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