Dörte Hansen is interested in the sea, Stephen King in fairy tales and Elfriede Jelinek in her own life: these are the major book releases of the second half of the year.
Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, well-known German actors or probably the most famous horror story author in the world: the new books promise a varied program this autumn.
Elfriede Jelinek
One of the highlights is the work by the Austrian Nobel Prize winner for literature, Elfriede Jelinek, which has been announced as a “life balance” and will be published in mid-November. The starting point of the story is a private financial case, writes Rowohlt Verlag: “A tax procedure that evaluates even the most intimate e-mails is an opportunity for Elfriede Jelinek to look back on her ‘career of life’. For the first time she tells the story of the Jewish part of her family in literature .” Guilt, in the financial as well as the political sense, is said to be a fundamental motive in “Indication of the Person”.
Abdulrazak Gurnah
The book by Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah is also eagerly awaited. When he received the award last year, none of the five books translated into German were available. “Nachleben” will be published by Penguin on September 14th – and with it the most recent novel by the Tanzanian for the first time in German. He tells of Ilyas, who left his poor home on the East African coast at the age of eleven and was forcibly recruited by a soldier from the German colonial troops.
Stephen King
The new novel by the American Stephen King (release date September 14) takes you into a fantastic fairytale kingdom. In “Fairy Tale”, a seventeen-year-old boy finds himself adventurously in a strange world in which “mighty creatures are up to mischief”, as Heyne Verlag writes. King himself said: “I wanted to write about another world, a fairytale world, and I wanted to fill the pages with adventure (and a little romance).”
Dorte Hansen
At the end of September, bestselling author Dörte Hansen will publish her long-awaited third novel. The predecessors “Altes Land” and “Mittagsstunden” celebrated great success. “Zur See” tells the story of the Sander family, who live on a small North Sea island. The family members are connected to seafaring and the sea in different ways.
Penguin Verlag’s verdict: “Dörte Hansen cleverly and with great warmth tells of the changes in an island world, of old laws that are no longer valid, and of new beginnings and liberation.”
Cormac McCarthy
An announcement about Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy caused a surprise. The 89-year-old American is bringing out two new novels at Rowohlt in October and November – and thus his first works since 2006. “Stella Maris” and “The Passenger” tell the stories of the siblings Alicia and Bobby.
Alicia is committed to a psychiatric ward diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, where she ponders insanity, physics, philosophy, and other big topics. Bobby, who works as a salvage diver, stumbles upon a sunken ship with several bodies and gets caught up in something bigger as a result.
Candidates for the bestseller lists
In Germany, several authors who actually always end up on the bestseller lists are publishing new books. Charlotte Link presents the new volume of her Kate Linville series (Blanvalet), in the volume of stories “Nachmittage” Ferdinand von Schirach writes “short stories about the things that change our lives, about coincidences, wrong decisions and the fleetingness of happiness,” according to Luchterhand Verlag .” And Sebastian Fitzek tells in his psychological thriller “Mimik” about a facial expressions expert “who can no longer trust herself in the greatest need” (Droemer).
directors and actors
Even celebrities who are better known for other trades have made books. The German cult director Werner Herzog writes down life memories in “Everyone for himself and God against all”. The novel by actor Michael Brandner (“Hubert without Staller”) is also biographically inspired. According to Ullstein Verlag, in “Kerl aus Koks” he “tells about the courage to do what is possible and about allowing happiness in post-war Germany”.
And the description of the novel “Falschgeld” by actor Matthias Matschke also suggests that his own life served as inspiration. According to Hoffmann and Campe, he tells of a childhood and youth in the West German provinces of the 1980s. (dpa)