Power

English sample translation by Anthea Bell available
Recommended for translation by New Books in German

Love has never been so dark, or the end of the world so entertaining – Karen Duve’s new novel is insane, wicked, funny, prophetic and topical

It is 2031 and Doomsday is in the air: A government of women is in power, there are pills for eternal youth, the climate is out of control, religious sects predicting the end of the world are mushrooming, and a class reunion celebrating 50 years since its members left school is to be held in the suburbs of Hamburg. Thanks to the rejuvenation pill Ephebo, to which Sebastian Bürger, among others, owes his good looks, the former classmates, though now senior citizens, look only twenty or thirty. When Sebastian meets Elli, the secret love of his youth, he falls in love with her again.

Everything could be wonderful but for Sebastian’s ex-wife, the former Minister of the Environment, Nature Conservation, the Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants and Radioactive Waste Management. For the last two years he has kept her prisoner in his cellar, where she has to bake his favorite cookies and serve him in every way. But now she is an obstacle to his new love.

In trying to get rid of his wife, Sebastian sets off catastrophe after catastrophe…

Contact Foreign Rights
Rights sold to

Great Britain (World English): Dedalus

  • Publisher: Galiani-Berlin
  • Release: 18.02.2016
  • 416 pages
  • ISBN: 978-3-86971-008-2
Kerstin Ahlrichs

Karen Duve

Karen Duve, born in Hamburg in 1961, lives in the Märkische Schweiz area of Brandenburg. She has won numerous awards. Her novels Regenroman (“Rain”), Dies ist kein Liebeslied (“This Is Not a Love Song”), Die entführte Prinzessin (“The Abducted Princess”) and Taxi were bestsellers and have been translated into 14 languages. In 2011, she published Anständig essen. Ein Selbstversuch (“Eating Well”) and, in 2014, the polemic Warum die Sache schiefgeht (“Why Things Go Wrong”). Her novel Macht (published in GB under the title “The Prepper Room”) received the Kassel Literary Prize for Grotesque Humor 2017 and her last novel Fräulein Nettes kurzer Sommer (“Fräulein Nette's Brief Summer”) received the Düsseldorfer Literature Prize 2019. Karen Duve was recently awarded with the Soluthurner Literatur Prize 2019 and the Carl-Amery Literature Prize 2019 for her multifaceted oeuvre.