Peirene Press

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Peirene Press

An award-winning independent publisher of new voices and great books from around the world. TLS

"Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting:literary cinema for those fatigued by film."

08/11/2024

Peirene is hiring! 💼

Peirene Press is seeking a part-time Marketing & Administration Assistant to support our co-publishers. The primary responsibilities include ensuring the smooth day-to-day operation of our office, collaborating with the co-publishers to devise and deliver marketing and publicity campaigns for our titles, organizing and promoting author and translator events, and helping to manage our e-commerce and website.

Click the link in our bio for more info & how to apply ✨

21/10/2024

OUT TOMORROW A German-Turkish family reckons with a web of secrets in the wake of their father’s death in Istanbul.

DJINNS is a fast-paced family saga about identity, suppressed memory and the demons that hover just out of sight.

Fatma Aydemir has been described as ‘the voice of a generation’ by Der Speigel and is a Guardian Europe columnist in the UK. DJINNS is translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi.

Available now via our website and through bookshops. ✨

Cover design by .b.lloyd

27/09/2024

Londoners, join us on Tuesday to celebrate the launch of A SIMPLE INTERVENTION.

Author Yael Inokai and translator Marielle Sutherland will be in conversation with author Nataliya Deleva . Topics will include Yael’s ambition to write a utopian q***r love story, her drive to write nursing and care work back into literature, and both authors’ interest in ideas of ‘normalcy’ and institutional settings.

See you there at 18.30 💙

***rfiction

25/09/2024

Calling Bristolians, Bathonians, So’westers ☎️

Join us at Bookhaus in Bristol on October 2 to celebrate the UK publication of Yael Inokai’s A SIMPLE INTERVENTION, translated by Marielle Sutherland. Author & translator will be in conversation—there will be drinks.

Book tickets via Bookhaus (link in bio) 🎟️

Cover artwork

17/09/2024

We’re celebrating the launch of Katja Oskamp’s HALF SWIMMER with a giveaway 🏊‍♀️

This is a chance to win a copy of Oskamp’s latest novel, HALF SWIMMER, and the Dublin Literary Award winning MARZAHN, MON AMOUR for yourself and a friend. Both books are translated from German by Jo Heinrich, and are brimming with Oskamp’s trademark warm, irreverent humour.

To enter –
Step 1. Make sure you’re following our account 🫶
Step 2. Share this post 🫴
Step 3. Tag a fellow book lover in the comments 🤝

The winner will be picked at random on Friday (12pm). Best of luck to you! 🤞

16/09/2024

We’ll be celebrating the publication of A SIMPLE INTERVENTION with three events in October and 📚

Join author Yael Inokai and translator Marielle Sutherland for a discussion of this haunting, beautiful novel, set in an institution which promises to relieve psychological torment with one procedure.

Link to tickets in bio 💫

13/09/2024

The latest book in the Peirene subscription, A SIMPLE INTERVENTION by Yael Inokai, translated by Marielle Sutherland, was sent out earlier this week to subscribers around the world. We’ve been looking forward to publishing this book since Marielle Sutherland won the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize in 2023, and it’s a special moment to see it appearing in our readers hands on social media.

A SIMPLE INTERVENTION is the story of Meret, a nurse at an institution which claims it can free people from psychological disorders with one ground-breaking surgical intervention. The hospital is her home, and her uniform is her identity. She supports her patients through their interventions and is proud to be a part of the solution. But when she falls in love with another nurse, she crosses an invisible boundary and her certainty in the system begins to crumble...

Subscribe to get your copy ahead of publication. Or preorder to receive your book on October 3rd.

27/08/2024

DJINNS by Fatma Aydemir tr. Jon Cho-Polizzi is in the Guardian’s ‘Best New Novels for Autumn 2024’… alongside Sally Rooney, Jonathan Coe and Haruki Murakami no less.

DJINNS is now available to preorder via our website for delivery on 22 October. Link in bio.

“Sometimes you just want a big old family saga to lose yourself in – and there’s none more engrossing this autumn than Djinns, the first English outing for a German-Turkish writer whose nuanced take on post-migration experience made her a controversial bestseller in her native Germany. It opens on the dying thoughts of Hüseyin, a Gastarbeiter metalworker suffering a fatal heart attack in the week he’s due to retire. Then come the lives of his children, from the eldest daughter he forced to marry early, to his youngest son, a high-schooler dangerously in love with another boy on his football team.” - Anthony Cummins, Guardian

16/08/2024

COVER REVEAL ALERT 🚨

We’re celebrating Women in Translation Month in style by revealing the cover of the latest book by the ultimate author/translator duo. Katja Oskamp and Jo Heinrich were awarded the 2023 Dublin Literary Award for their ‘warm and witty’ MARZAHN, MON AMOUR – and next month, we’ll be publishing their hotly anticipated English-language follow-up HALF SWIMMER... and in this stunning jacket no less.

Full of Oskamp’s characteristic humour and empathy, HALF SWIMMER is the story of Tanja – a girl growing up in in 1980s East Berlin. As the daughter of an army officer and a teacher, Tanja seems set to become a model citizen of the German Democratic Republic. But she has other ideas. And so, it turns out, does the course of history.

Preorder now for delivery on 17th September – link to shop in bio!

Design .b.lloyd
Photography
Publicity enquiries - [email protected]

08/08/2024

You can still take advantage of our summer sale - and just in time for WITMonth, here are three books from women in translation included in the sale.

Hanne Ørstavik’s THE BLUE ROOM, translated by Deborah Dawkin, was her first in English - and it introduced her themes of intense familial relationships and unreliable narrators with aplomb. A Guardian Book of the Year in 2014, it’s ten years old this summer, but has lost none of its psychological and narrative power.

Also at 40% off is Senka Marić’s deeply personal, poetic and radically optimistic BODY KINTSUGI, translated by Celia Hawkesworth. This takes us on a journey through the mind and body under illness, as it traces the author’s experience with breast cancer.

Or take a trip to Reykjavík with Sigrún Pálsdóttir’s HISTORY. A MESS., translated by Lytton Smith. A gripping and satirical exploration of a highly intelligent mind under huge pressure, this Icelandic marvel asks fundamental questions about the roles of history, narrative, and knowledge itself, and dares us to try and separate a story from the process of creating it.

Get these titles (along with many others on our list) for 40% off, for a limited time only. Shop in bio.

29/07/2024

With still a couple of weeks to go on the Peirene Summer sale, let’s zone in on some of the German books which are 40% off on our website. Link to our website shop is in our bio, so fill your stiefel (boots).

Let’s start with last year’s Dublin Literary Award sensation MARZAHN, MON AMOUR by Katja Oskamp, translated by Jo Heinrich. This love letter to the East Berlin district of Marzahn and its inhabitants takes place in the clinic where the protagonist works as a chiropodist, and is full of tender, but honest, stories of her clients. A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime last year, it even garnered the praise of Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who said, “Oskamp knows how to capture the essence of people beautifully. They really come to life in her portraits. A powerful book.”

Another story which springs from East Germany is YOU WOULD HAVE MISSED ME by Birgit Vanderbeke, translated by Jamie Bulloch, which introduces the reader to a little girl living as an East German refugee in the West. A dark and troubling story dealing with abuse, it nonetheless shimmers with Vanderbeke’s brilliant eye for detail and wit.

Finally (although there are several other books translated from German for you explore on our website) Richard Weihe’s SEA OF INK, translated again by Jamie Bulloch, takes us into a fraught historical moment, as the Ming dynasty crumbles in the early 17th century, leaving a former royal needing to feign madness in order to escape his fate. Elegant storytelling with the added bonus of ten beautiful illustrations.

22/07/2024

We’ve been running our summer sale since last Monday, and there are three weeks left. So we thought we’d highlight some of the books on offer via our website: www.peirenepress.com/shop

Shatila Stories is a unique work of fiction, written by nine Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in Shatila refugee camp, and translated into English by Nashwa Gowanlock. This is a novel that Khaled Hosseini characterizes as “not about the refugee voice, but born and told through it”, and through the multiplicity of voices comes a single powerful work of art, and act of witness.

Saneh Sangsuk’s The Understory and Venom, both translated by Mui Poopoksakul. transport the reader to the Thai Jungle, exploring its majesty and plenitude, while hinting at what has been lost as the country modernised. But most importantly these are thrilling books about demonic tigers and furious snakes, and the fear they strike in the human heart.

Another poetic and dark exploration of a changing world and our relationship to nature is Of Saints and Miracles, Manuel Astur’s depiction of rural northern Spain, translated by Claire Wadie. After a terrible mistake on his family farm, Marcelino goes on the run, and becomes an unlikely folk hero in the process.

The Peirene Summer Sale will run until 12 August. For up to 40% off most titles in our list, head over to our website.

15/07/2024

We’re running a Summer Sale for the next four weeks, with up to 40% off our paperbacks, ebooks and collections until August 12th. Explore our online bookshop to make the most of the discount, and get your summer reading sorted.🌻

peirenepress.com/shop

12/07/2024

A reminder that we are giving away a FREE COPY of THE LOVE OF SINGULAR MEN to everyone who subscribes to our 6-book subscription in July.

Subscribers around the world have been receiving their latest Peirene read: GLÓRIA by Victor Heringer, translated by James Young and Sophie Lewis. If you would like to be among their number, and get the book ahead of publication on July 23rd, don’t delay and sign up to our six book subscription now: https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/subscription/peirene-subscription-six-books/

If you subscribe in July and leave the note HERINGER at checkout, we’ll include Heringer’s first novel, THE LOVE OF SINGULAR MEN, in the first package you receive. Fantástico!

11/07/2024

Join us at The Hastings Bookshop on Friday 19th July for an evening of Brazilian literature: talking translation with James Young and Sophie Lewis, who have brought Victor Heringer’s prize-winning GLÓRIA into English.

Heringer’s previous book THE LOVE OF SINGULAR MEN found fans in Zadie Smith, Rónán Hession and critics from the Guardian to the New York Review of Books. His tragic death in 2018, aged just twenty-nine, robbed us of one of the most exciting voices in world literature.

James and Sophie will be chatting to International Booker Prize shortlisted translator Annie McDermott. Tickets free, booking essential 👉 LINK IN BIO

05/07/2024

The first copies of GLÓRIA by the inimitable Victor Heringer (trans. James Young & Sophie Lewis) have been going out to our six-book subscribers over the last few weeks. There is still time to get your hands on a copy before publication on 23 July by subscribing, and we’re offering a FREE COPY of THE LOVE OF SINGULAR MEN to everyone who signs up or upgrades to the six-book subscription in July. Just write ‘HERINGER’ in the order note (not coupon code) at checkout.

One for fans of Italo Calvino, Salman Rushdie and Jorge Luis Borges. GLÓRIA is a metafictional tale of a family like no other, following three brothers – Benjamin, Daniel and Abel – as they do battle with online forums, religious hysteria, the art world of Rio de Janeiro, ants, aunts, love, humiliation and a stammering God. It’s the second novel in English by the acclaimed Brazilian author Victor Heringer, following the THE LOVE OF SINGULAR MEN, published by Peirene in 2023, which was praised by Zadie Smith as ‘a truly singular novel’, ingenious, funny and elliptical, and in the TLS as ‘formally playful, inventive and moving’.

These are the only novels penned by Heringer, whose death in 2018, aged just 29, was a huge loss to international literature. His was an extraordinary voice, and we are grateful to be able to share these books with you.

💚💛🧡❤️

04/06/2024

Happy publication day to UN AMOR 🌱

This simmering story of obsession and small-town unease, by acclaimed Spanish writer Sara Mesa (tr. .whittemore1 ), is now available via our website & through bookshops.

Cover by & .b.lloyd

17/05/2024

Calling all Manchester readers! 📣 Sara Mesa and translator Katie Whittemore will be at Manchester Blackwells on the 28th of May to discuss their novel UN AMOR. A simmering tale of obsession and small town unease, this is the first UK publication for the acclaimed Spanish writer and evening not to be missed.

Tickets are £3.50 and bookable at the link in our bio. We look forward to seeing you there.

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Happy publication day to GLÓRIA by Victor Heringer, translated by Sophie Lewis (@sophietimes) & James Young (@seeadarkness)!!! We’re so proud to be the UK publisher of V.H., a remarkable & unique writer. Thank you to everyone who was a part of bringing this book into English. This is a video that Heringer, a properly restless artist, created to mark the publication of GLÓRIA in Brazil twelve years ago. He was twenty-four years old when the book came out. Thanks to James Young for the subtitling. https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/books-2/gloria/

Yesterday by Juan Emar: Book Launch

Join us to celebrate the publication of Yesterday by Juan Emar, in translation by Megan McDowell. The event will include a panel discussion, readings in English and Spanish, and an audience Q&A. Chair: Carlos Fonseca Speakers: Megan McDowell and Alejandro Zambra

The Peirene Stevns Translation Prize

This video shows the different ways the first few words of Claudio Morandini’s book Neve, cane, piede were translated as part of the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize. Seeing the variations in the translations was fascinating and today we’re delighted to announce the winner of the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize 2019 on our website! Find out the winner here: https://www.peirenepress.com/prize/ This has been an incredible experience for us and we’re thrilled to have found a worthy winner. We’ll be making some changes to the award in 2020 so watch this space!

To explain what this means is a little impossible right now so I'll just pass on Nora's words 'I feel I am in a dream.' Soviet Milk has just been SHORTLISTED for the EBRD Prize, great thanks to all involved and many congratulations to Fitzcarraldo Editions and Tilted Axis Press as well! https://www.ebrd.com/cs/Satellite?c=Content&cid=1395280584218&d=Mobile&pagename=EBRD%2FContent%2FContentLayout

Children of the Cave

Happy #publicationday to Children of the Cave!! 'Poignant and piercing, it is a story for our times' Jackie Law 'Like nothing else I've read' Sarah Terry 'One of the most ambitious works of the year' Kuvastaja Prize Jury 'Though the novel is set two hundred years ago, the fear of the other is still very much alive today.’ Grant Rintoul And £6 for ONE DAY ONLY! https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/deals/children-of-the-cave/

Children of the Cave trailer

Its February tomorrow! Which means that its almost publication month for Peirene No. 28 Children of the Cave!!! It went out to our subscribers in Dec but won't be available until Feb 15th, this prize-winning Gothic Finnish adventure is going to blow you away! https://bit.ly/2Rdahs8

Christmas wishes from Peirene Press!

We finish our #PeireneChristmasCalendar with a little video of some of the translated books we’ve explored along the way! Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Peirene no. 27 And the Wind Sees All is 'a heart-warming gem'

Peirene no. 27 And the Wind Sees All might only have been officially released on Saturday but it has already been featured in The Sunday Times! David Mills described how whilst Peirene normally 'delights in challengingly dark books' - And the Wind Sees All is instead 'a heart-warming gem' of a novel with 'an eye for the poetry of the everyday.' We couldn't have put it better ourselves. Read the rest of the article here and find more translated fiction inspiration: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/review-foreign-fiction-babylon-strike-your-heart-drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead-and-the-wind-sees-all-kvw2khscg If you're not yet a subscriber - who receive our books two months before anyone else (!) - you can buy your copy here: https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/books/and-the-wind-sees-all/

It's Peirene send out day!

We're busy wrapping up these beautiful polkadot copies of Peirene No. 27 And the Wind Sees All ready to be shipped out to all our wonderful subscribers later this week. And the Wind Sees All is our first Icelandic translation. It's the perfect tonic to this ridiculous heatwave that has descended upon us like a Pharoah's curse. I can't wait to hear what you all think of it! If you're not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here to receive Peirene's latest releases months in advance: https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/subscribe/subscribe/

For every book bought whilst Trump visits the Uk, we're giving one to charity!

Donald Trump is currently visiting the UK. So we're taking a stand. For every book bought whilst he's here (from the 13th to the 16th of July) we'll donate one to a charity which sends books to prisoners. A book is a gift of recognition, it opens new pathways for communications and says 'I value you' to the recipient. We believe in diversity, open borders and open hearts. We stand against Trump. #ResistTrump #TrumpUKVisit Buy your books here and help make an active difference to peoples lives: https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/

Shadows on the Tundra released today!

Peirene No. 26 Shadows on the Tundra has now been released for all our non-subscribers! This incredible piece of survival literature was written on scraps of paper and buried in a glass jar underground for nearly 50 years. Written by a young woman on her escape from a Siberian labour camp this book is an incredible testament to survival and the will of the human spirit. Get your copy: https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/books/shadows-on-the-tundra/ Lithuania Lithuanian Commercial Attaché in the United Kingdom

Pre-order Shatila Stories NOW!

Shatila Stories, a novel written by nine Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in a Shatila refugee camp, is now available to pre-order: https://bit.ly/2HBxTTb Get the book Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, called "HEARTBREAKINGLY ALIVE" This isn't a book about the refugee crisis, this is a book from the heart of the refugee crisis. ALL PROFITS will go to support refugees living in nine camps throughout Lebanon and Turkey. Published June 18th for Refugee Week, get your copy: https://bit.ly/2HBxTTb

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"Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting: literary cinema for those fatigued by film." TLS