The High-Rise Diver
• Lead title with 10,000 AFP, extensive promtional plans & multi-city author tour
• Twice a year, the New Books in German US committee meets and votes on the 30+ titles to be submitted by German publishers for translation recommendations. Every single committee member voted The High Rise Diver as their #1 candidate for translation, while the response to the other 30 titles presented was tepid overall.
• Young, female author who spends a lot of time in NY. Great promotional opportunities!
• Uncomfortably realistic dystopia featuring two very different female characters
• While using elements from reader’s favorites such as Corpus Delicti, Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World and Hunger Games, the story is highly original.
• The dystopian touches are kept light – just enough to provide an interesting framework and throw current societal issues into sharp relief.
• The plot itself centers on two women’s response to failure – intentional in one case, and desperately fought against in the other.
• Speaks to a US readership as concrete parallels can be drawn between city life and the middle- and upper class and the peripheries and the lower class. The widening income gap in America is an increasingly pressing topic, and the author captures the existential fear of losing everything by losing one’s job perfectly. The book can be read as a sharp satire on US society which crystalizes the pressure to perform and the economic divide in the country.
• Fresh and relevant title perfect for the significant surge of interest in works of dystopian fiction, in particular written by and for women (since we all feel that we suddenly live in a catastrophic dystopia which none of us thought was possible ...).
• The author’s experience in TV and Film make for a particularly visual read
JULIA VON LUCADOU was born in Heidelberg in 1982. She studied film and theater at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and Victoria University of Wellington and earned her PhD in Film Studies in 2015. Lucadou worked as both an assistant director and a television editor prior to writing The High-Rise Diver, her debut novel, which was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize in 2018. She splits her time between Biel, New York, and Cologne.
Originally from New York, SHARMILA COHEN came to Berlin in 2011 as a Fulbright Scholar to complete an experimental translation project with local poets. She now divides her time between both cities. Cohen is an award-winning writer and German-to-English translator who has translated the works of several leading German-language authors. Her work has been featured in publications such as BOMB and Harpers, and her projects span from poetry and literary fiction to crime and children’s stories.
