Mating Season Munich

ARNOLD STADLER
LonGListed
FOR THE German
Book Prize
2016
Mating Season
FICTION
ERNST-WILHELM HÄNDLER
Munich
LonGListed
German
Book Prize
2016
Social novel
FOR THE
What is happiness? You only know after
you’ve had it.
Alain and Mausi, both forty, have been married for 15 years. They’ve arrived in the middle
of their lives: love is behind them, and “the
vegetarian period of their life” is just beginning.
But the death of one of their friends reopens
old wounds and brings back memories of a
summer they shared on the Atlantic coast of
France – a summer in which their youth finally
ended. Now, 20 years later, Alain runs into his
old flame Babette, and Mausi falls head over
heels for a blonde Danish man who happens to
sit next to her.
Mating Season is a book about happiness, and
the difficulty of keeping it; about life and what
it has become; and about the wish to go back to
how it all used to be.
• Winner of the Georg Büchner Prize
• His most important work yet
ARNOLD STADLER was born in Meßkirch, Germany,
and studied Catholic theology in Munich, Rome, and
Freiburg before studying literature in Freiburg, Bonn,
and Cologne. His numerous awards include the 1999
Georg Büchner Prize. He most recently published Komm,
gehen wir, as well as Salvatore, Einmal auf der Welt. Und
dann so and New York machen wir das nächste Mal.
How much can we really know about
ourselves?
Thaddea – early 30s, living in Munich, proud
owner of two houses and a new, independent
practice as therapist – has her life under control. Or at least she thinks she does, until her
boyfriend Ben-Luca and her best friend Kata
have an affair. In a maelstrom of emotions, she
decides to cut both out of her life. She grows
close to Ben-Luca’s best friend, hobnobs with
Munich’s high society at gala dinners and receptions … but the pain stays. In her search for
true knowledge of herself and others, Thaddea
discovers the boundaries between her and the
world.
A philosophical novel about what happens
when the soul collides with the world – and
about what we call emotions.
“My novels are experiments. If I knew
how they were going to turn out,
I wouldn’t write them.”
Ernst-Wilhelm Händler
ERNST-WILHELM HÄNDLER , born 1953, is the author
of the novels Der Überlebende, Welt aus Glas, Die Frau des
Schriftstellers, Wenn wir sterben, Sturm, Fall, and Kongress,
as well as the short story collection Stadt mit Häusern.
His most recent work is Versuch über den Roman als
Erkenntnisinstrument. His critically acclaimed novels
have won Händler numerous prizes.
552 pp., Hardcover
August 25, 2016
S. Fischer Verlag
Rights sold: Eines Tages, vielleicht auch
nachts: NO (Solum), RUS (AzbukaKlassika); Der Tod und ich, wir zwei:
SLO (Modrijan); Mein Hund, meine
Sau, mein Leben: PL (Santorski)
10
352 pp., Hardcover
August 25, 2016
S. Fischer Verlag
S. Fischer Verlage Frankfurt am Main / Germany Rights Guide Autumn 2016 www.fischerverlage.de/rights/foreign_rights