Silke Scheuermann: Rich Girls

Hermann Hesse Award for Emerging Talent

Silke Scheuermann
Rich Girls

fiction

164pp (35,400 words)

>> Winner of the Grimmelshausen Award for Emerging Talent
>> Winner of the George Konell Award
>> Winner of the Droste Award for Emerging Talent

In seven luminous stories of love and loss, loneliness and desperation, Silke Scheuermann’s debut collection paints a vivid and poignant picture of a generation searching for identity. Unfulfilled desire, stalled communication, and the vagaries of memory are the themes woven through the spare stories in this book.

Franziska should be happy really. She is young, pretty and in a functioning relationship. But an obsessive amour fou has made a prisoner of her, turned her into a submissive sacrificial animal. Every day she waits for Simon, her married man, to arrive; she decorates the apartment festively, buys flowers for him, and whisky. Yet Franziska’s love for Simon is proven a fiction, and her life a crisis area.

Silke Scheuermann’s stories veer to the uncanny; her heroes become entangled in the invisible trap of their own existence, an existence characterised by dissatisfaction. REICHE MÄDCHEN is an ironic, laconic, amusing and razor-sharp depiction of a generation desirous of the ordinary while yearning for the out-of-the-ordinary.


»Silke Scheuermann masters the high art of contemporary writing, capturing the particular climate, that special flavour of the present in her prose as well as in her poetry, making it more tangible and perceivable than in our daily routine.
Silke Scheuermann is an original poet, a ravishingly sensual narrator writing a lean, clearly structured, gently ironical and lively prose. Over and above, Silke Scheuermann is a highly intelligent and gifted author and a keen observer of her time and contemporaries.«
Georg Konell Award, laudatio by Uwe Wittstock

Rights sold

Estonia - Pegasus
Italy - Voland

paperbacks - S. Fischer, Random House/Goldmann

Previously published (rights reverted)
China (Chinese simple) - New Star
The Netherlands - Cossée
Russia – Centrepolygraph
Syria (Arabic World) - Cadmus
Thailand – Circle (first serial)
Sweden - Weyler

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Reviews

»Silke Scheuermann is a big talent, she is one of German literature’s great hopes – hence hope for us readers to learn more about us and our times. A brilliant piece of literature. Not since Judith Hermann’s stories did I read anything so beautiful.«
Die Welt - Book of the Week

»Silke Scheuermann is among the few poets who sense and embrace the challenge of turning prose into poetry in these entirely unpoetic days.«
Süddeutsche Zeitung

»One of the most talented young authors...Happiness and similar illusions of life cannot possibly be put into more beautiful words than these.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Every single sentence breathes poetry.«
BRIGITTE

»When I read Silke Scheuermann’s work fort he first time, I realised I was reading something I had rarely found before in German: a collection of short stories that gripped me. (...) Both sensual and shocking at times. In each story Scheuermann creates a strong voice for her female protagonists, navigating the delicate territory of misunderstandings.«
Lucy Renner Jones for New Books in German

»With flying colors, Silke Scheuermann passes the tightrope walk to great fiction.«
Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

»A downright pamphlet for having doubts about others and oneself, for the continuous struggle against one’s own emotions and the ever-present fear of the abyss of love.« die tageszeitung

»Poetic and concise prose, a brilliant portrayal of characters persistently attempting to wrest a piece of happiness from today’s life.«
Neue Presse

»A work of striking imaginative power.«
Frankfurter Rundschau

»Intelligent, humorous, ironical ... Prose that goes under the skin.«
Aachener Zeitung

»Scheuermann’s prose shines pleasently out of the usual mass of young women’s fiction, maintaining an elegant balance between reality and the absurd; capturing the wonderous, sad and eerie twists of everyday life.«
Nürnberger Zeitung

»A remarkable debut.«
Stuttgarter Zeitung

»Great expectations and salutary frustration go side by side, seducing the reader. (...) Scheuermann delves into the hearts and the worn souls of her characters, accompanies them on their meandering search for love that all to often leads into a dead end.«
Wiener Zeitung

»Laconic and precise prose. (...) Scheuermann places her emphasis with admirable restraint.«
Nürnberger Nachrichten

»There are several successful women writers in Germany who inspire a wide audience with their soulful, ironic and cutting-edge stories - Judith Herrmann, Julia Franck or Alissa Walser, to name but a few. Now Silke Scheuermann has risen straight into that league.«
Giessener Allgemeine

»Zsuzsa Bánk's favourite book.«
Madame


Reviews from abroad

»These seven stories are literary jewels. Scheuermann proves herself a master of the erotic narrative à la Maupassant.«
De Volkskrant

»In her confident writing style, Scheuermann gets right to the point. Her choice of words is accurate, her expression refreshing and highly imaginitive, yet accessible.«
Vrij Nederland

»Here comes another young German author that commands our admiration.«
VPRO

»Reveals the close relation between modern young women’s saturated lifestyle, and the lack of emotion.«
De Telegraaf

More titles by Silke Scheuermann

Silke Scheuermann: What We Lived OnSilke Scheuermann: The Hour Between Dog and WolfSilke Scheuermann: Winter Has Come OvernightSilke Scheuermann: Shanghai PerformanceSilke Scheuermann: Other People's HousesSilke Scheuermann: The Day the Seagulls Sang in Two-Part HarmonySilke Scheuermann: Sketches of GrassSilke Scheuermann: And I Asked The Bird – Lyrical Moments