Pitches
Below, you will find a list of all of my sample translations that are currently looking for a good home.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me with regards to any of these works using the form on my contact page.
Dog Wolf Jackal by Behzad Karim Khani, Hanser Literaturverlage
(Selected as Winner of the Goethe-Institut Prize for New Translation 2023)
Dog Wolf Jackal is a spectacular debut that has garnered rave reviews in Germany. The novel tells the story of two brothers and their father who leave Iran for Berlin in the late 1980s. One of the brothers is drawn into a culture of gang crime in the Berlin district of Neukölln. The writing style is sharp, fast, and often brutal, and then contemplative and poetic. In the background are hints of Iranian folklore, with a man who is potentially a djinn appearing in a scene in a bar and later with Saam wondering if some messages he finds in a jacket pocket might be used to summon djinns. The author has described the book as being about destiny and has written a novel which deals with the complex fates of both revolutionaries and of those who become involved in a culture of crime. It was a New Books in German jury selection, meaning translation funding is guaranteed. (synopsis provided by New Books in German)
For rights information, contact Friederike Barakat.
The Heart It Casts No Shadow In The Chest by Noemi Somalvico, V&Q (‘Living In A Tin Can’ featured in Subnivean Issue 11)
How do we meet, how do we love, how do we part? What if what we feel for one another can’t be categorised? In her collection of short stories, Somalvico tackles the maelstrom of inter-personal emotions, romantic liaisons, and the beginnings and endings of tenderness, with longing, kissing, biting and spying. There is the daughter of a business magnate who collects love affairs like clothes, while another daughter follows an almost complete stranger to Marseilles. And two women experience classic man-woman shit. Doorframes are paused in, slices of lemon drift in glasses of water; meanwhile, the poet chases a lover past her own apartment and up the street at a ninety-degree angle.
For rights information, contact Ilka Winkler.
Fire Lily by Gianna Olinda Cadonau, Lenos Verlag
‘Out here, I dream. In the city, my sleep was empty, dark-grey, big.’ In this tender debut, rich in Alpine imagery, Gianna Olinda Cadonau tells the story of three quite different characters and their complex traumas. In a quiet village nestled in the Swiss Alps, journalist Vera meets a young stranger, Kálmán, who has inherited a house and has come out here to try and rid himself of the memories of war and torture that still haunt him. They begin to meet for walks and meals together, telling each other about their past bit by bit. Kálmán reminds Vera of her older sister, Sophia. When Sophia comes to visit, a curious connection forms between her and Kálmán, one which changes both of them. Lauded as a “literary symphony of images, atmosphere, voices and traumas“, Gianna Olinda Cadonau’s debut novel won the 2022 Studer/Ganz Preis for best unpublished manuscript. Applications for translation funding can be made to Pro Helvetia.
For rights information, contact Christoph Blum.
The Traitors by Artur Weigandt, Hanser Literaturverlage
‘We Children of the East are children of divorce. Born in the East. Raised in the West. Neither side wants us.’ Artur Weigandt’s The Traitors is a story “for those with no home”. For those who left the former Soviet Union to return ‘home’ only to find themselves treated as strangers and foreigners in their supposed “primal homeland”. In this debut, Russian-German journalist, Artur Weigandt, explores the issues of identity, belonging and home and what it means to feel like a ‘traitor’ to one’s own homeland. Beginning on 24 February 2022, Weigandt gives us a deeply personal insight into the effects Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is having on his identity and the identity of so many other Children of the East, tracing the roots of the invasion back through centuries of Great Russian colonialism.
For rights information, contact Friederike Barakat.
Is This The Other Side, Asks Pig by Noemi Somalvico, V&Q
Noemi Somalvico’s striking debut Is this the Other Side, Asks Pig positions her as an author to watch. A whimsical and absurdist fable, the book adapts the conventions of A.A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books – with talking animals, an episodic structure and stylised summaries for chapter titles – for an adult audience. The result is a strange and memorable book which breaks with conventions of structure, making effective use of non-sequiturs to create an enigmatic sense of mystery. It is a refreshing, surreal and tender read. It was a New Books in German jury selection, meaning translation funding is guaranteed. (synopsis provided by New Books in German)
For rights information, contact Ilka Winkler.
People Like Dirk by Julia Kohli, Lenos Verlag (‘Dirk’ featured in Your Impossible Voice, Issue 27)
Julia Kohli’s short story collection People Like Dirk examines modern-day gender politics, digital discourse and cancel culture with a dark and satirical eye. While original, Kohli’s work fits well with today’s most popular literary fiction – from Patricia Lockwood’s ease with internet culture to Ottessa Moshfegh’s satirical eye and Sally Rooney’s social observations. People Like Dirk was a New Books in German jury selection, meaning translation funding is guaranteed. (synopsis provided by New Books in German)
For rights information, contact Christoph Blum.
The Air Raid Siren by Gisela Elsner, Verbrecher Verlag
Supposedly written in a frenzy of inspiration in just eight days, this was the last work by Gisela Elsner before she took her own life. Told from the perspective of five-and-a-half year-old Lise, The Air Raid Siren is a dark-humour portrayal of the final days of World War II in Nazi Germany. With intentionally paragraph-length sentences and multiple nested clauses that make reading difficult even for native speakers, this is a work which deliberately disorients the reader and is a tale of the power of war and propaganda that is as relevant today as when it was first published over 30 years ago.
For rights information, contact Andrea Wildgruber.
Once, When I Was A Girl: Memories of a Him-Girl by Knud Petersen, Ti Vilde Heste
In the 1960s, Knud Petersen sits down to write a personal memoir of his time as a young, gay, working-class man in 1910s Copenhagen. His memories are passed down through the family for a further half a century, until they are finally published in 2022. Where most queer history in Scandinavia is heavily reliant on ‘outside sources’, such as legal, medical, criminological and journalistic documents, Once, When I Was A Girl represents a unique, first-hand account of queer life in the early 20th century. It introduces concepts and aspects of queer life that are entirely new to researchers and interrogates the idea of what is ‘normal’ when it comes to sexuality. Written more like a novel than an autobiography, it is a captivating read and an invaluable historical account of marginalised communities that urgently demands a wider readership.
For rights information, contact Jens Pedersen.
Burn The House Down, Water The Tree by Hans-Peter Madsen, Turbine (‘My Memories Have Been Taken From Me’ featured in The Dodge, Fall issue; ‘Five-Day Forecast’ and ‘Vaguely Familiar’ longlisted for the John Dryden Translation Prize 2023)
‘The snow of poetry is not cold. The snow of poetry is not a phenomenon that occurs as the result of certain weather conditions in certain climates. The snow of poetry is something white doves leave footprints in. I sit down in the snow. Or in the muddy turf on the lawn.’ Awarded five stars and described as “the funniest book of the year” by major Danish daily, Berlingske, Hans-Peter Madsen’s debut collection of short stories, Burn the House Down, Water The Tree, takes a brash swing at such wide-ranging topics as gender, climate change, love, sexism, clickbait… and what party snacks former PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s testicles most closely resemble. Politically razor-sharp yet also bursting with lyricism and beautifully crafted prose, Madsen is one to watch.
For rights information, contact Martin Graae Jørgensen.
Guts by Aleksandra Paduch, Wydawnictwo Czarne
Shortlisted for the prestigious Gdynia Literary Prize 2026, Aleksandra Paduch’s debut novel Guts (Trzewia) is a brief chronicle of the last one-hundred years of Polish history told through the lens of food. Organised into one-hundred very short chapters, some just a few lines long, Paduch’s evocative language builds historical vignettes of Poland around the reader in a way that is accessible even to those with no knowledge of the history or country. Guts is a micro-history of a single family and at the same time a tale of many Polish families, in which intimacy is at once natural and shameful, concrete and unspoken. It is a precise, physiological description of the anxieties and the desires we carry in our heads and in our bellies. In our guts. It is also an ode to the Polish tradition of hospitality come feast or famine, to the role of food as a love language. It will appeal to readers of The Butchers by Ruth Gilligan, The Restaurant of Love Regained by Ito Ogawa, Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
For rights information, contact Zofia Dimitrijević.
i’m a little fruit fly come to take a peep at you by Ewelina Figarska, słowo/obraz terytoria
A dystopian peep-show, a mind-bending meditation on death, decay and what we make of the precious little time we have, i’m a little fruit fly is a bold, genre-defying debut that reveals something different with every reading. Figarska has crafted a mosaic of mini-prose, lyrical excursions and tragicomic tableaus which lingers somewhere between “surrealism, fluid post-modernism [and] experimental and peculiar journeys in text”, all garnished with a biting sense of dark humour. The interdisciplinary artist-author whisks us away on a surrealist journey through a world that is (maybe, possibly) now inhabited by beings that are not entirely human. Broken down into a series of cleverly linked vignettes, each viewed through the eyes of marauding fruit flies, Figarska mixes flowing prose with verse and winding, unpunctuated sentences to disorient the reader, as we are drawn deeper into this maybe-post-apocalyptic world. This work will appeal to fans of Ottessa Moshfegh, Mariana Enriquez, Bronka Nowicka and Dorota Masłowska.
For rights information, contact Anna Laska.
The Seven Pills of Lucifer by Sergiusz Piasecki, Wydawnictwo LTW (extract featured in Turkoslavia, Issue 4)
Published in 1948 in political exile, the full title of this work is The Seven Pills of Lucifer: The Genuine Adventures of a Devil Called Marek in the years 1945-1946 in an Independent, Democratic Poland, based on Documents, Witness Statements, Press Clippings and the Author’s Personal Observations. It tells the story of Marek, a Category 9 devil working in Hell in Boiler Room no. 13. After Marek falls asleep on the job one night, causing the fires beneath the boilers to go out and the sinners boiling in them to die, Marek is punished by being sent to earth for one year. During his time, he rises from lowly moonshine-brewer to the very highest echelons of the Party. An acerbic satire of post-war Communist Poland, this work is as relevant today as it was seventy years ago.
For rights information, contact Ewa Tomaszewicz.
Hush Now by Agnieszka Jelonek, Wydawnictwo Cyranka
‘Love is an indecisive bitch. Appearing and disappearing, always disappearing, if she even makes an appearance at all.’ Hush Now is Agnieszka Jelonek’s second novel and was shortlisted for the prestigious Gdynia Prize 2023. It tells the story of Luna and Theo who attempt to paper over the cracks in their marriage by doing up an old house in the countryside with Luna’s unconventional friend, Miśka. Jelonek’s writing has been compared to that of Sally Rooney and Hush Now has been praised in the Polish press for its portrayal of the ‘new’ man who rejects heteronormative ideals and ‘mansplaining’, and who marched side by side with his partner, sister and mother during the recent ‘Women’s Strike’ movement in Poland. The book is an unflinching, unpretentious reflection on love, both romantic and platonic, and an exploration of how to find one’s own voice in life and build a reality that is not centred around the wants and needs of others.
For rights information, contact Konrad Nowacki.
Scraps by Dariusz Adamowski, Novae Res (extract featured in Turkoslavia, Issue 1)
‘The river will never stop flowing’. Told through hundreds of short ‘scraps’ of information, memories and flashbacks presented out of order, Scraps is a story of loss in all its aspects. Published in 2021, in the midst of ever more aggressive homophobia in large portions of Polish politics and society, the work has garnered significant interest and praise in literary circles and among the wider LGBTQ+ community in Poland.
For rights information, contact Dariusz Kuśniewski.
Siiigns by Samuel Hamen, Editions Guys Binsfeld (‘Almost’ featured in LIT42)
Winner of the Luxembourg Prize for Literature 2020, Siiigns is the second collaboration between author and critic Samuel Hamen and graphic artist Marc Angel. Composed of three connected short stories, it is a coming-of-age graphic novel about growing up in Luxembourg. Hamen conjures up images of his childhood with a literary flourish, but how much is real and how much is artistic flair? The stories are a mix of deeply personal experiences, and stories that will resonate with an entire generation – from a young boy who can’t decide whether to watch live news coverage of the 9/11 attacks or MTV, to conjuring up new continents on a desk at school with the weird kid in the class.
For rights information, contact Barbara Wiesen.
The Third Balloon, Kuseyin Esenkozhoev (shortlisted for the John Dryden Translation Prize 2021)
Kuseyin Esenkozhoev is considered one of the foremost authors in Kyrgyz literary history, despite only living to the age of 23. The Third Balloon tells the tale of a man who dreams of flying and fashions his own hot air balloon to take to the skies. After his initial success, things soon take a turn for the worse and he finds himself stranded in the wilderness of Central Asia and forced to fight off bears, mountain cats, starvation and the gradual deterioration of his grip on reality.
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