German publishing sensation Er Ist Wieder Da (working title: Look Who’s Back) continues to make headlines around the world ahead of its April 2014 publication by MacLehose press.
This week alone Timur Vermes’ black satire, in which Adolf Hitler wakes up, confused but very much alive, in contemporary Berlin, has been featured in the Guardian and the Telegraph , which praised the “pitch-black prose” and “relentlessly dark” humour of Vermes’ debut novel.
Er Ist Wieder Da has sold over 400,000 copies in Germany, stubbornly refusing to shift from the top of the bestseller charts and kindling furious debate in the German media about the book’s taste – though no-one denies its hilarity.
Once Hitler works out where, and when, he is, he sets about trying to understand this strange new Germany, with its Turkish newspapers and its media executives, and in doing so unwittingly becomes an “ironic” Youtube sensation, critically-lauded “impersonator”, a TV personality, and someone whose opinion is listened to.
Er Ist Wieder Da: Springtime 2014 is for Hitler. . .
David Tennant and Emilia Fox have revived their roles as Leo and Emmi in Every Seventh Wave, the sequel to Daniel Glattauer’s Love Virtually.
More information here.
Read an extract of Every Seventh Wave, or pick up a copy here.
Who is Alex?
That’s the question … and one that crime readers will only be able to answer if they get their hands on a copy of Pierre Lemaitre’s superb new novel:
In kidnapping cases, the first few hours are crucial. After that, the chances of being found alive go from slim to nearly none. Alex Prévost – beautiful, resourceful, tough – may be no ordinary victim, but her time is running out.
Commandant Camille Verhoeven and his detectives have nothing to go on: no suspect, no lead, rapidly diminishing hope. All they know is that a girl was snatched off the streets of Paris and bundled into a white van.
And today – ahead of the publication of Alex this Thursday – we are giving 1000 copies of this astonishing novel away!
From 12 noon to 2pm we’ll be setting up stall and letting all the people who work near our building in London’s Baker Street in on the secret of this soon-to-be bestselling crime phenomenon.
For more information about Alex, go to whoisalex.co.uk.
The Voyage, Murray Bail’s elaborate, time-shifting novel of courtship and culture clash, pitting the the stately old world against the brash new order from down under, was published in the UK last week, and the first review is from one of our most favourite critics . . .
Eileen Battersby in the Irish Times on Saturday hailed The Voyage as:
“This is an astonishing, defiant little book. Though concise in scale, it is vastly thought-provoking, with some inspired nods to the great Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard’s final novel, Woodcutters (1984)”
And there’s more:
“If ever a novel could be said to exceed the sum of its many sensations, this masterful concoction engages, excites and perturbs with singular virtuosity.”
The full review can be found on the Irish Times website.
But this is not The Voyage‘s first printing, so this was not its first-first review. In Australia it has been received with the same enthusiasm as Bail’s Miles Franklin-winning, internationally bestselling novel Eucalyptus, itself a courtship narrative of sorts. Peter Craven in the Melbourne Age declared that “We won’t see a finer piece of fiction in the longest while”, while John Banville in the Monthly admitted to having read it “in a permanent faint fever”.
The Voyage is available in harback . . .
Marie NDiaye has already made history by becoming the first black woman to win the Prix Goncourt (for Three Strong Women). Now she has been named as the youngest ever finalist for the Man International Booker Prize.
She joins nine other authors on the shortlist: U R Ananthamurthy (India), Aharon Appelfeld (Israel), Lydia Davis (USA), Intizar Husain (Pakistan),Yan Lianke (China), Marie NDiaye (France), Josip Novakovich(Canada), Marilynne Robinson (USA), Vladimir Sorokin (Russia) and Peter Stamm (Switzerland).
The winner of this the fifth Man Booker International Prize will be announced on May 22 at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
