Ferdinand von Schirach, COFFEE AND CIGARETTES

Luchterhand - Stories - Hardcover - March 2019 - 192 pages

Ferdinand von Schirach weaves autobiographical narratives, aperçus, notes and observations into a narrative whole in which the private and the general touch, mix and mirror each other. It is about defining experiences and encounters of the narrator, fleeting moments of happiness, about loneliness and melancholy, uprooting and the longing for home, about art and society, as well as about the great life themes of Ferdinand von Schirach, strange legal cases and incidents, about the idea of law and human dignity, the achievements and legacy of the Enlightenment that must be preserved, and about what makes human beings human in the first place. In this complexity and range of narrative approaches and themes, Coffee and Cigarettes is Ferdinand von Schirach’s most personal book.

• “The great voice of German literature.” - ZDF Mittagsmagazin

• “[…] this quiet, personal and thoughtful von Schirach, who describes events from his life in an unagitated and trenchant way, invites us to reflect like no one else before.” - Die Glocke

• "It is with these crystal-clear no-frills sentences that Ferdinand von Schirach makes the world a little more understandable to us." - Nürnberger Nachrichten

• "Probably Germany's most important writer at the moment" - phoenix persönlich

• "The insight into Schirach's universe, into a mixture of origins, longing for redemption and sadness, always has something fascinating about it."- SWR2

• "A world-class man of literature" - Galore

• "A class of its own" - NZZ am Sonntag

• "The matter-of-fact, unobtrusive style, the glimpses into another world and the sometimes crazy stories stay in the reader's mind even longer." - Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung

• "With empathy, Ferdinand von Schirach approaches the innermost, with a clear mind he puts it in relation to the given."- Leipziger Volkszeitung

• "Ferdinand von Schirach remains true to his supercooled, laconic style in this book as well." - Berliner Morgenpost

• "With subtle irony, underlying humour, quiet desperation, the author evokes what makes him despair and what saves him." - NDR Kultur

• "Eloquent and stylistically confident, he strikes a chord, and the metaphor-rich parables and short stories in particular provoke intense thought and philosophy." - Oberösterreichische Nachrichten

• Ferdinand von Schirach’s most successful book so far

Rights sold to: China (Thinkingdom), France (Gallimard), Italy (Neri Pozza), Lithuania (Tyto Alba), Japan (Tokyo Sogensha), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Spain (Salamandra), Sweden (Lindelöws), Taiwan (Prophet Press), The Netherlands (De Arbeiderspers), UK (John Murray)