February 2026

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

January should have been quiet, but it refused to be: Your Turn by Rolf Dobelli excels on the domestic and foreign market – maybe because it questions New Year's resolutions. Julia Engelmann's Where the Sky Never Ends and Katja Früh's Perhaps That's How Love Is are soaring, too.

Takis Würger's For Polina will soon be available in 26 languages and remains on the Spiegel bestseller list (approaching its first anniversary in March). Melissa Müller's With You, The World Keeps Turning and Martin Suter's Love and Fury are winning hearts and critics: L'Amour et la Fureur has just been published in France. Melissa Müller is warmly recommended in the UK by Daniel Finkelstein, English translation rights are still available.

Meanwhile, we’re out in the world, pitching stories: At the Solothurn Film Festival, Patrizia presented Seraina Kobler's Valley of Swallows. And of course, fair season is upon us: Susanne will be at the London Book Fair – drop us a line if you’d like to meet there or online.

    
Your Diogenes Rights Team,

✉️ Susanne Bauknecht (Rights Director)

✉️ Patrizia Hasler

✉️ Jana Lissek

✉️ Claudia Reinert 

✉️ Andrej Ruesch

Rolf Dobelli’s new book Your Turn, one of our first publications this year, is flying off the shelves: Your Turn is an instant Spiegel bestseller, having entered the Swiss bestseller list on #3 on publication as well.

We have sold 25'000 copies of this book within just one month and have commissioned our third print run.

»With his new book, Dobelli once again proves that sometimes asking the right questions can be more valuable than giving answers.«

Welf Grombacher / Rheinische Post, Düsseldorf

Rights sold to date:

Chinese/CN: China South Booky

Chinese/TW: Business Weekly

Russian: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber

A Swiss bestseller for seven weeks, we have sold

25'000 copies of Perhaps That’s How Love Is by Katja Früh.

»The book blew me away and I think it’s fantastic.«

Elke Heidenreich / WDR4, Cologne

»Katja Früh describes her characters so vividly, you’d love to spend time with them.«

Britta Spichiger / SRF Kultur, Zurich

Please find our English sample by Jamie Lee Searle here.

An instant #1 on the bestseller lists in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, the book also ranks #15 on the Spiegel all-year bestseller list and #2 on the Swiss bestseller list for 2025. Its French translation has just been published – the press is raving:

»In Love and Fury, Suter once again brilliantly employs the play of appearances, where transparencies are merely mirrors in a labyrinth of ice. Dazzling entertainment carried by an elegant and flavourful style, very well translated by Olivier Mannoni.«

Pierre Deshusses / Le Monde des Livres, Paris

»He describes [the world of the wealthy] with an elegant and amused detachment, uses sophisticated dialogues, and delves into the depravities of his characters.«

Éric Neuhoff / Le Figaro Littéraire, Paris

»Because in Martin Suter’s work, the most straightforward looking stories soon become obscure and throw you into an abyss.«

Philippe Chevilley / Les Echos, Paris

»Love and murder have perhaps never been so inextricably and splendidly intertwined as in his new novel (his seventeenth published in France), Love and Fury.«

Olivier Mony / Livres Hebdo, Paris

»Twists, deceptions and false coincidences abound throughout Love and Fury, a story rich in dialogue and joyfully amoral.«

Antoine Faure / Lire, Paris

Foreign Rights sold:

French (Phébus)

Italian (Sellerio)

Russian (Azbooka)

Ósmann was the #1 best-selling translated novel in 2025 in Iceland. Overall, Ósmann ranks #7 on the Icelandic all-year fiction bestseller list for 2025. An outstanding success for our Swiss-born Icelander whom we’re proud to represent. And here he is, presenting his book in Icelandic – this was before he knew what a bestseller it was going to be: Ósmann | Joachim B. Schmidt - YouTube
 
Rights sold:
Czech (Prostor)
English/world (Bitter Lemon)
Icelandic (Forlagið)

»This book is an absolute gem. […] Ósmann is a powerful story, exceptionally well written, and it has a tone that penetrates the soul.«

Steingerður Steinarsdóttir / lifdununa.is

Please find our English sample by Jamie Lee Searle here.

Julia Engelmann's Where the Sky Never Ends continues to please readers: We have sold 60'000 copies since its publication in summer 2025 – and that as a debut novel. 

Foreign Rights sold:

Russian (Azbooka)

Slovak (Ikar)

Spanish (Urano)

Please find our English sample by Katy Derbyshire here.

In the last few weeks, we sold Czech rights to Argo and Croatian rights to Profil. This means that For Polina is going to be published in 26 languages. 

Furthermore, For Polina made it to #4 in the 2025 all-year Spiegel bestseller list, and is currently still in the top 20. What a rare and spectacular feat!

Rights sold to date:

Albanian (Botart)

Catalan (Les Hores)

Croatian (Profil)

Czech (Argo)

Danish (Gad)

Dutch (Meulenhoff)

English/world (Bloomsbury)

Estonian (Tänapäev)

Finnish (Tammi)

French (Calmann-Lévy)

Greek (Psichogios)

Hungarian (Európa)

Italian (Neri Pozza)

Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)

Polish (Literackie)

Portuguese/BRA (Zain)

Portuguese/PT (Bertrand)

Romanian (Bookzone)

Russian (Azbooka)

Serbian (Laguna)

Slovak (Ikar)

Slovenian (Mladinska)

Spanish/world (Alba)

Swedish (Mondial)

We were very happy to receive this fantastic blurb for With You, the World Keeps Turning by Melissa Müller:

»This was such a fascinating thing to read. It really helps see events in their context. I most certainly recommend it.«

Daniel Finkelstein, Member of the British Parliament, OBE, best-selling author of Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad

Please find our English sample by Ruth Martin here.

Seraina Kobler's Valley of Swallows was selected as one of five books that were presented to film producers during the festival Solothurn Film Festival: Any film project based on the novel will be financially supported by the festival.

Please find our English sample of Valley of Swallows by Alexandra Roesch here. The book is going to be published in April 2026.

Israeli playwright and director Amit Erez has been invited to this year's Monodrama festival Theatronetto in Jaffa with his adaptation of Andrey Kurkov's Death and the Penguin. In April, his stage adaptation for one player and a penguin puppet will be presented to the public for the first time.

Diogenes quartet: Books about music

Sometimes, at book fairs, we are asked about books with a certain topic – and the results are always quite interesting, so we decided to share them with you. Today's focus is music.

Our first Diogenes quartet kicks off with our most played one-person play: The Double Bass by Patrick Süskind, in which you learn astonishing things about the underestimated instrument (and in which you will come to fear its players). Far less menacing is the e-guitar that plays a pivotal role in Beck's Last Summer by Benedict Wells: A Fender Stratocaster brings the talent of one of its protagonists to shine.

And of course, Takis Würger's For Polina is the one book for pianists (and those who cannot be pianists). Just as classical, but more hopeful is the tuba in Luis Murschetz' picture book Tubi Walrus: It helps its player find new friends in a foreign land. 

Maybe you have books about this topic in your programme, too? And they sell? Why not have a look at all of ours. 

Now published in translation: Conspiracy by Petros Markaris in Turkish

Alfa, Istanbul.