5 NOMINEES FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2024

5 out of 31 nominees for the Dublin Literary Award 2024 are represented by schoene agentur, woop woop, and the nominees read like a list of the most groundbreaking novels I had the honor of working with these past years! Good job, guys! The fabulous list comes here:

Mithu Sanyal, IDENTITTI, Hanser Verlag: Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a doctoral student who blogs about race with the help of Hindu goddess Kali, is in awe of Saraswati, her superstar postcolonial and race studies professor. But Nivedita’s life and sense of self are upturned when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Hours before she learns the truth Nivedita praises her tutor in a radio interview, which calls into question her own reputation and ignites an angry backlash among her peers and online community. A darkly comedic tour de force, Identitti showcases the outsized power of social media in the current debates around identity politics and the power of claiming your own voice.

Sold to Arabic (Al-Kamel), English World (Astra House), Denmark (Straarup&Co), Italy (Keller Editore), Netherlands (Uitgeverij Cossee), Serbia (Kontrast) Spain (Consonni).

Sharon Dodua Otoo, ADA’S REALM, S. Fischer: In a small village in what will become Ghana, Ada gives birth to a baby who does not live. As she grieves for her child, Portuguese traders arrive in the village, an event that will bear terrible repercussions for Ada and her kin. Centuries later, Ada will become the mathematician Ada Lovelace; Ada, a prisoner forced into prostitution in a concentration camp; and Ada, a pregnant Ghanaian woman who arrives in Berlin in 2019 for a fresh start. Ada is not one woman, but many, and she is all women. This debut from Sharon Dodua Otoo paints an astonishing picture of femininity and resilience with deep empathy and infinite imagination.

Olivia Wenzel, 1000 COILS OF FEAR, S. Fischer: A young woman attends a play about the Berlin Wall coming down and is the only Black person in the audience. She is sitting with her boyfriend and four neo-Nazis show up. In New York, she witnesses Trump’s victory and later awakes to panicked messages from friends. Engaging in a witty question and answer with herself, the narrator looks at our rapidly changing times and tells the story of her family: her mother, a punk in East Germany who never had the freedom she dreamed of and her absent Angolan father. But in the background of everything is the memory of her twin brother, who died when they were nineteen.

Mircea Cărtărescu, SOLENOID, Zsolnay Verlag: Based on Cărtărescu’s own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. On a broad scale, the novel’s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. The novel is grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life.Combining fiction with autobiography and history, Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art within the Communist present.

Rights sold to Bulgaria (Faber), Catalonia (Periscopi), China (Beijing Imaginist), Croatia (Fraktura), Denmark (Palomar), France (Noir sur Blanc), Hungary (Jelenkor, Italy (Saggiatore), Korea (Marco Polo), Netherlands (Bezige Bij), Norway (Solum), Portuguese/Brazil (Mundareu), Slovakia (BraK), Sweden (Bonniers), Spain (Impedimenta), USA (Deep Vellum)

Ulrike Almut Sandig, MONSTERS LIKE US, Schöffling & Co.: Monsters Like Us is the story of old friends Ruth and Viktor in the last days of Communist East Germany. They are inseparable since kindergarten, but are forced to go their different ways to escape their difficult childhood: Ruth into music and the life of a professional musician; Viktor into violence and a neo-Nazi gang. Monsters Like Us is a story of families, a story of abuse, a story about the search for redemption and the ways it takes shape over generations. More than anything, it is about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and who we want to be.

Rights sold to WE (Seagull).