What if I’d decided differently? What if I’d done that, instead of this? What if I had defied expectations? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could give life a trial run first, before living it for real?
MÖCHTE DIE WITWE ANGESPROCHEN WERDEN, PLATZIERT SIE AUF DEM GRAB DIE GIESSKANNE MIT DEM AUSGUSS NACH VORNE
(When the Widow Is Happy to Talk, She Places the Watering Can on the Grave With the Spout Facing Forward)
by Saša Stanišić
Luchterhand Literaturverlag, May 2024
We sometimes worry that we’ve been a coward, hesitated too long – and missed out on something that would have made us a better, happier person, with better-looking and more fun pets and partners. This is what Stanišić’s new stories are about: the constant, gnawing feeling that maybe you should have taken the road less travelled, made the less obvious choice, told a lie for once. Like the cleaner, for instance, who, holding a goat’s-hair brush in their hands, finally decides to take the matter of life into their own hands too. Or like the author who travels to Heligoland for the first time, only to discover that he’s actually been there before. Or like the father who’s prepared to cheat, if that’s what it takes to finally beat his eight-year-old son at Memory…
Saša Stanišić, born in Višegrad in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1978, has lived in Germany since 1992. His novels and stories have been translated into more than 30 languages, and have won numerous awards, including the 2019 German Book Prize (for « Where You Come From ») and the 2014 Leipzig Book Fair Prize (for « Before the Feast »), as well as the Eichendorff Book Prize, Schiller Prize and Hans Fallada Prize. He lives in Hamburg.
In 1926, full of hope and longing, the ambitious young sculptor Constantin Avis moves to New York. A famous gallery owner wants to take him under his wing and facilitate his great breakthrough in this city of dreams. Constantin floats through his new life buoyed by an exciting new love affair, and the prospect of success – but threatens to lose touch with reality. How far can his art really take him? A whole century later, this is the question that Dora sets out to answer. It is early springtime on the Ligurian coast, and she is working on a novel about Constantin. She has moved here together with her son and a nanny, to find the peace that usually eludes her in her everyday life as an artist and mother. But the deeper she dives, the more her own story becomes intertwined with Constantin’s. Eventually, she realises that she can answer the sculptor’s questions only with her own life. An exceptionally charming tale of the unbreakable bond between art and life – as light as a feather, and yet so powerful that its thoughts will linger with you for a long time.
Paula grew up in Minsk, was sent to New York when she was young, dreamt of studying medicine and was a committed anarchist. But then she met her future husband, the founder of the state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion – and at the end of her life, she finds herself in a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. Her husband is expecting the arrival of his friend, Konrad Adenauer, who has just resigned as German Chancellor. Once again, it is down to Paula to organise the visit and arrange everything. Poverty, war, motherhood, and – again and again – loneliness: this novel is a memorial to a strong, courageous woman, who had to make many compromises in life, and became the First Lady of a country in which she did not believe. And who, even in old age, never stops doubting, searching and hoping.
Muse, secretary, wife: these are some of the labels used to describe the women whose influence on history has been erased. Their achievements have brought honour and fame to the men close to them – such as Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein, who couldn’t have done what they did without their female friends, daughters or lovers – but they themselves remain largely unknown. The list includes scientists like Rosalind Franklin and Lise Meitner, who, unlike their male colleagues, were never celebrated for their discoveries; and authors and artists like Marie Hirsch, Lou Andreas-Salomé and Hedwig Thun, who hid behind male pseudonyms all their lives in order to be taken seriously. In « Stolen Fame », Schöler tells their stories, introducing us to the women who changed human history and showing that there are still issues around participation and visibility. Behind every successful man is a system that empowers him – and that system stands in every woman’s way.
The Ocean Race is the toughest team race in the sailing calendar. It consists of seven legs that take around six months to complete, the longest of which covers an unbelievable 23,000 km, from Cape Town via Cape Horn to Itajaí in Brazil. German champion yachtsman Boris Herrmann and Team Malizia are competing against four other teams on Seaexplorer, and with five crew squeezed into such a small space you need to be able to rely on each other. In storms and lulls, everything you do has to be exactly right. Unforeseen problems like a crack on a mast 26 m up could spell the end of the race for the Seaexplorer, but the team tackles them with total professionalism. These four men and one woman are pushing their bodies and minds to the very limit, as they experience both failures and triumphs. In their new book, Herrmann and Wolfers give us a fascinating insight into the Ocean Race, and what it’s like for five people to live and work together in such exciting and unique circumstances.