A Sad Affair

Novel

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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (W.W. Norton), France (Albin Michel), Norway (Bokvennen), Finland (Karisto)

Literary

Wolfgang Koeppen

A Sad Affair / Werke in 16 Bänden

Novel

A romantic roman à clef that tells the story of Sibylle, one of the greatest literary femmes fatales since Salomé.

A romance that anticipated Beat literature by nearly twenty years through its dizzying language and exploration of casual love, this is Koeppen's most hilarious work, one that evokes Mann's Tonio Kruger. Set during the heady, pre-World War II days of cabaret-era Germany, the novel centers around Sibylle – a stunning seductress who balances her love affairs with five men at once – and Friedrich, the callow, melancholic youth who obsessively pursues her. In a stranger-than-fiction turn, Sibylle Scholoss, on whom the character of Sibylle is (very) loosely based, is now in her nineties and living in Manhattan. This publication enables us to celebrate not only the extraordinary renaissance of one of Germany's greatest twentieth-century writers but also the meteoric stage career of a German actress whose career was thwarted in its prime. (book description from the English edition with W.W.Norton)

»Muscular elegant prose [...] Koeppen's writing is a revelation, dense with controlled, scathing anger and bitter insights.« The Times

»[This is] sentimental traveling without sentimentality, rambling journeys on the edge of happiness, at their most beautiful, most staggering when the futility of desire turns into humor, into an urge to play [...] Fantasy, swathed in spirituality.« Berliner Tageblatt

1934, 206 pages

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Literary

Wolfgang Koeppen

Author

Wolfgang Koeppen was born on June 23, 1906 in Greifswald and died on March 15, 1996 in Munich. After spending eleven years in Ortelsburg (East Prussia), he returned to Greifswald in 1919. Due to financial reasons he had to leave grammar school and change to a lower secondary school, which he left without obtaining a diploma. After that, he dabbled in many different professions: he worked in a bookshop and at Greifswald's city theatre. As a commis chef he went to Sweden and Finland; in Würzburg he worked as a dramaturge. In 1927 he settled down in Berlin, where he began to work as an editor at the Berliner Börsen-Courier in 1931. He stayed there for two years. He wrote reportages, for the feuilleton, and started on his first literary works. His first novel,...

Wolfgang Koeppen

Author

Wolfgang Koeppen was born on June 23, 1906 in Greifswald and died on March 15, 1996 in Munich. After spending eleven years in Ortelsburg (East...

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Year of Publication: 2024

Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 2024

Novel Fragments

Wolfgang Koeppen’s novel fragments were produced over a period of almost sixty years. Though the author enjoyed phases of increased productivity, such as between 1951 and 1954, when his novels Pigeons on the Grass, The Hothouse and Death in Rome were released, he regularly found himself unable to realise his literary plans. Wolfgang Koeppen was without a doubt an author...

Year of Publication: 2018

Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 2018

Feuilletons

Wolfgang Koeppen once stated that no bibliography could ever exist that drew up a comprehensive list of all the newspaper contributions issuing from his pen. Jörg Döring has refuted this pessimism with this volume of the Complete Works. The complete overview of the feuilleton pieces is the result of a meticulous autopsy of almost every publication mouthpiece where Koeppen had the opportunity...

Year of Publication: 2016

Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 2016

Youth

Youth, published in 1976, is the only longer prose work that Wolfgang Koeppen completed after refraining from the genre for almost twenty years. Youth is composed of a...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Dalkey Archive), France (Hachette)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (Progress), Netherlands (Querido), Japan (Dogakusha), Poland (Czytelnik), Czech Republic (Odeon), Bulgaria (Narodna Kultura)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag)

Year of Publication: 1954

Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 1954

Death In Rome

In 1954, Wolfgang Koeppen published Death In Rome, the conclusion of a series of novels that are regarded today as the critical inventory of the early years of the German Federal...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Granta / Penguin), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Lucidabooks), France (Typhon), Netherlands (Cossee), Turkey (Kültür Yayinlari Iş), Greece (Kritiki), Macedonia (Ad Verbum)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (RBA), Catalan rights (La Magrana), Russia (Progress), Italy (Zandonai), Norway (Bokvennen), Poland (PIW), Czech Republic (Academia), Slovakia (Slovensky Spisovatel), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Narodna Kultura), Latvia (Liesma), Slovenia (Mladinska Knijga)

Year of Publication: 1953

Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 1953

The Hothouse

Bonn, March 1953: the days of the debates on re-militarization and Germany's accession to the European Defense Community become a fiasco for Keetenheuve, a member of parliament for the Social...

Rights sold to:

Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Lucidabooks)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (W.W.Norton; UK sublicense: Granta), Spanish world rights (RBA), Russia (Progress), Netherlands (Thoth), Finland (Kirjaythymä), Poland (PIW), Czech Republic (Academia), Slovakia (Slovensky Spisovatel), Hungary (Europa), Latvia (Liesma)

Year of Publication: 1951

Wolfgang KoeppenYear of Publication: 1951

Pigeons on the Grass

»Koeppen's work consists, as does that of all writers, of books of varied degrees of importance. I myself appreciate the early novel A Sad Affair, Death In Rome and the fragment...

Rights sold to:

USA (New Directions), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Lucidabooks), Serbia (Fabrika), Greece (Kritiki)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (RBA), Russia (Progress), France (Laffont), Netherlands (Thoth), Norway (Bokvennen), Finland (Kirjayhtymä Oy), Czech Republic (Academia), Slovenia (PAN), Israel (Carmel)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)