In Case of Loss

Essays
Suhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

English world rights (And Other Stories), Italy (selection, Del Vecchio)


In Case of Loss / Sonntags dachte ich an Gott
Essays
Evocative non-fiction from the German Book Prize winner, on topics such as rural life, growing up in an East German uranium mining community, and the creative process

»In Case of Loss gathers the best of Lutz Seiler’s non-fiction from last twenty-five years, revealing his essays to be different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry. Seiler’s beautifully anecdotal and associative pieces throw fascinating light on literature and his background, not least the environmental and human catastrophe of the Soviet-era mining in the community he grew up in, ›the tired villages . . . beneath which lay the ore,...

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»In Case of Loss gathers the best of Lutz Seiler’s non-fiction from last twenty-five years, revealing his essays to be different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry. Seiler’s beautifully anecdotal and associative pieces throw fascinating light on literature and his background, not least the environmental and human catastrophe of the Soviet-era mining in the community he grew up in, ›the tired villages . . . beneath which lay the ore, uranium.‹ Other essays focus on poetry, including his discovery of poetry during his military service and pieces on German poets, including Ernst Meister, Jürgen Becker and Peter Huchel, whose former house, outside Berlin, is now home to Lutz Seiler, after he broke and entered it with Huchel’'s widow's blessing. Meanwhile, the title essay – a fascinating insight into creative process – describes Huchel's notebook, a kind of dictionary of poetic images organised by mood and location.

Providing a perfect welcome in to his work as a whole, In Case of Loss sees one of Europe's most original writers speak with openness and clarity in essays full of insight, humanity and a poet’s attention to the importance of often overlooked objects and lives.« (book description from the English edition by And Other Stories)

»Seiler's inimitable style as a storyteller, the wilful waywardness and weight of what he has to say, the intensity (and personal tact) of his engagement with the landscapes of others’ poetries and lives all make these essays a lively portrait of the writer surrounded by his library. Seiler sets standards for reflection in art today. At the same time, he gives us a sense of the pagan-sacramental importance of objects in poetry.« Sibylle Cramer, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»Seiler's inimitable style as a storyteller, the wilful waywardness and weight of what he has to say, the intensity (and personal tact) of his engagement with the landscapes of others’ poetries and lives all make these essays a lively portrait of the writer surrounded by his library. Seiler sets standards for reflection in art today. At the same time, he gives us a sense of the pagan-sacramental importance of objects in poetry.« Sibylle Cramer, Süddeutsche...
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2004, 150 pages
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DISCOVER

Nachricht
The German Academy for Language and Literature has awarded the Georg Büchner Prize 2023 to Lutz Seiler.
Nachricht
The German Academy for Language and Literature has awarded the Georg Büchner Prize 2023 to Lutz Seiler.

DISCOVER

Nachricht
The German Academy for Language and Literature has awarded the Georg Büchner Prize 2023 to Lutz Seiler.

Persons

Lutz Seiler was born in Gera, Thuringia, in 1963 and today lives in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin and in Stockholm. He underwent training as a mason and a carpenter and completed his studies in 1990. Since 1997, he has been the literary director and custodian of the Peter Huchel Museum. He was writer-in-residence at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and at the German Academy in Rome. His many prizes include the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Bremen Prize for Literature, the Fontane Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize, and most recently the Georg Büchner Prize.

Lutz Seiler was born in Gera, Thuringia, in 1963 and today lives in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin and in Stockholm. He underwent training as a mason...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

script for blind giants
Year of Publication: 2021
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2021
After publishing two novels, Lutz Seiler returns to the home port of poems. Back to the voices of childhood, to the Waldstadion, to the »bone park« and to the question of where our...
Rights sold to:

Sweden (Edda)

Star 111
Year of Publication: 2020
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2020

»November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge und Walter, following a secret dream they’ve harboured all their lives, set out for life in the West....

Rights sold to:

UK & Commonwealth (And Other Stories),  USA & Canada (NYRB), Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Verdier), Italy (Utopia), Netherlands (Meridiaan), Denmark (Batzer), Sweden (Norstedts), Bulgaria (Black Flamingo), Lithuania (Hieronymus), Slovenia (Sodobnost), Greece (Patakis)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV), German Entire Radio Readings (rbb & NDR), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg)

Kruso
Year of Publication: 2014
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2014
After the accident, Edgar Bendler decides to step out of his own life. He becomes a dishwasher on Hiddensee, that legendary island which is said to lie outside of time and »beyond the...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Scribe), Spanish world rights (Anagrama), Catalan rights (Club Editor), Russia (Text), France (Verdier), Italy (Del Vecchio), Denmark (Batzer & Co.), Sweden (Norstedts), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Japan (Hakusuisha), Poland (Jagiellonian UP), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Romania (RAO), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Slovenia (Sodobnost), Turkey (Bence), Greece (Patakis), Macedonia (Goten), Armenia (Antares)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Netherlands (Meridiaan / Dutch Media Group), Serbia (Laguna)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Entire Radio Reading (NDR), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg + Club Bertelsmann)

in field latin
Year of Publication: 2010
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2010
in field latin or in other words: to exist in a field of language, and at the same time explore a landscape’s legends, how they come to one’s ears, in walks, in whispers, in silence....
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Italy (selection, Del Vecchio), Sweden (selection, Faethon)

The Time-Balance
Year of Publication: 2009
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2009
Whether in the story of a play-acted shooting or in the everyday drama of a real-life separation – all the texts in The Time-Balance are about decisive turning-points, about the...
Rights sold to:

Catalan Rights (selection, Club Editor), Arabic world rights (Al'Asreya), France (Verdier), Italy (Del Vecchio Editore)

Turksib
Year of Publication: 2008
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2008
Lutz Seiler first came to be known thanks to his two poetry collections, pech & blende (2000) and vierzig kilometer nacht (2003). For the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize in 2007 he offered up his first short story, Turksib, and was subsequently declared the winner.

  Ilma Rakusa describes the text’s allure: »With poetic-grotesque...
forty kilometres of night
Year of Publication: 2003
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2003

Lutz Seiler‘s poems, created between 2000 and 2003, undertake a journey through forty kilometres of night, they lead out of the native landscape, destroyed by uranium mining, depicted in pech...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (And Other Stories)

Pitch & Glint
Year of Publication: 2000
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2000
»On its original publication in 2000, Pitch & Glint was widely hailed as a landmark in German poetry. Rooted in Seiler’s childhood home, an East German village brutally...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (And Other Stories)


DISCOVER

News
On June 8, 2023, Lutz Seiler celebrates his 60th birthday.
News
Since 1995, the City of Augsburg has been awarding the Bertolt-Brecht-Preis to writers who critically examine the present in their literary works.
News
The Konrad Adenauer Foundation awards its prize for literature since 1993 to authors who let freedom speak.