tells a pitch-black story, accompanied with downright sardonic humour.«

Lilo Solcher / Augsburger Allgemeine

»If you’re after an accurate look on the current commotion in Russia, I recommend Sasha Filipenko’s latest novel.«

Nicolas Butylin / Berliner Zeitung

»Sasha Filipenko’s novel is a parabola on the failure of Perestroika and present-day Russia that goes straight to the heart.«

Welf Grombacher / Frankfurter Neue Presse

»The Shadow of an Open Door is a gripping novel that is equally convincing as a portrait of society and as a crime novel.«

Tino Dallmann / SWR Kultur, Stuttgart

»In a nicely ironic way, the author Filipenko – who had to leave Russia and now lives in Switzerland – tells of chicanery in a provincial town.«

Britta Helmbold / Ruhr Nachrichten, Dortmund

French rights to The Shadow of an Open Door are sold to Noir sur Blanc, whose edition of Kremulator was awarded the 2024 ›Prix Transfuge‹.

Norman Ohler's Magic Mountain. The Full Story praised by the press

»Ohler writes literature, a historiographical variant of the New Journalism.«

Der Spiegel, Hamburg

»Casual, with plenty of irony and self-irony, entertaining and informative.«

Badische Neueste Nachrichten, Karlsruhe

»An entertaining pleasure that will make you want to read the original as well.«

Linda Stift / Die Presse, Vienna

»A bit like a song by Harry Styles – catchy, but also wise in the right moments.«
Barbara Haas / Kleine Zeitung, Graz

»It is very interesting and captivating throughout«

Frank Pommer / Die Rheinpfalz, Ludwigshafen

»Magic Mountain, the Full Story is a contemplative, and entertaining walk through the Swiss mountain town, in which Thomas Mann’s wife Katia spent several months in 1912 and Arthur Conan Doyle learned how to ski.«

Dagmar Kaindl / Buchkultur, Vienna

»This is entertaining as well as instructive.«

Dresdner Morgenpost

»Magic Mountain, the Full Story is an exciting document of everyday cultural history.«

Manfred Hitzeroth / Oberhessische Presse, Marburg

»This entertaining book spans an arc from the past into the future. Today more than ever, the world is in need of healing.«

Welf Grombacher / Schwäbische Zeitung, Ravensburg

Just Published: City of Dogs by Leon de Winter

Our German edition has just hit the shops. Here are the very first quotes for our edition as well as for the Dutch original:

»City of Dogs is an unputdownable novel with many subplots.«
Allegra Mercedes Pirker / ORF1, Vienna

»In almost five decades of successful work, the author and filmmaker stays true to his storytelling, and yet surprises us time and again.«

Uwe Sauerwein / Berliner Morgenpost

»He [Leon de Winter] takes us seriously as partners, reflecting with him on the peculiarities of life.«

Annemarie Stoltenberg / NDR Kultur, Hamburg

»City of Dogs is a virtuoso parable about peace, mourning, love …«

Arjan Peters, Dutch literary critic

»An amusing book, a wacky fairytale with unpredictable plot twists that you take in without having to find them realistic or believable. You read on: that is the quality of City of Dogs.«

Thomas de Veen / NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam

»…as surprising and painful as it is satisfying…«

Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad, Amsterdam

»…if a book can keep you ‘on your toes’, make you read on, make you laugh and eventually even move you, then the author has definitely done something right.«

Tzum, literary blog, Groningen

Now published in translation: Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov in Chinese

Beijing Imaginist has just published the Chinese (simplified characters) edition of Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov.

Now published in translation:

Melody by Martin Suter in Spanish

Galaxia Gutenberg (Barcelona) has just published the Spanish edition of Melody by Martin Suter.

The author will present the book in Madrid and during the BC Negra Festival in Barcelona, both in February.

Joachim B. Schmidt interviewed by New Books in German

Sarah Hemens of New Books in German interviewed Joachim B. Schmidt on »connection, culture and crime« – here.

The occasion is the upcoming publication of his new book Ósmann, in its German original in April and in its Icelandic cousin in September this year, published by Forlagid.