FOREIGN HANSER RIGHTS - Hanser Literaturverlage

FOREIGN
HANSER
RIGHTS
Wilhelm Genazino
Wenn wir Tiere wären
If Only We Were Animals
Novel. 160 pages. Hardcover
Publication date: July 25, 2011
We have it all – employment, home, relationships. But sometimes just one of them
would be more than enough, and having it all is more than you can handle. But
how is a man to shake off his private life if he can’t even divest himself of work?
F I CTI O N
Life is hard and can easily be too much for even the toughest of individuals to cope with.
The world we live in makes excessive demands on us: turning up at work every day with a
beaming smile that exudes commitment, struggling with the vicissitudes of public transport
and supermarkets. And then, on top of it all, there’s our private life to contend with. Even
if the whole thing runs more or less smoothly, even with a life that may be deemed halfway
successful, there comes a time when a man has had enough.
He is a longstanding freelance partner in an architectural office and longstanding boyfriend
of Maria. But when he takes on permanent employment, the precarious balance of his life tips
out of kilter and before he knows it he has three women on his hands instead of just the one.
Oh, if only we were animals! A duck in the park, a friendly dog on the sofa! If only we could
just blithely ignore all life’s daily impositions!
Wilhelm Genazino describes a here-and-now in which we are all out of our depth, and he
describes a man who can only withstand the pressure by transgressing the stifling regulatory
system. But, inevitably, he is soon found out, and finds himself in prison. Things won’t be
any easier there … Ironic, funny, incisive – this is Genazino at his best.
Wilhelm Genazino
was born in 1943 in Mannheim, and lives in Frankfurt. His work has won him numerous
awards, amongst others the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize and the Kleist Prize. His recent
publications with Hanser include the novels Die Liebesblödigkeit (2005), Mittelmäßiges
Heimweh (2007), and Das Glück in glücksfernen Zeiten (2009).
Sales to Foreign Countries
Liebesblödigkeit: China (People’s Literature), France (Bourgois), Greece (Kastaniotis),
Italy (Guanda), Korea (Changbi), Netherlands (Atlas), Russia (Fluid), Slovenia (Zavod Litera),
Spain (Círculo de Lectores), Taiwan (Yuan Liou), Turkey (Gendas)