English Samples auf dumont-buchverlag.de

A BOOK THAT CELEBRATES LOVE – AND LIFE ITSELF

Eduard Brünhofer has been happily married to his wife Gina for half an eternity.  He has made a name for himself as an author of romance novels, but has since lost the desire to reveal anything about his love. Now he is traveling by train from Vienna to Munich, where he has an unpleasant appointment to attend in this regard. 
Sitting diagonally opposite in the train compartment is an early middle-aged woman. At first, Eduard Brünhofer is afraid that he will have to talk to her. Soon he can no longer avoid it. At first he hopes she will get off soon. Then he learns that she is also going to Munich. Catrin Meyr is his chance acquaintance. She tends to talk confidentially, unabashedly asks the most indiscreet questions, doesn't say anything good about long-term relationships, but wants to know everything about them. 
In short: she wants to talk about love. And puts Eduard Brünhofer in quite a predicament in the process.

Atmospherically dense and true to life, Martin Mittelmeier tells of the hopes, encounters, doubts and successes of the Nobel Prize winner, who had to question his values and identity under the Californian sun at the age of almost 70. 
Los Angeles in the 1940s. All those who no longer had or wanted a home in Nazi Germany were stranded here: Arnold Schönberg, Theodor W. Adorno, Lion Feuchtwanger, Bertolt Brecht, Helene Weigel, Max Horkheimer, Vicki Baum, Hanns Eisler, Franz and Alma Werfel - and above all: Thomas Mann, the writer of the century, the most German of the German exiles in California. At Bloody Marys, they exchange intellectual, artistic and political ideas under the Californian sun. The news from their old homeland is depressing. And so life here in Pacific Palisades often revolves around the identity rooted in German culture and language, which seems to be threatened by every piece of news from Europe. What can art be, especially German art, in the face of the horrors and barbarism of Nazi Germany?
Thomas Mann searches for answers and broadcasts a total of 55 radio addresses, which he addresses to ‘German listeners’. At the same time, he is working on his novel Doctor Faustus, in and with which he explores the question of love, art and Germany.

IT'S 1971 IN A VILLAGE IN SOUTHERN GERMANY

20-year-old Roberta returns to her parents’ farm after completing a dressmaking apprenticeship. She is an only child and eventually the farm will be hers. Here in the countryside, concepts like coming to terms with Germany’s past, conscientious objection, feminism, pop culture, and miniskirts are not the sort of things that people bother themselves with. What matters is work, obedience and moral conduct. Roberta dreams of designing her own clothes but she’s well aware that it’s little more than a dream. Besides, she loves countryside life and working on the farm. She also loves Wilhelm, the priest’s son. 
Roberta is not the only one staying in the village because of Wilhelm. His mother, Gertrud, also stays for her son’s sake. Unlike Roberta, Gertrud hates life in the village and would like nothing more than to get away, out into the world.
The two women both fall pregnant and are forced to make a decision, but a tragic accident turns both their lives in a completely new direction.

FRIEDS FOR LIFE — IN A WORLD TEETERING ON THE BRINK

Hanna, Zeyna and Cem - a luminous friendship that begins one summer in the late 1980s. They grow up together in a working-class neighbourhood in the Ruhr area, forming a family of choice in which origin plays no role. Home is where they can be together. 
But the older the children get, the more visible the differences between them become. On 11 September 2001, their friendship is finally put to the test, until the rifts between Hanna and Zeyna grow into a rift. 
Years later, Hanna returns to the flat of her now deceased grandparents. The city stands still and Hanna feels lonely. Cem, her rock, is still there, but Zeyna has been gone from her life for years. Hanna sets off in search of Zeyna, of traces of her history, of what came between them back then. 
In a linguistically gripping yet poetic way, Rasha Khayat tells of the gaps in our lives and how we try to overcome them, of great love in an unusual family constellation and friendship in a world that is falling apart at the seams.

AFTER HER ACCLAIMED DEBUT 22 LENGTHS THE NEW GREAT NOVEL BY CAROLINE WAHL

Ida has nothing with her except her mother's old, scuffed hard-sided suitcase, a few favorite clothes and her laptop when she leaves home. It's probably goodbye forever to the small town where she has spent her entire life. Ida is really bad at goodbyes; she didn't even make it to her mother's funeral two months ago. At the train station, she chooses the train that goes the farthest away - and finally lands on Rügen. With no plan, just a big lump of anger, grief and guilt in her stomach, she wanders around the Baltic island. And finally meets Knut, the local pub owner, and his wife Marianne, who take Ida in without further ado. The three of them have breakfast every morning, Ida then spends the day with Marianne, they walk through the forest together or play cards, and in the evening Ida works with Knut in the Seal. And Ida meets Leif, who is similarly damaged as she is, but maybe they do each other good. Suddenly everything is a little lighter, warmer, more bearable in their lives. But then Ida learns that Marianne is seriously ill, and the pain breaks out again.

Rights to previous book sold to: Al-Arabi (Arab); Host (Czech); Cossee (Dutch); Albin Michel (French); Neri Pozza (Italian); Chanda Pustaka (Kannada); Albatros (Slovak); Vida (Slovenian); Lumen (Spanish World)

Full English translation available

HORMONES KILL – NAMELY OTHERS

48-year-old Liv is a wife, mother of three and works successfully as a kitchen planner. She doesn't know that much about menopause. Mood swings and hot flashes, okay, sure, she's heard about them. But the fact that her first hot flash is accompanied by her first murder comes as a surprise. Especially for the guy who actually just wants to sell her pubescent son some drugs and provokes Liv so much that she cracks his skull. From then on, her well-ordered life is thrown into disarray. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop at just the one murder — regrettably, unfortunate circumstances lead to yet more unhappy situations . But it also led to Liv finally being properly informed about her bloody hormonal balance and finally stops her getting bogged down between family, job and household.
The Menopause Murders tells the story of a woman who's in over her head - so badly, in fact, that a few people unfortunately have to jump the fence. Exciting, funny and original - the world's first menopausal crime novel!

SEX IS EVERYWHERE AND SEX SELLS

In our western society, we see ourselves as enlightened and free, open and receptive. But is that really true? And for everyone?

Few areas of discourse are still permeated by such taboos and myths, such pressure to adhere to certain norms, as female* sexuality. Yet, for women trying to escape the objectification of the male gaze, the boundaries of what can be exhibited and what can be said are still narrowly set. This is especially true for women who are no longer young and for mothers: As sexual beings, they still hardly appear in the public perception. For many the exploration of personal pleasure and desire, remains a little known, potentially dangerous terrain which, for many, is still accompanied by feelings of shame. The dearth of vocabulary to describe this important topic is an expression of a general speechlessness when it comes to the matter of female* desire.

Verena Güntner, Elisabeth R. Hager, and Julia Wolf combat this speechlessness with a literary book project: Coming. They have invited fifteen colleagues from different generations to discuss — under the cover of anonymity — expressions of female* desire. The result is a unique literary collective text which casts light on the elements of female* and queer sexuality that society suppresses.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

September 2021: the International Olympic Committee is sitting in Shanghai to decide which city will be awarded the Summer Games ’32. Shortly before the deciding vote, the Mozambican IOC functionary Charles Murandi is found dead in his hotel room. It soon transpires he has been poisoned. Footage from a security camera attests that German journalist Thomas Gärtner was the last person to visit the dead man’s room, taking unidentified documents with him as he left. When grilled by Inspector Frank Luo, Gärtner admits that he knew Murandi well, but he doesn’t seem keen to remember anything else. The Chinese police happen upon further inconsistencies and the German Consulate attempts to gain access to the arrested journalist, and as the Chancellor learns of the murder on board her flight to Shanghai and a second journalist scents a big story in the offing, no one suspects where the key to solving the case might lie: several decades before, when a Mozambican worker was cheated of his future in the GDR, and a six-year-old girl lost her father.

A gripping novel that leads far into the distance and at the same time deep into German history: highly suspenseful, gripping and factual.

LOOKING FOR A WORLD OF YOUR OWN

Sally and Liss: two women who couldn’t be more different from each other. Just about to take her A-levels, Sally only wants to be left in peace. She is furious with everything and everyone, and she hates it all: suggestions, offers, rules, regulations, adults. What she hates most are questions, particularly about her appearance. Liss works the farm among fields and vineyards all on her own. At their very first meeting Sally realizes that Liss is different from other adults; no secret studying, no rush judgements, no suspicious questioning. Liss offers Sally a bed for the night. One night at the farm turns into several weeks. For Sally the elder woman remains a mystery for a while. What kind of woman is she, never talking about herself, living on her own in the house where you can still feel the presence of others? The two women connect, not so much through conversation as through observations and most of all through working together on the farm, in the fields, the woods and the vineyard. And, slowly, they also get to know each others’ injuries.

Atmosphere, images and the description of the landscape with its people sharpen the eye for the essence.

A Book to Shake Perceptions and Certitudes – a Book that Will Change You

The book’s unnamed protagonist, who feels neither male nor female, is prompted by their grandmother’s slide into dementia to investigate their family history. The more their grandmother forgets, the more the narrator tries to remember: what was it in their childhood that prompted them to feel so alienated from their body? Does it have something to do with the family’s hushed-up history of incest? Why is their grandmother struggling to differentiate between herself and her sister who died young? And what happened to their youngest great aunt who disappeared when she was young?
Tracking down answers to these questions proves difficult because the family has a habit of keeping quiet about such matters. At the heart of it all is the question of self-determination: how to exist when your own body is never a given, but is instead constantly having to be negotiated?
Singular in its style and form, Bloodbook deals with our intangible heritage, the things we carry without being asked: stories, genders, identities, trauma, languages, class affiliations. Kim de l’Horizon searches for other kinds of knowledge and traditions, other stories and ways of becoming: feminist, witchy, bought with blood, and those that leave a hole in their wake. De l’Horizon leaves the linear, monotonous form of family stories behind and opts for a fluid, streaming form of writing which softens instead of pinning down.

The Empowerment of Two Sisters: a Compelling, Luminous Debut

Tildas days follow a strict schedule: the supermarket till, maths homework, the swimming pool, cooking, looking after her 10-year-old sister Ida and, on bad days, her mother too. The three of them live in the saddest house on Fröhlichstraße in a small town which Tilda loathes. After all, someone has to be there for Ida, someone has to earn money, take responsibility. They have no father in their lives anymore and their mother is a depressive alcoholic; she tries, but the situation runs away from her more and more. Then Tilda is offered a PhD position in Berlin, and her future flashes before her, promising freedom and possibility. But how can she leave Ida alone with their mother? And when Viktor, Ivans older brother who Tilda used to be friends with, appears, her life goes off the rails. Viktor has an unabashed grin and swims 22 lengths at the pool just like she does. Viktor is there for her when the situation at home spins out of control...