News

new sales

«Sasha, hello» for Bulgaria | «Description of a City» for Serbia

Serbian translation rights for Dmitri Danilov’s novel DESCRIPTION OF A CITY have been sold to Prozart.

«Description of a City got under my skin and into my livers…» LIZA HAYDEN

Bulgarian translation rights for Dmitri Danilov’s novel el SASHA, HELLO have been sold to Panorama Publishers.

The new novel SASHA, HELLO by Dmitri Danilov with distopian character moves right on the edge of the real situation in Russia. Death penalty was recently introduced as part of a project to humanize the penal system for crimes where society has no real sense of wrongdoing. Executions are no longer carried out by executioners. Instead, a warden has recently taken you out for a walk every day through the same hallway, where one fine day you will be torn to pieces by a salvo of an automatic machine gun. This can happen in three days or in thirty years. As algorithm would have it.

new publication

German translation of HOW TO SLAY A DRAGON published by Europa Verlag

In its pamphlet-like gesture, Mikhail Khorodkovsky’s short MANUAL FOR START-UP REVOLUTIONARIES is very reminiscent of Stéphane Hessel‘s „Time for Outrage!“. The German publisher Europa Verlag made it available in a special short version right in time for Munich Security Conference 2023 where Khodorkovsky has been invited as speaker.

The presentation of the German version of HOW TO SLAY A DRAGON will take place at the public event of the MSC Security and Literature Series 2023 with Khodorkovsky in Literaturhaus München on Thursday Feb 16 at 19:00. TICKET RESERVATION

Isn’t this one of the most pressing questions of our times? How can a totalitarian regime be put to an end? By whom? From the inside or from the outside? After that, who would come to power? And what would that power look like? And what should that power look like?

Far from any know-it-all attitude, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s book HOW TO SLAY A DRAGON poses questions, uncomfortable questions that have been avoided in the West up to now, such as non-violence/ violence against a totalitarian ruler acting aggressively both internally and externally. Using the example of Russia Khodorkovsky derives the resulting options for action. The book does not want to provide recipes but to initiate a discussion overdue.

The full long version will be published in German translation as hardcover also for Leipzig book fair.

new sales

4 languages sold: Finnish, Romanian, Macedonian and Albanian (on Macedonian territory)

new publication

Serbian translation published by Utopia

Dmitri Danilov’s novel HORIZONTAL POSITION was written before Covid crisis catapulted us out of our old routines. Are we hoping and ready to return to them? To answer this question this novel is a very good guide to travel back in time.

We experience precisely one year, going from chapter to chapter – breathless, bored, bothered, relaxed, irritated, amused – and every evening falling exhausted into bed, together with the hero. For a brief moment of sleep in the horizontal position only to then be roused again straightaway, knowing what the daily routine will bring and yet continually full of expectations for the new day.

new sale

World English language rights have been sold to Glagoslav

Aleksei Ivanov’s novel THE FOOD SHACK is a very tricky vampire novel about a highly topical ideological conflict that runs through the entire book on many levels: Independence of thought, dreaminess, the urge for freedom and the attempt to understand our complicated world – as a counterpart to the simple answers and blunt rules that have always been and still are set up, out of laziness of thought or just to enslave people. A novel that is not only straightforward and strong like a wooden post, but also follows the rules of the genre so well, that the reader doesn‘t even notice how he has already been bitten and infected.

new prolongation

of the license for Norwegian edition of SHIRT

sad news

Grigori Kanovich passed away at the age of 93

On January 20, Grigory Kanovich died in Tel Aviv at the age of 93. He devoted almost his entire long life to the memory of the people murdered in the fires and gas furnaces of the Holocaust. He was not only an award winning Lithuanian author of Jewish origin writing in Russian, but also a translator, playrighter, poet and screenwriter.

Most famous are probably his novels SHTETL ROMANCE and DEVILSPEL sold and translated into 7 languages.

The agency is sending its sincere condolences to the family.

new award

Young Adult Content Award – Best fantasy author (for 2021 awarded in 2022)

Max Maximov has published already several scifi novels in the best tradition of the Strugatski brothers. His books are also timely parables exploring guilt and innocence, hell and paradise, life and spirit, nothingness and the morality of algorithms. As though in parallel worlds or in different dimensions, the reader is taken along two plots lines which at first glance do not seem connected in any way. The connection only becomes clear in the course of or towards the end of the story. This alternation between parallel plotlines has become a trademark of Maximov.

sad news

Aleksei Slapovski passed away

We are very sorry to announce that author Aleksei Slapovski recently died at the age of 65.

The very first license contract concluded by Thomas Wiedling for a novel by a Russian author – even before the agency was officially founded – happened in 1998: ANKETA – THE QUESTIONNAIRE by Aleksei Slapovski.

More novels in translation followed. Just recently the agency was able to conclude a deal for a feature film based on a theatre play by Slapovski.

Also Slapovski was one of those authors who did not hesitate to speak out against Putin’s aggressive war in Ukraine. When it became too dangerous to openly publish critical texts in Russia about this war and about Putin, Slapovski started to use a pen name.

The trusting relationship with Slapovski had developed into a friendship over the course of 25 years. We have lost an author who never lost his sense of humor. I have lost a friend.

new publication

Czech edition published by Host