August 2025

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Most of us are back after the summer break, during which one of our debuts spent no less than four weeks in the top ten of the Spiegel bestseller list: Julia Engelmann's Where the Sky Never Ends. Apparently, the sky’s the limit for this book this summer. 

Fingers crossed for a long summer and a winter of magic!

Your Diogenes Rights Team,

✉️ Susanne Bauknecht (Rights Director)

✉️ Jana Lissek

✉️ Claudia Reinert

✉️ Andrej Ruesch

Landing an instant top 10 Spiegel bestseller is a remarkable feat for itself – and after two weeks at #9, Where the Sky Never Ends by Julia Engelmann has climbed to #6.

Offer for Spanish and Russian rights.

»Julia Engelmann’s skill shows in the precision of her unsentimental language.«

Peter Helling / NDR, Hamburg

»If Julia Engelmann knows how to do one thing, it is to speak and write from people’s hearts.«

Katharina Mild / Radio Bremen

For a full 25 weeks now, Takis Würger’s For Polina has been among the top ten titles of the Spiegel bestseller list. 

Offer for Serbian rights.

Rights sold:
Albanian (Botart)
Catalan (Les Hores)
Dutch (Meulenhoff)
Estonian (Tänapäev)
French (Calmann-Lévy)

Italian (Neri Pozza)
Russian (Azbooka)
Slovak (Ikar)
Slovenian (Mladinska)
Spanish/world (Alba)

»Romantic, quiet and light like a dream. Just beautiful!«

Berliner Zeitung

»Really touching, this great novel.«

Esquire, Munich 

Love and Fury by Martin Suter is still in the top ten on the Spiegel bestseller list after 17 weeks (6 of which on #1). 

French rights are sold to Phébus.

Please let us know if you would like to see our English sample translation by Jamie Bulloch.

Chris Kraus' Sun and Moon has been selected by New Books in German.  As always, this implies a guarantee for the Goethe Institute’s financial support of an English translation.
 
Please let us know if you would like to see our sample translation by Ruth Martin. 

Sun and Moon has just been published.

»With great empathy, Melissa Müller paints a moving portrait of two connected lives in the shadow of the Holocaust – a tale of loss, love and resilience, that will touch the hearts of many.«

Ronald Leopold, Director of the Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

We have sold Czech rights for Joachim B. Schmidt’s Ósmann to Prostor, who already published the two Kalmann novels to great success.

Forlagiđ’s Icelandic edition will be published this autumn.

»An absolute must-read.«

Irene Zöch / Die Presse am Sonntag, Vienna

Ósmann was recommended by New Books in German, and therefore an English translation will be funded by Pro Helvetia.

After the successful series Kostas on Italy's RAI TV station in September 2024, we have just optioned a second series based on four further books of the Costas Haritos series by Petros Markaris.

The first eight episodes were directed by Milena Cocozza, produced by Palomar and RAI Fiction.

Paradise Garden by Elena Fischer travels on and on. After selling Russian rights to Azbooka, the book will be available in 15 languages. 

Rights sold:

Czech (Prostor)
Dutch (Meulenhoff)
English/world (Indigo Press)
Estonian (Tänapäev)    
French (Gallmeister)
Hungarian (Helikon)
Italian (Feltrinelli Gramma)
Portuguese (Porto)
Russian (Azbooka)
Serbian (Publik Praktikum)
Spanish (AdN)
Slovak (E. J. Publishing)
Turkish (Domingo)

»The revolt breathes in these chapters brimmed with hope and longing. She’s got a sound all of her own, feverish, eclectic.«

Éric Neuhoff / Le Figaro littéraire, Paris

Feltrinelli Gramma has just acquired rights to our modern classics Flight to Afar and The Redhead. 

Furthermore, De Arbeiderspers has secured Dutch rights to Alfred Andersch’s The Cherries of Freedom for their series ›On War‹. 

Rights to The Redhead currently sold:

Chinese/CN (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press)
French (Actes Sud)
Italian (Feltrinelli Gramma)

On the occasion of 75 years of bilateral relationships between China and Switzerland, the National Theatre of China in Beijing played The Physicists by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The performance was directed by Wang Jiannan (director of the National Theatre).

In an adaptation by Joanna Murray-Smith, the Sydney Theatre Company plays The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The production will also be shown at the end of October at the Arts Centre Melbourne. Joanna Murray-Smith is one of the most important contemporary Australian playwrights.

Now published in translation: A Refiner's Fire by Donna Leon in French

Calmann-Lévy, Paris.