FOREIGN HANSER RIGHTS - Hanser Literaturverlage

FOREIGN
DEUTICKE
RIGHTS
Julya Rabinowich was awarded the Rauris Literature Prize for her wonderful
debut novel, Splithead.
F I CTI O N
Mischka spends the first years of her life in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Splithead and
Baba Yaga, the witch from the Russian fable, are as real to the little girl as are the aunts, uncles,
grandmothers and cousins of her extended Judaeo-Russian family, who all live on top
of each other, cooped up in cramped conditions.
When Mischka is seven years old, her parents tell her they are going on holiday to Lithuania.
But the plane lands in Vienna and there is no going back. »My father and I both suffer a
nervous breakdown when he tries to exorcise three years of Communist socialization in the
course of a single evening and it is simply beyond me that Lenin, ‘Every Child's Friend’, is
suddenly an arsehole. But what my father cannot accomplish, the mere sight of a Barbie doll
can.«
Torn between the myths of her childhood and the promises of the West, the exiled Mischka
has to carve out her own path in life – and neither her parents (whose marriage breaks up)
nor her sister (who has decided to stop speaking) are of much help to her.
Julya Rabinowich entices the reader into her world with her distinctive feel for comedy and
utterly unique style: interweaving substance and make-believe, she describes the cultural
vacuum that comes with emigration.
»A clever, snappy novel suffused with comedy, proverbial wisdom and fairy tale.«
The Guardian
Julya Rabinowich
born in 1970 in St. Petersburg, studied in Vienna where she has lived since 1977. The author
of several plays, she also paints and works as a simultaneous interpreter. Her debut novel,
Spaltkopf (Splithead) (2008), won her the Rauris Prize for Literature. Deuticke published
her most recent book, Herznovelle, in 2011.
Sales to Foreign Countries
UK/USA (Portobello)
Julya Rabinowich
Spaltkopf
Splithead
Novel. 206 pages. Hardcover
Publication date: July 25, 2011