https://www.damionsearls.com/home daily 1.0 2025-12-19 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647627337530-459WGYP9BVIUHGEDJUA9/book25.jpeg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1904fd3f-99a5-4945-a577-43c0506fdea5/Nobel.jpeg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.damionsearls.com/about daily 0.75 2024-10-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/ee1befb9-f2bb-4128-a9cc-c9fb0a7e6cca/DamionSearls_BeowulfSheehan.jpg About - Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch and a writer in English. He has translated books by Nobel Prize winners Thomas Mann, Elfriede Jelinek, Hermann Hesse, Gide, Modiano, and Jon Fosse, as well as many other classic modern writers: Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche, Bachmann, Döblin, Robert Walser, Christa Wolf, Victoria Kielland, and Nescio. He has edited a one-volume abridgment of Henry David Thoreau’s Journal and produced a lost work of Hermann Melville’s; published criticism (Harper’s, Bookforum, New Republic), essays (Time, n+1, The Atlantic, The Believer), and poetry (Paris Review, New York Review of Books); and taught at universities (Princeton, Harvard, Wesleyan, Iowa Writers Program) and other venues (NYC Center for Fiction, 92nd St. Y, Naropa). His own books include What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going (stories), The Inkblots (a history of the Rorschach Test and biography of its creator, Hermann Rorschach, which has been translated into ten languages), and The Philosophy of Translation. Awards 2023 Ungar German Translation Award for Trees 2022 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Where You Come From 2022 Robert B. Silvers Work in Progress Grant for The Philosophy of Translation 2021 German Federal Order of Merit 2019 Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for Anniversaries 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship 2013 Cullman Center Fellowship 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship 2012 Leon Levy Biography Fellowship 2011 PEN Center USA Translation Award for Aliss at the Fire 2010 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Comedy in a Minor Key 2010 Austrian Cultural Forum Prize for Her Not All Her 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Acknowledgments Author photo: Beowulf Sheehan Website design: Deric Carner https://www.damionsearls.com/books daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1720818281030-KPLCHQKH3J4C69K2S7J9/Philosophy.jpg Books - Philosophy of Translation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647627337530-459WGYP9BVIUHGEDJUA9/book25.jpeg Books - Inkblots https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1748710070927-JCJFB2BBY2FTJ86ZLCAK/Analog+Days.jpg Books - Analog Days https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743357481882-87160DMWPN7DGKGM5NLG/Mariner.jpg Books - Mariner's Mirror https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743357127264-R7JDMZCUM3ED2JSMLAD3/a1.jpg Books - What We Were Doing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743357140861-YKH5DG42YG92DA7KE9A7/a2.jpg Books - Travelogue https://www.damionsearls.com/writing-videos daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://www.damionsearls.com/more-books daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743364831687-ZVVR6BRZQT9PLYB73BT1/Thoreau.jpeg More Books - The Journal https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743357966038-ZDIF6HKPQJ6MUJTP4GKX/book_lg9.jpg More Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1706201529564-100HSBMO7H9K95SUE64X/book32.jpg More Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1696270440163-GOCHHV9TQ9D62XLEPX9T/inner-sky.jpeg More Books - 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The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and The Power of Seeing The history of the Rorschach Test and the first-ever biography of its creator, Hermann Rorschach. Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by NPR - The NY Post - The Irish Independent - Sunday Times: Thought “Marvelous” —David Grann “Amazing” —Elif Batuman “Sure to become the standard” —Deirdre Bair See all blurbs “A rich, resonant book” —Sunday Times (UK) “Excellent” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “A richly detailed, sensitive biography” —Kirkus “All-consuming prose” —Signature, Best Books of the Month More reviews Buy now: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound / Publisher / Audiobook https://www.damionsearls.com/book27 daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/5221ec07-d4c3-413a-b7f9-cfff7d257ccf/anni.jpg Anniversaries - Uwe Johnson, Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl 4 vols. in a 2-vol. box set — The first complete translation into English Now available separately: vol. 1 / vol. 2 An ambitious historical novel, a wonderfully observed New York story, and a record of grappling with daily barrages of brutal, epoch-making news -- Uwe Johnson's great work covers a year in the life of a German mother and daughter on the Upper West Side, New York. In 367 chapters, from Aug. 20, 1967, to Aug 20, 1968 (1968 was a Leap Year), the book moves between past and present, Germany and America and Prague and Vietnam, the weight of the past and the demands of living your life in the present. Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon (NOT this edition!) See artist Joanna Neborsky’s supercut of cover designs https://www.damionsearls.com/wwwd daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/4b0f1355-0556-4a64-8979-5abdfcc34bb1/book1.jpg What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going - What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going Reissue with Everything You Say Is True forthcoming in 2026 Five wise and funny tales of intelligent characters feeling their way toward complex moral and personal truths. “[A] beautiful book.... Contemporary works of literature with an inner life are in short supply and one that so honorably serves and recognizes its lineage is pretty much beyond praise.” —The Brooklyn Rail “A bewitching snapshot of modern life.” —The Guardian (UK) “[An] impressive collection.... Searls draws his characters sharply and humanely. His meticulous and beautiful descriptions come naturally; not a phrase or a moment in the collection seems forced. Searls [is] a great stylist as well as a talented storyteller.” —Howard County Times (Baltimore/Washington D.C.) “I’ve read books this pleasurable before, but most of them have been in my dreams.” —Ed Park, author of Personal Days “as sensual as it is sophisticated...” “accomplished and erudite...” more reviews... Amazon / Publisher / Podcast / Excerpt / Interview / Readings https://www.damionsearls.com/book26 daily 0.75 2022-05-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647627337804-RC2XXWKANX6QELCFHRZW/book26.jpeg Bright Magic: Stories - Alfred Döblin, Bright Magic: Stories NYRB Classics, August 2016 “Essential anthology of short works by the master of German literary expressionism... many [of these stories] seemingly seek to defy all expectation.” —Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW Alfred Döblin was a titan of modern German literature. This collection of stories--astonishingly, the first collection of his stories ever published in English--shows him to have been equally adept in shorter forms. Included in its entirety is Döblin's first book, The Murder of a Buttercup, a work of savage brilliance and a landmark of literary expressionism. Mortality roams the streets of nineteenth-century Manhattan, with a white borzoi and a quiet smile. A ballerina duels to the death with the stupid childish body she is bound to. We experience, in the celebrated title story, a dizzying descent into a shattered mind. The collection is rounded off with two longer stories written when Döblin was in exile from Nazi Germany in Southern California, including "Traffic with the Beyond," the hilarious story of a spiritualist medium called in to investigate a murder by asking the victim himself what happened. Publisher/ IndieBound / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/young-once daily 0.75 2023-01-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647627338405-RKBVK0I0X21ZH11AU2A2/book30.jpeg Young Once - Patrick Modiano, Young Once NYRB, 2016 “The most gripping Modiano book of all.” —Der Spiegel “The most French book I’ve ever read. It’s a thriller that isn’t very thrilling, if that makes sense. Yet I loved it. It’s slow-moving and graceful with a bit of ennui throughout. Peaceful pacing fits with warm-weather lazy days.” —Lucy Dacus of boygenius, Vogue A crucial book in the career of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, where he stripped away the difficulties of his earlier work and found a clear voice for his haunting stories of love, nostalgia, and grief. Odile and Louis are leading a happy, bucolic life with their two children in the French countryside near the Swiss mountains. It is Odile’s thirty-fifth birthday; Louis’s thirty-fifth birthday is a few weeks away. Then the story shifts back to their early years: coming together in a Paris saturated with the crimes and secrets of the past but breathing hopes for the future, they struggle to create what, looking back, will have been their youth. “Clinging to the last of their dreams, alone and lost in Paris, Odile and Louis both become compromised by wartime morality. Modiano’s stark, unadorned style is anything but simple... Unlike some of Modiano’s later plots that lose steam halfway through or stubbornly refuse to tie up at the end, the plot of Young Once continues to build throughout.” —Shelf Awareness (Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle) Amazon (NOT this!) / Indie Bound / Publisher https://www.damionsearls.com/book22 daily 0.75 2022-05-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647627566302-6JCANSNO10H66T5YQV2F/81%2B2Y7LOavL.jpeg A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories - Robert Walser, A Schoolboy’s Diary and Other Stories Introduction by Ben Lerner NYRB Classics, 2013 Over seventy stories, vignettes, and prose pieces, most of them never before translated, around themes of (schoolboyish) beginnings and (diaristic) writing. The collection includes the entire opening sequence of Walser’s first book, Fritz Kocher’s Essays, framed as the posthumously gathered schoolroom assignments of a young tween--the perfect vehicle for Walser’s dizzying slips between naivete and irony, awkwardness and virtuosity. The book also includes “Hans,” one of Walser’s longest stories: his Magic Mountain. “There is no one like Walser. Utterly original... Sophisticated stories disguised in simplicity.” —Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian (UK) “[Walser’s] groundbreaking 1904 Fritz Kocher's Essays ... made me feel for the first time that I understood what all the fuss is about.” —Lorin Stein, Paris Review Daily Fritz Kocher in The Paris Review / a story in n+1 Publisher / Amazon / Indie Bound Related: “Circle Dance,” an uncollected Walser story Translations of a dozen Walser poems in Thomas Schütte, Watercolors NYRB Classics and Coffee Club https://www.damionsearls.com/book8 daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/862f301b-2284-4378-9ee4-c2582e9fe321/9781590173213.jpeg The Journal - Henry David Thoreau, The Journal NYRB Classics, November 2009 Preface by John R. Stilgoe Thoreau’s 7,000-page Journal was, in every possible sense, his life’s work: the daily practice that accompanied his daily walks, the source from which he drew his books and essays, and perhaps the most searching investigation ever made into the everyday environment, seasonal changes, and the ecology or interrelations among different facets of nature and the moods and mind of the observer. It is a treasure trove of some of the finest prose in the English language. There are other available editions with selections from the Journal, but none capacious enough to be a true one-volume abridgment of the whole. 48-minute interview (audio) on Open Source / Huffington Post Read Searls's Introduction / Stilgoe's Preface / Interview / Reviews (Washington Post, Booklist) / Publisher / Amazon “It is the unflagging beauty of the writing, day after day, that confirms its greatness among writers’ journals. It is not natural for a man to write this well every day. Only a man who had no other life but to practice a particularly intense and truthful kind of prose could have done it.” —Alfred Kazin “At times he seems to reach beyond our human powers in what he perceives upon the horizon of humanity.... Thoreau defined his own position to the world not only with unflinching honesty, but with a glow of rapture at his heart.... [All his books] are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries [and with the Journal] we have a chance of getting to know Thoreau as few people are known, even by their friends.” —Virginia Woolf Related(?!): Waldageddon! https://www.damionsearls.com/book29 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631192497-6JUFTUKKU4SLHSM926Y5/book29.jpeg Anti-Education - Friedrich Nietzsche, Anti-Education (On the Future of Our Educational Institutions) NYRB, 2015 Five little-known lectures from 1872, shortly afterThe Birth of Tragedy, in the form of a crazy sort-of-Platonic dialogue (two frat boys hike up into the mountains for shooting practice and meet a cranky philosopher and his dog...). Nietzsche's penetrating diagnosis of the sad state of humanities education is as relevant today as ever: he argues that society is putting too much emphasis on skills training so that people can go out and make money and devote themselves to the state; that professors are no longer capable of asking big questions, so they focus on ever-more-specialized minutiae; that democracy might not be compatible with humanistic inquiry; and he wonders what can become of education when its only end is economic utility. The Paris Review: Back to School with the Übermensch Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/inner-sky daily 0.75 2023-10-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647627336749-476XIL1S2YC2SCX3RCQ6/book_lg10.jpeg The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams - Rainer Maria Rilke, The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams David R. Godine; selected and translated from German and French Winner of a 2007 NEA in Translation “[It] feels like a dream in which you can understand perfectly a language you didn’t think you knew. Rilke’s thrilling precision and disorientations and purposefulness are all suddenly there....” —Jonathan Franzen “Wonderfully fresh and concentrated.... In Searls we have a fascinating new interpreter.” —John Banville “Reading these pages is like pulling out your pockets expecting to find nothing but lining, and discovering instead a neglected roll of bills. [An] original and revelatory translation...” —William Gass Excerpts in Paris Review / on PEN.org Publisher / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/book12 daily 0.75 2022-04-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/7bd18fa6-a374-46a3-aa35-9c8cf98f56b1/comedy.jpeg Comedy in a Minor Key - Hans Keilson, Comedy in a Minor Key FSG (US) and Hesperus (UK); translated from German National Book Critics Circle Award finalist New York Times Notable Book of 2010 A Salon.com Best Book of the Year Winner of the 2011 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize "A masterpiece, and Hans Keilson is a genius... [one] of the world's very greatest writers." —Francine Prose (review / podcast) "One of the best short novels I've ever read." —Andre Alexis, The Globe and Mail A lost Holocaust classic by a German-Jewish resistance hero, first published in 1947 and never before translated into English. Comedy in a Minor Key, a penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation and a dark comedy of wartime manners, tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who hide a Jew they know as Nico during WWII. When Nico dies of pneumonia, how will Wim and Marie dispose of the body without getting posthumously caught? Also translated by Damion Searls: Keilson's first novel, Life Goes On His wartime journal from the year he wrote Comedy, 1944 Diary Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/book14 daily 0.75 2022-05-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/d9cd14f2-b2c8-4811-af81-cf4fa1229213/amsterdam-stories.jpeg Amsterdam Stories - Nescio, Amsterdam Stories Introduction by Joseph O’Neill NYRB Classics, 2012; selected and translated from Dutch Winner of awards from the PEN Translation Fund (2008), the Netherland America Foundation (2007, 2010), and the Dutch Literature Fund (2010, 2011) “Crushing beauty.... For me, reading Amsterdam Stories was like watching Casablanca.” —The Millions “The three main stories in this book deliver riches that defy their brevity. Nescio is revered in the Netherlands and Germany, and this generous little book shows why.” —The Irish Times No one has written more feelingly than Nescio about the courage and vulnerability of youth: its big plans and vague longings, marathon walks and talks. And no one has written with such pristine clarity about the canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands. Nescio — Latin for “I don’t know” and part of the Dutch way of saying “Anonymous” (N.N. or Nomen Nescio, “name not known”) — was the pen name of J.H.F. Grönloh, highly successful director of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company and a father of four. Only in his spare time did he let himself go, producing a handful of utterly original stories. First line: the essay First line: the poster! podcast from City Lights Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/sundays daily 0.75 2024-01-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647627630100-G930M6AMR8XSFZ520NLZ/thumb-26478.gif Sundays in August - Patrick Modiano, Sundays in August Yale-Margellos, 2017 “While I have admired Modiano’s books, to varying degrees, I had not fallen in love with any of his work, until now: his crime novel Sundays in August snuck up on me and struck me deeply. I loved it!" —The Mookse and the Gripes Perhaps the most suspenseful, noirish Modiano — mistaken identities, stolen diamonds, missing persons — set in sun-drenched Nice, not Paris like most of his other novels. Amazon / Indie Bound / Publisher https://www.damionsearls.com/book9 daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631187795-WN1DY5NYM3VYA7ISOX1G/book_lg2.jpeg Everything You Say Is True - Everything You Say Is True: A Travelogue Reissue with What We Were Doing… forthcoming in 2026 Rare small-press first book, not available in bookstores or online Six countries, twenty moments of experience — not the places themselves, but what it feels like to change and be changed. Available ONLY here Excerpt https://www.damionsearls.com/-or-the-whale daily 0.75 2024-11-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631189207-1PNZKP5HK7JW909MRH49/book_lg9.gif ; or The Whale - Herman Melville, ; or The Whale Review of Contemporary Fiction, special issue, Summer 2009 In 2007, Orion Books produced Moby-Dick in Half the Time, a Compact Edition “sympathetically edited” to “retain all the elements of the originals: the plot, the characters, the social, historical and local backgrounds and the author’s language and style.” ; or The Whale is an abridgment that preserves the elements missing from that list—digression, texture, weirdness—by keeping every chapter, word, and punctuation mark of Melville’s original Moby Dick; or The Whale that was removed from Orion’s edition. Press release / Excerpts / Interviews I / II / Facebook / Amazon Believer magazine cover story (“funny and fascinating”) “Decidedly quixotic.” —The Globe and Mail “There’s a touch of Pierre Menard about [it].” —London Review blog “Weird, atmospheric, and compelling.... Once you begin reading this, it’s bizarrely difficult to stop.” —The Rumpus “All Moby, no Dick.” — Adam Gopnik https://www.damionsearls.com/demian daily 0.75 2024-12-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631190745-MVNXC3W467MLVRILIUXT/book_lg21.jpeg Demian - Hermann Hesse, Demian Foreword by James Franco Penguin Classics, 2013 Hermann Hesse’s timeless tale of self-discovery in “[an] excellent new translation.” -The Times Literary Supplement Read the opening of the novel Autonym bonus: Aragon’s Damien More Hesse: Trees Amazon / Indie Bound / Reading group guide https://www.damionsearls.com/book19 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/a09a18de-0525-47f7-a0ba-1f90b5708030/cityofangles.jpeg City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud - Christa Wolf, City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud FSG, 2013; translated from German The masterful last novel by one of East Germany's great writers. Deeply autobiographical, the book takes place in Los Angeles in 1992-93, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the East Germany. It tells of the Clinton-Bush election, the homeless in America, the aftermath of the L.A. riots, the traces of an earlier emigration of German artists and intellectuals to southern California, and life at the heart of "what we are now allowed to call Capitalism again," while reflecting on the failures of memory and of her own country's utopian dreams. "Defying superlatives and superbly translated, [an] extraordinary autobiographical novel.... Written in a ruminative style, mournful and rueful, though occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, Wolf's complex tale conveys every shade of agonized reflection on forgetting and remembering." —Booklist (starred review) "Connoisseur of uncertainty, archeologist of delusion, Wolf...offers up, against hatred, what can only be called honesty, even if the idea of an honest novel sounds like a category error. City of Angels is a profound book, even a heroic one." —Todd Gitlin, The New Republic / "Searls's excellent translation" —The New Yorker / "Intensely autobiographical and vividly imagined at once...a nervy, vibrant translation" —David Ulin, L.A. Times / "Wolf's engrossing and sometimes frustrating last work... The most extraordinary scenes in Wolf's book document her complex love-hate relationship with East Germany." —Joshua Hammer, N.Y. Times IndieBound / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/morning-evening daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/9a7bef61-6a62-4dc2-97cc-095aa95f9851/Morning-and-Evening.jpg Morning and Evening - Jon Fosse, Morning and Evening Dalkey Archive, 2015; Fitzcarraldo, 2024 Chapter 1 is a twenty-page childbirth scene, partly from the baby’s point of view. Chapter 2, eighty pages, is the last day in the life of the old man who was born in Chapter 1. Pow! “Searls’s translation is delicate and rhythmic. Fosse is a great novelist of our time, and if you haven’t already discovered him for yourself, this short, sublime novel may be the perfect opportunity.” — Rónán Hession, Irish Times Essay on translating Fosse and Knausgaard: Pure Prose An Irish Examiner Writer’s Pick Book of the Year: “Hypnotic, hallucinatory, and utterly compelling.... Morning and Evening is a breathtaking read. Damion Searls deserves high praise for the remarkably readable translation, and it is a testament to his skill that he can replicate Fosse's stylistic ambition while still preserving the book’s larger sense of compression.... [Fosse] is undoubtedly one of the world’s most important and versatile literary voices, [and] with this short novel, he has created something special and important, an unforgettable reading experience, and one of the books of the year.” — Billy O’Callaghan UK Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon (US edition, often unavailable) Also an opera by Georg Haass, premiered at the Royal Opera House in London. Other Fosse translations Septology A Shining Vaim Aliss at the Fire Melancholy I-II Scenes from a Childhood (stories) A Silent Language: The Nobel Lecture How It Was (play) https://www.damionsearls.com/aliss daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/53e4277f-09fb-4341-aa46-c0ec60b84978/61lVr1yMskL.jpeg Aliss at the Fire - Jon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire Dalkey Archive, 2010; republished by Fitzcarraldo, 2022 (their 100th book!) PEN Center USA Translation Award, 2011 A TLS book of the year, 2022 Fosse’s visionary Scandinavian marriage novel. “Though it’s true that his books are thoughtful and spare, they are also hopeful in a deeply spiritual way… My advice is to read everything by Fosse, but if the larger Septology seems too intimidating to start with, Aliss at the Fire provides, in capsule form, a worthy introduction.” — Rónán Hession, The Irish Times reading/interview opening lines Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon Other Fosse translations Septology A Shining Vaim Melancholy I-II Morning and Evening Scenes from a Childhood (stories) A Silent Language (the Nobel Prize lecture) How It Was (play) https://www.damionsearls.com/book17 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/5f914694-08c3-4839-9600-a2d8d1ebfd3a/book_lg17.jpg HER NOT ALL HER - Elfriede Jelinek, HER NOT ALL HER on/with Robert Walser Cahiers, 2012; translated from German Winner of the 2011 Austrian Cultural Foundation NY Translation Award Sylph Editions - Cahiers / Center for Writers and Translators https://www.damionsearls.com/book15 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/b38f81b7-8e48-4453-991b-6b329e4935a2/annFrank.jpeg Anne Frank's Family - Mirjam Pressler with Gerti Elias, Anne Frank's Family: The Extraordinary Story of Where She Came From Previously titled Treasures from the Attic Anchor (US) and Penguin (UK), 2011; translated from German Based on more than 6,000 newly discovered letters, documents, and photos A lively and moving family chronicle of the Franks from the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt in 1800 to the survivors in the present. "This book breathes new life into our view of Anne Frank, whom until now we could only see through the prism of her diary." —Süddeutsche Zeitung "A gripping family saga ... full of dazzling and colorful characters." —Brigitte Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon / New York Times on Buddy Elias (Anne Frank's cousin "Bernd") and the background to this book https://www.damionsearls.com/book16 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631187743-OIPEYNKX716IPK3SGMQE/book_kippenberger.jpeg Kippenberger - Susanne Kippenberger, Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families J&L Books, 2011; translated from German The richly detailed biography of the German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-97), based on hundreds of interviews and intimate personal knowledge of his life and background. "A tender, reasonably cleareyed, oddly gripping account of [Kippenberger's] headlong plunge through life.... [Written] in a brisk, personable style that has been sensitively translated by Damion Searls, who has also done justice to Martin Kippenberger's penchants for non sequiturs, malapropisms and skewed aphorisms (Never give up before it's too late)." —Roberta Smith, New York Times Book Review Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon / Author Susanne Kippenberger on the book in The Paris Review https://www.damionsearls.com/scenes daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631192519-NNZ0SON01MWUMGFBQ757/book31.jpeg Scenes from a Childhood - Jon Fosse, Scenes from a Childhood Fitzcarraldo, 2017 The first collection of short stories by Fosse in English, this career-spanning selection includes an autobiography of childhood and adolescence in a mosaic of short scenes, and a haunting, intense novella about a man who finds out that his neighbor has killed his dog. “Jon Fosse is a major European writer.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard “Fosse’s prose ... builds out of an ambiguity and sparseness and moves with a slow poetic intensity... The collection has all the hallmarks of Fosse’s signature brooding manner where lyrical precision is used to paint unmoored psyches, [and] benefits greatly from Damion Searls’s adroitly measured translation.” —Tank Magazine “The stories included here boast a rich emotionality as well as a complex blending of reality and dream... This is powerful work.” Berfrois Publisher / Amazon Other Fosse translations Septology A Shining Vaim Melancholy I-II Morning and Evening Aliss at the Fire A Silent Language (the Nobel Prize lecture) How It Was (play) https://www.damionsearls.com/melancholy daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/169153c5-395c-4092-a059-5159ccd36cf4/Melancholy+I-II.jpg Melancholy - Jon Fosse, Melancholy I-II Reprint of Melancholy (Dalkey, 2006; co-translated with Grethe Kvernes), Fosse’s first fiction in English, together with a new translation of Melancholy II and a translator’s afterword The inner visions and struggles of Lars Hertervig, a young painter from the Norwegian provinces in Germany, in prose reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard at his most nightmarish and Ingmar Bergman at his most mystical. “The only question I have is why, since Fosse is as good as this, I haven't heard of him before now.” —Brian Evenson Publisher / Amazon Also by Jon Fosse: Septology A Shining Vaim Aliss at the Fire Morning and Evening Scenes from a Childhood (stories) A Silent Language (the Nobel Prize lecture) How It Was (play) https://www.damionsearls.com/book5 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/e975b8f0-06ac-440a-8afc-42646d6fb7e4/kalng2.jpeg A Trip to Klagenfurt - Uwe Johnson, A Trip to Klagenfurt with "Youth in an Austrian Town" by Ingeborg Bachmann; tr. from German A brilliant collage-biography of one major twentieth-century writer by another. Johnson and Bachmann were friends, and after her sensationalized death in 1973 Johnson made a pilgrimage to her home town, collected newspaper, tourist brochures, and other facts, and constructed a scrupulously discreet record of her surroundings, and indirectly of her life. Amazon "This book is ... utterly successful in its attempt to approach the truth. It is a model biography." —Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll, 1974 https://www.damionsearls.com/book4 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631188244-DFUI0MDP4Z1QASEJS3VX/book_lg4.jpeg Letters to Felician - Ingeborg Bachmann, Letters to Felician Green Integer, 2004; edited, introduced and translated from German An unclassifiable work by the great postwar Austrian poet and prose writer. These letters, written when Bachmann was only 18 and 19 and about to go to college, are passionate declarations of love to a male figure, Felician, but as in Emily Dickinson's "Master Letters" the recipient may well be imaginary: the one she longs to throw herself at the feet of is her own creative, intellectual life. The male/female splitting foreshadows her masterpiece Malina, and the letters are also a hymn to the beauty of southern Austria, underlying Bachmann's utopian visions of her later work. This edition's reordering of the German text and inclusion of additional poems is now the basis of, for example, the French edition. Amazon Bachmann biography Online resources (in German) https://www.damionsearls.com/book11 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/0c4d6222-8158-409b-ab9d-1f37b51e33fe/on.jpeg On Reading - Marcel Proust and John Ruskin, On Reading Hesperus; selected and translated from French Marcel Proust's breathtaking essay "On Reading" was originally his preface to his translation into French of John Ruskin's book about reading, Sesame and Lilies. It is also the first example of Proust's mature fictional style, with marvelous scenes of vacation reading in his childhood home. Finally, he added hundreds of footnotes to Ruskin's text, often arguing against Ruskin or providing his own little mini-essays on Proustian topics such as lung doctors and Maeterlinck. This first English publication of Proust's essay together with large portions of Sesame and Lilies and Proust's footnotes is at once a rediscovery of Ruskin's great and beautiful work, some of Proust's best writing outside Remembrance of Things Past, and a unique artifact of the creative art of translation. "The excellent idea of this volume is to bring together [the two:] Proust's glorious and much anthologized essay on reading [and] Ruskin's own ideas [which] can sound surprisingly modern." —Guardian (UK) Amazon / Amazon UK https://www.damionsearls.com/book6 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/f24dad4c-a66a-489b-8599-9c88bcc17eb4/thankyou.jpeg Thank You For Not Reading - Dubravka Ugrešić, Thank You For Not Reading Dalkey Archive, 2003; co-translated from Croatian with the author and Celia Hawkesworth "A fast-moving, brilliant compendium of reflections and polemics about contemporary literary culture.... It also made me laugh out loud on at least a dozen occasions.... It is hard in a short space to do justice to the sparkling, Flaubertian satire and profound anthropological quality of these essays.... [Ugrešić] is a writer, and this is a book, to be treasured." (Guardian UK) Amazon Ugrešić website https://www.damionsearls.com/book7 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1b6b5353-f54f-4e11-8f33-c7fc23c1fe08/515S4uWBC-L.jpeg Lend Me Your Character - Dubravka Ugrešić, Lend Me Your Character Dalkey Archive, 2005; co-translated from Croatian with the author and Celia Hawkesworth, except for two stories translated by Michael Henry Heim Two short early books by Ugrešić in one volume. Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life, a "patchwork novel" of a young secretary's search for Mr. Right, is the greatest feminine and feminist postmodern book in any language. Life Is a Fairy Tale, six hilarious stories rewriting and revisiting a wide range of world literature, was a major inspiration for my book of rewritten tales What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going. Amazon Ugrešić website https://www.damionsearls.com/book20 daily 0.75 2022-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1647631186619-B4N23EAZ4N11AP5511YE/book_berger2.jpeg Angel of the Poor - Clemens Berger, Angel of the Poor, a comedy Dalkey Archive, 2005; co-translated from Croatian with the author and Celia Hawkesworth, except for two stories translated by Michael Henry Heim Two short early books by Ugrešić in one volume. Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life, a "patchwork novel" of a young secretary's search for Mr. Right, is the greatest feminine and feminist postmodern book in any language. Life Is a Fairy Tale, six hilarious stories rewriting and revisiting a wide range of world literature, was a major inspiration for my book of rewritten tales What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going. Amazon Ugrešić website https://www.damionsearls.com/marshlands daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/f9715624-bd5e-423a-97cd-5d33ddac05c2/marshlands.jpg Marshlands - André Gide, Marshlands NYRB Classics, 2021 An unnamed narrator is writing a book called Marshlands—his friends all think it’s boring, his girlfriend wishes he’d commit, he has literary parties to go to and he says he hates literary parties… It is not 2010s Brooklyn, it is 1890s Paris. Nobel Prize winner André Gide’s most timeless novel, a pioneering work of autofiction/metafiction, is a truly hilarious look at the pretentiousness, but also real emotional stakes, of the writer’s life. There’s something compelling in Gide’s perception that all of us are trapped, regardless of the pandemic, in some kind of lifelong lockdown, the days essentially featureless, relieved only by trivialities like our meaningless work, our predictable cultural products and our irrelevant public affairs. — Ken Kalfus, The New York Times Book Review In the lightest, most Parisian way [Marshlands] foreshadows the 20th-century preoccupation with intertextuality, books-within-books, perilously shifting levels of reality and the blurring between genres. — Edmund White, London Review of Books First published in 1895, Marshlands is an antic anti-novella about writing, friendship, envy, and ambition that is as crisply funny as anything written since. — Ed Park, “Best Books of the Year,” Bookforum I don’t understand a single thing in Marshlands. Did I write the book? — André Gide Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/book41 daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/cb20544b-4cbd-4dda-9eb6-f789615a9e6d/book_41.jpg Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet for the first time in English with the Letters from the “Poet” to Rilke Liveright, 2020 Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/where-from daily 0.75 2024-04-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/e6af941f-f0a2-49eb-a451-632e9606986e/book_43.jpg Where You Come From - Saša Stanišić, Where You Come From Tin House / Jonathan Cape, 2021 Winner of the 2019 GERMAN BOOK PRIZE 2022 SCHLEGEL-TIECK PRIZE for Translation from German BEST 21st CENTURY GERMAN NOVELS: #1 — Katy Derbyshire 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD longlist A Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, Kirkus, and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month “Inventive, funny and moving.” —The New York Times Book Review “Wonderfully inventive and impressive.” —The Guardian “In this astounding translation, Searls achieves the seemingly impossible: he captures the novel’s remarkable breadth of tone – from gentle humour to profound sadness and righteous anger, sometimes in the same sentence… Searls somersaults his way through this playful book. His keen sense of rhythm and celebratory approach to the translator’s task make Where You Come From as much a joy to read in English as it is in German.” — Katy Derbyshire, judges’ statement for Schlegel-Tieck Prize US / UK / IndieBound / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/septology daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1575a4da-2750-46e7-b894-732255fe6f8f/Septology.jpg Septology - Septology (seven parts in three volumes) A best book of the year: New Yorker, TLS, Irish Times, Bookforum 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD finalist 2022 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD finalist 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE finalist 2022 REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE finalist 2022 OXFORD-WEIDENFELD PRIZE longlist 2022 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD longlist 2021 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD longlist 2021 NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD longlist 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE longlist “Translated with astonishing grace by Damion Searls… so transcendent that not only is it my best book of the year 2022, it ties 2666 by Roberto Bolaño as my favorite book from the 21st century.” — Lauren Groff Fosse himself on the translation: “In my opinion Damion’s translation is very close to how I experience the Norwegian original, of course expressed in its own way… I feel that Damion has an unbelievable talent for understanding what I write and transforming it into an English that is different but still keeps, so to speak, the music of my language, in the way that’s possible in English. I must admit that it is sometimes a mystery to me how he does it!” The Other Name - US / UK I Is Another - US / UK A New Name - US / UK In one volume - US / UK / Australia Deluxe one-volume in Fitzcarraldo First Decade Collection https://www.damionsearls.com/schwitters daily 0.75 2022-07-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986051101-DV7VIP7LGLD3N5KPEZPQ/schwitters_Page_1.jpg Schwitters https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986512346-BDUJDK5DYP24LSBZWSUE/schwitters_Page_2.jpg Schwitters https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986281415-H02QCC38CI1VUTHZ9E28/schwitters_Page_3.jpg Schwitters https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986315619-RL78RAN9UX4SGZL28B5V/schwitters_Page_4.jpg Schwitters https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986406111-78PAOPUGUQGZAL5S3PXL/schwitters_Page_5.jpg Schwitters https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986446590-FIZLEXQEYANJY8GVF2GB/schwitters_Page_6.jpg Schwitters https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986544031-I3WFU5VCIZHAKWCSNKFV/schwitters_Page_7.jpg Schwitters https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1657986572337-XXGD2OMCGR5JEI759EZO/schwitters_Page_8.jpg Schwitters https://www.damionsearls.com/bambi daily 0.75 2024-04-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/cc1f5059-0dff-4867-9750-ff9f709b678f/bambi+hi+res.jpg Bambi - Felix Salten, Bambi NYRB Classics, 2022 Bambi first came out in Vienna a hundred years ago, the work of a Viennese litterateur, journalist, Zionist, pornographer, and man about town, and it was an immediate success with readers. An English translation (by Whittaker Chambers(!?) and with an introduction by Nobel Prize winner John Galsworthy) soon appeared: it was well reviewed and sold half a million copies. When Walt Disney made his famous movie of the book, Salten’s intimate, delicate, poetic, and gripping tale of forest life came to be seen as a children’s book—it certainly is one that children can enjoy, but it is also a moving and lasting contribution to the literature of the natural world. In this new translation, Bambi and his mother, the groves and thickets of the forest, the open and dangerous space of the great field, the ever-present threat of the human—the whole intricate weave of life and death that Salten handles so deftly—come alive for a new generation of readers. Bambi is a delicious book. Delicious not only for children but for those who are no longer so fortunate. For delicacy of perception and essential truth I hardly know of any story of animals that can stand beside this life study of a forest deer. Felix Salten is a poet. — John Galsworthy Thanks to a new translation from Damion Searls…, Salten’s name and prose and the true, complex spirit of Bambi are finally restored. — Farah Abdessamad, The [New York] Observer Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/mann daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/b298c862-2492-47c4-aecb-3280af3390df/Mann.jpg Mann - Thomas Mann, New Selected Stories Including “Death in Venice” and Mann’s greatest story, “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” Liveright, 2023 “Searls infuses the prose of Nobel laureate Mann with momentum and energy in this excellent collection.” — Publishers Weekly “A profound new translation… Although it contains a magnificent rendition of his classic novella Death in Venice,… the greatest achievement of this book may very well be recontextualizing Mann within the jumbled, pan-continental tradition he shares with other expatriate writers like Joyce and Nabokov.” — vulture.com, “New Books You Should Read” “Superb translations of Mann’s most essential short works… Searls is meticulous in his attention to German-language nuance but intuitive in channeling the tensions and rhythms of his source material.” — Booklist, starred review “A well-chosen, confidently translated gathering of stories that casts new light on its author… Fresh, revealing… Searls [brings] Mann’s decades-old prose to life without anachronism or false breeziness.” — Kirkus, starred review Publisher / IndieBound / Amazon Blurbs “I have long loved Thomas Mann’s subtlety, erudition, and elegant mind, but it wasn’t until reading these newly translated stories that I picked up the range of the author’s irony and humor. The art of translation seems to me the most delicate and precise of literary arts, and Damion Searls stands at the very apex of translators into English.” — Lauren Groff, author of Matrix “Damion Searls has produced the perfect Mann translation; the author’s erudition and aesthetic sensibility are mutually enhanced instead of one being sacrificed for the other. Mann has never been more readable in English, and the English reader never more aware of the shining beauty of the source.” — Anton Hur, translator “Although Mann’s stories are more than a century old, Damion Searls’s new translations capture the writer’s sly humor and warmth, making these short masterpieces feel wholly modern. Readers who know Mann will see him anew; for those who haven’t read him yet, this collection is a superb introduction to one of the greats.” — Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind “Searls’s selections of this funny, ironic, exceptionally readable 20th-century writer’s work are as inspired as his engaging and lucid translations: here we have the slow-burning torment and humiliation of ‘Louisey,’ the charming irony of ‘Confessions of a Con Artist, By Felix Krull,’ the startling emotional acuity of ‘A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook,’ and the great rediscovery, ‘Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow,’ which condenses a novel’s worth of empathy, family conflict, and fine-grained observation into a riveting story less than forty pages long. Towering above all is ‘Death in Venice’—the extraordinary pandemic tale, refreshed and haunting in its best-ever translation. I’ve spent years waiting for the Mannaissance—the publication of New Selected Stories will, at last, bring it into being.” — Mark Krotov, coeditor, n+1 https://www.damionsearls.com/my-men daily 0.75 2025-08-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/e8a19649-56f1-48fd-b84b-1a862a4f38e1/Kielland.jpg My Men - Victoria Kielland, My Men A Best Crime Novel of 2023 — NY Times A Best Book of 2023: Mystery — Wall Street Journal A Best Book We Read in 2023 — Chicago Review A Best International Crime Novel of 2023 and Best Historical Fiction of 2023 — Crime Reads Dublin Literary Award (currently on longlist) “A stylistic tour de force . . . It reads like an expressionist prose-poem penned by a stark-minded zealot . . . Kielland is clearly a gifted writer, and My Men is an impressively realized creation.” — Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal “This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read.” — Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle “Kielland’s dense, lyrical novel offers both insight and opacity . . . Despite the subject matter, this novel is not your typical thriller. The language, in Searls’s translation, is dense, poetic, and deeply figurative.” — Kirkus Reviews “Splendidly translated by Damion Searls… Kielland plumbs Belle’s inner life through jaggedly rhythmic prose, where what should be obvious is sometimes opaque and what’s often shrouded — female rage — takes center stage.” — New York Times From Victoria Kielland, a rising star of Norwegian literature, comes My Men, a literary reimagining of the harrowing true story of Norwegian maid turned Midwestern farmwife Belle Gunness, the first female serial killer in American history. Among thousands of other Norwegian immigrants seeking freedom, Brynhild Størset emigrated to the American Upper Midwest in the late nineteenth century, changing her name and her life. As Bella, later Belle Gunness, she came in search of not only fortune and faith but, most of all, love. In pursuit of her American Dream, Kielland’s Belle grows increasingly alienated, ruthless, and perversely compelling. Raw, visceral, and altogether hypnotic, My Men has won several literary prizes in Norway, been translated into a dozen languages, and is a brutal yet radically empathetic glimpse into the world of a woman consumed by desire. Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/trees daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/e653a59b-db0e-4145-a436-28b4bdf76e82/trees.jpg Trees - Hermann Hesse, Trees Kales Press, 2022 Winner of the American Translators Association Frederick Ungar Award An elegant collection of Hesse’s essays, poems, and passages on the subject of trees, with thirty-two of his watercolors, selected by the world’s leading expert on Hesse, Volker Michels. Hesse understood trees to be symbols of transcendence and rebirth, of instinctive growth present in all natural life. This anthology reveals his inspired thoughts on nature, spirituality, and self-knowledge. “[A] slender gem of a book… One of humanity’s most beautiful love letters to trees.” — Maria Popova, The Marginalian “This beautiful collection of some of his essays and poems, focused on trees, will be balm for your soul.” — Manhattan Book Review “Extraordinary and unreservedly recommended.” ― Midwest Book Review “A lovely book…. Right into the heart of the matter.” — Patheos More Hesse: Demian Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/shining daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/ecc8f03f-b0a3-49df-949b-d58757e86a41/shining2.jpg A Shining - Jon Fosse, A Shining Transit Books / Fitzcarraldo, 2023 A New Yorker Best Book of the Year A World Literature Today Notable Translation of the Year Finalist for the inaugural Cercador Prize In Fosse’s first novel since his acclaimed Septology, a man feels himself at a loss and just starts driving. He turns right, then left, then right, and ultimately finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road. It soon grows dark and starts to snow. But he ventures into the dark woods. “ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 A perfect introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning author’s work… The prose in A Shining is radiant, as if Fosse were sculpting it in light.” — The Telegraph “If [the 670-page Septology] is a daunting entry point, I bring you tidings of great joy: A Shining is only 75 pages long and made up of short, simple sentences; it’s also, somehow, a luminous and subtle rewriting of the entire Divine Comedy…. A Shining (beautifully and brilliantly translated, as was Septology, by Damion Searls) affords an excellent occasion to make a stronger case for why reading Fosse is a singular and transporting experience.” — The New York Times “In this spare tale of disorientation and longing, [Fosse’s] bracingly clear prose imbues the story’s ambiguities with a profundity both revelatory and familiar.” — The New Yorker “[Fosse’s] fiction rather astonishingly dissolves the border between the material and the spiritual worlds... After I finished the last book of Septology, I walked around in a haze for a long while, simply grateful to be alive. The work is so breathtakingly strange and unclassifiable…, [but] one of Fosse’s peculiarities is how accessible his work is to nearly anyone who’ll allow themselves to simply succumb and let the gentle waves of his prose break over them. Some of this accessibility is surely due to Fosse’s translator into English, the great Damion Searls, whose intelligence, subtlety and attention to rhythm are again evident in A Shining… I think the great splendour of Fosse’s fiction is that it so deeply rejects any singular interpretation; as one reads, the story does not sound a clear singular note, but rather becomes a chord with all the many possible interpretations ringing out at once.” — Lauren Groff, The Guardian “At once a concise and fable-like summation of the larger themes that Fosse has worked his entire career towards delineating while also a baffling, oneiric, and deeply strange novel that totally resists comprehensibility, clarity and closure. It might be the worst place to start with Fosse, but only because it is so perfectly and completely Fosse-ian. Reading it first is like spending your first night of drinking slamming shots of absinthe; it wouldn’t give you a necessarily representative idea of ‘alcohol’ but it still might be the most alcoholic drink possible. Let’s chase the green fairy then!” — Evan Reads “A man ventures into a dark forest, where he is confronted by some kind of amorphous, luminous presence—the ‘shining’ of the title…. A Shining feels momentous, even at fewer than 50 pages. You never quite know where you’re going. But it doesn’t matter: you want to follow, to move in step with the rhythm of these words…. The writing is transporting and moving and painful; it’s writing that forces a reckoning with the part of us who also feels alone in the woods, and wants to be rescued and brought towards the light.” — Financial Times “Though publishers see long stories as something of a misfit in marketing terms, I’m a fan of them – they’re the perfect length for an immersive single-sitting read… The translation by Damion Searls perfectly judges the pitch and rhythm of this mental flow, producing a natural reading beat.” — Rónán Hession, Irish Times Publisher / UK Publisher / Amazon Other Fosse translations Septology Vaim Melancholy I-II Aliss at the Fire Morning and Evening Scenes from a Childhood (stories) A Silent Language (the Nobel Prize lecture) How It Was (play) https://www.damionsearls.com/tractatus daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/0a574852-5415-4861-a7e9-42bbbfc9f3df/Tractatus.jpg Tractatus - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Liveright, 2024 My translator’s introduction available online 1 The world is everything there is. … “What I love about Searls’s translation of the Tractatus is that it captures the literariness of the text. And so, one can better follow the nuanced movement and construction. This is not just another translation.” — Percival Everett “Damion Searls, one of our finest translators of German literature, … has given us a literary translation of the Tractatus that finally does Wittgenstein’s enigmatic masterpiece justice… When I, a bilingual reader, first read Searls’s translation, I was astonished… [It] opens up the text for us in remarkable ways. Wittgenstein’s concise statements begin to make more sense, and the text becomes much more accessible, without sacrificing, at any point, Wittgenstein’s meaning.” — Marjorie Perloff, from the Foreword Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/overstaying daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/abb7ed1e-808c-455b-b03f-3b4f380520a4/Overstaying.jpg Overstaying - Ariane Koch, Overstaying Dorothy (US) / Pushkin Press (UK), 2024 “Overstaying amazed me.” — Jonathan Lethem In Ariane Koch’s anarchically comic debut, an impudent young contemporary Bartleby is living alone in nine rooms of her parents’ old ten-room house, in a small hometown she hates but can’t bring herself to leave, when a visitor turns up. She takes him in, and instantly her life revolves around him. Yet it’s hard to tell what, exactly, this visitor is. A mooch, a lover, an absence, a presence—possibly a pet? Mostly, he is an occasion for Koch’s wild imagination to take readers in brilliant and unexpected directions. “I don’t see my writing as chronological or classically narrative, but as spatial—a kind of architecture. I keep adding rooms, and readers can take different paths through the rooms.” — Ariane Koch “Overstaying is a short novel of huge ambition. Much of its beauty lies in its arresting use of language, the unruly juxtaposition of images that ought not to cohere but somehow do, jolting us from our complacency towards a more vital understanding of the world. Damion Searls’s translation is lucid and precise… Hypnotic and masterly, this is a book that creates its own world, forcing us to look at our own through altered eyes.” — Nina Allen, TLS ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 “How do you deal with a house-guest who eats your socks? Overstaying becomes a bizarre and beautiful psychodrama about hospitality, control and domination… that seems to take place half in the ‘real world’ and half in a Leonora Carrington painting… It is a joy to read. It’s tautly written, caustically witty, and replete with imaginative insights. I’m already excited to read Koch’s second book; she is so perceptive, convincing and poised a writer that it makes you feel grateful that such a talent shares your world.” — Luke Kennard, The Telegraph “So many novels have been written about immigration—what it means to leave home and install oneself in a foreign land, what it means to be left behind—that you might think there’s nothing more to say. But then you read Overstaying, [which] takes these themes and transforms them into a strange, brilliant fever dream. [The book] ought to outlast the current conversation about these issues. Given its intelligence, humour and originality, there’s no doubt it will.” — Niamh Donnelly, Financial Times “An eccentric, wry voice, … tempered by a darkness that bleeds slowly through the pages… It both welcomes and distances the reader, which is a rare feat and may be why the book won prizes in Germany and in Koch’s home country of Switzerland. If there’s any justice, it should do the same here.” — John Self, The Critic “Overstaying has the makings of a classic.” — Die Zeit Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon / UK publisher https://www.damionsearls.com/lecture daily 0.75 2025-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/e4738a8c-0173-4c84-8b98-03e9feb95ad9/lecture.jpg A Silent Language - Jon Fosse, A Silent Language Transit Books / Fitzcarraldo, 2024 The Nobel Prize lecture Publisher / UK Publisher / Amazon Also by Jon Fosse: Septology A Shining Vaim Melancholy I-II Aliss at the Fire Morning and Evening Scenes from a Childhood (stories) How It Was (a play, PDF free online) https://www.damionsearls.com/philosophy daily 0.75 2025-12-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/484de849-364c-4870-abaf-f7f6ef358b40/Philosophy.jpg Philosophy of Translation - The Philosophy of Translation Yale University Press, 2024 “Translators are priceless, and their task is often thankless. Now more than ever, readers who have been confused by Google Translate do not understand the project of translation. The Philosophy of Translation makes clear the mission of the translator, the amazing task of offering an extant work by constructing a new work. This book is open, honest and, most of all, smart; it makes clear that the act of translation is an act of creation. Remarkable.” — Percival Everett “Damion Searls is one of the most erudite and original—and provocative—thinkers on one of today’s most important cultural subjects: translation. This book is vast, generous, charming, and profound, a brilliant meditation on how we read and what it means to move in and out of languages and language.”— Jennifer Croft “Searls’s philosophy is ultimately one of freedom—to move beyond mere equivalence, to translate how a text communicates rather than simply what it says. In other words, freedom to do what good literary translators have always done.”— Max Norman, The New Yorker “Illuminating and invigorating… exceptionally clear prose.” — Michael Cronin, The Irish Times “This book is phenomenal… the most complete, forward-thinking, handy, rich, gleefully nitty-gritty, and compelling book on translation that I have ever read.”— Spencer Ruchti, Third Place Books “The Philosophy of Translation reminds you that a gifted translator must be a gifted writer as well: to translate is, first and foremost, to write. His voice on the page is sometimes pettish and sometimes exuberant, but it’s never less than engaging... enlivened by his love of wordplay and a flair for the epigrammatic…. Searls is especially riveting when he walks us through the choices he has made as a translator: this is OK, this is better, this kind of nails it.” — Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Review of Books “From a rich and unexpected array of sources ranging from Mayan etymology to the psychology of airplane pilots, Searls weaves a compelling case for translation as a creative act of individual human perception.”— Esther Allen “It’s no easy task to explain what translators do all day. Damion Searls’s lively book explains the conceptual and practical challenges in terms that will be accessible for non-specialists and invigorating for translators and theorists.” — Emily Wilson “Damion Searls is perhaps the only translator in the world who could write a book with the title The Philosophy of Translation and be taken seriously by theorists and practitioners of translation alike. This erudite and accessible volume takes us on a tour of the world of translation where the familiar is made unfamiliar and back again. A stellar work I will be quoting from and returning to for years to come.” — Anton Hur “I appreciate the honesty with which Searls writes. He is a sort of realist. He is aware and honest about what he knows and doesn’t know. He describes the experience of translation with a humility that makes me want to keep reading.” — A reader’s Notes and Reflections Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/books-tr daily 0.75 2025-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1696637846652-6I2E3ZPFVSWAQ8G9XFJ0/Septology+1.jpg Selected Translations - Septology (Copy) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1712256038352-XJWD6TYYEDFWETZE7SUB/Overstaying.jpg Selected Translations - Overstaying (Copy) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1762104723997-FH6OODPJ1QW98CGPJV0O/Vaim.jpg Selected Translations - Vaim https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1696271188730-KINX7ZD84RHOUZYDPT7F/Mann.jpg Selected Translations - New Selected Stories (Copy) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1696638014624-7ZYXUM1Y0U183BY8KIM7/shining2.jpg Selected Translations - A Shining (Copy) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743356049375-XLAJXKPX0PAQRV9DWDEQ/Trees.jpeg Selected Translations - Trees https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1649100601026-OIM5IWE6VTXRYSH15Y9E/anni.jpg Selected Translations https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743476224328-FOC4ZIBS370SN5Z54Q16/Beradt+hi+res.jpg Selected Translations - Third Reich of Dreams https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1652148349765-Q3ODTA1SHGVERHJ5VH79/book_41.jpg Selected Translations https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/1743356013784-G12E96EN0B84H415QZ3J/gide.jpg Selected Translations - Marshlands https://www.damionsearls.com/dreams daily 0.75 2025-11-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/b9a23ef0-41ef-49a6-b2fd-acf45ab80c63/Beradt+hi+res.jpg Third Reich of Dreams - Charlotte Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams Princeton University Press, 2025 The dreams of ordinary people under Nazism, revealing how totalitarian power makes its way into the minds of its subjects. When a Nazi official claimed that “the only private individuals left in Germany are people sleeping,” it turns out he was actually underestimating the regime’s power… “A spare but haunting compendium… a concise but powerful exploration of well-trod history that feels remarkably new.” — Publishers Weekly “Damion Searls’s new translation revives this almost forgotten but hugely insightful text.” — Financial Times An Economist Best Book of 2025: a “remarkable work of journalism.” “How does one become a totalitarian subject? What—aside from the threat of violence—are the necessary conditions? These are questions Beradt’s dreaming people daren’t ask themselves in the cold light of day, but the queries reappear under cover of night.” — Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books “An extraordinary clandestine project [in] a new English edition, translated with crisp clarity by Damion Searls… Beradt’s book is at once a nocturnal oral history, a collection of parables worthy of Kafka and a revelatory account of despotism internalized.” — Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal “After decades out of print, a new English translation has now been reissued, reaffirming [the book’s] relevance for a contemporary readership.... The Third Reich of Dreams defies categorization, blurring the lines between historical document, sociopolitical study, and literary anthology.... Beradt’s project is an unprecedented record of how the Nazi regime extended its grip beyond the public sphere into the innermost recesses of private existence.” — TLS “Beradt reveals how terror infiltrates not just public life but the depths of the subconscious. Vividly rendered in Damion Searls’s crisp and haunting translation, The Third Reich of Dreams illuminates the profound vulnerability of life under systems of surveillance, domination, and racism.” — Roger Berkowitz, founder and director of the Hannah Arendt Center “What happens when your dreams are no longer your own? This new translation of Charlotte Beradt’s terrifying look into the collective unconscious appears as a warning in our age of ideology, foreshadowing what happens to the inner life of a person who is forced to live under conditions of dictatorship. Fascinating and unsettling, Beradt’s collection of dreams reveals what happens when the distinction between fact and fiction ceases to exist.” — Samantha Rose Hill, author of Hannah Arendt Publisher / Bookshop.org / Amazon https://www.damionsearls.com/mariner daily 0.75 2025-03-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/3f4fa04a-7d4e-49a0-b704-17e8c9baae34/Mariner.jpg The Mariner's Mirror - The Mariner’s Mirror Rain Taxi, 2025 Poetry chapbook (30 pages) After years on the sea of reading, the mariner reflects on what he has seen, and what he has seen reflects him… “I have collected all the hard words together, he says,” Searls writes about the author of the first-ever manual of letterpress printing—but it turns out there are no hard words, only textures, feelings, “sheets of sound” and meaning that add up to a way of experiencing the world. Available only from the publisher First poem, from The Paris Review (PDF) https://www.damionsearls.com/analog-days daily 0.75 2025-12-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/4496a13d-7dc8-493c-8280-13edfb3703c1/Analog+Days.jpg Analog Days - Analog Days Novel Coffee House Press, 2025 On the New Yorker Best Books of 2025 list! “Now more relatable and more timely than ever.” — A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2025 Excerpt: Opening pages A snapshot of a circle of friends living through the sorrows and joys of a particular inflection point in history. LitHub: Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about? Searls: The vibe of being receptive to the beauty in the world while that openness makes it hard to fend off bad news and terrible things. “Searls offers in these clear-eyed ruminations a Gen Xer’s impressions of the technology and violence that shape 21st-century life… It’s a stimulating attempt at making sense of a gloomy world.” — Publisher’s Weekly “A quixotic exploration of the recent past that reveals something far deeper about how we will remember the future… Readers of this book wash in and out of the flood of images … only to come up hard against the immutable fact of a headline that both binds us to the experience through shared history and underscores the privilege of hindsight… The book’s real interest lies in the ordinary power of sensation, rather than the flashbulb sensationalism of event.” — Kirkus “Searls takes up the problem of memory, sometimes his narrator’s own, but ultimately the collective memory of his generation… A compelling portrait of the not-so-distant past, a time when ‘fake news’ was a principal political concern and collective truth and memory were in the beginning of a particular and ongoing crisis.” — Zyzzyva “A non-book book about so much and not, akin to classics by Sebald or Adler, both light in its compactness and heavy in an inflated state. With an attention to the United States in 2016, right before, well… it’s a great book for folks who like to focus on distractions.” — Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA) “Analog Days by renowned translator Damion Searls is a knockout in style and form. Searls weaves in Gen-X nostalgia with world events and focuses on a group of friends in San Francisco and New York. Revisiting the summer of 2016 was an eerie look at recent history and how much everything has changed since that year. Highly recommended!” — Caitlin Luce Baker, Island Books (Mercer Island, WA) “Searls’s sentences move swiftly between markers of routine existence and insight bombs that explode them into a larger context, often in ways that feel humorous at first, then dark… Reading Analog Days [was more like] an ongoing experience than any kind of fixed encounter with an outcome... But what could I expect? To give definitive answers would be to close the loop on the experience and turn away from the porousness with which its storyline blends life and art.” — Erin Langner, Zona Motel Publisher (signed copies) / Bookshop.org / Amazon.com https://www.damionsearls.com/vaim daily 0.75 2025-12-19 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6234ae10c9b085653f17bf00/c14f9c3a-0a38-4ba7-a4bc-5cd7b15f0b27/Vaim.jpg Vaim - Jon Fosse, Vaim Transit Books / Fitzcarraldo, 2025 Fosse’s first new novel since winning the Nobel Prize, the first in a series of three books set in the fictional small town of Vaim. A Best Book of the Year: New Yorker, Financial Times, Publisher’s Weekly ★ Starred Review “A spectacular story of loneliness, love, and death… It would ruin this endlessly magical and surprising novel to summarize what happens… [One character] sums it all up with understated humor when he considers having his epitaph read, ‘all was strange’… Indelible turns of phrase… Unforgettable.” — Publisher’s Weekly A Best Book of the Year “As with everything Fosse writes, there is a surface simplicity with deep reserves of meaning beneath.” — British GQ “A strange miracle… How can prose that is so simple—cushions are ‘nice,’ work is ‘trusty’—pulse with such feeling? How can it be so littoral, incarnating the light and spray and tidal tempos of these seascapes with such power? And how can a novelist make a reader feel so lost and so found at the same time?” — The Guardian “Wonderfully wrought by translator Damion Searls, Fosse’s prose continues to cunningly prioritise a plain, unliterary vocabulary. But this unfolds … until its rhythmic, poetical lure becomes irresistible to any reader with half an ear to hear… Fosse’s is an intrepid, seductive, highly accomplished writing that perfectly fits to the intricate human truths he seeks to convey… In Vaim, however, it’s deployed to more comic effect than previously, adding an unexpected warmth. Without compromising the sting of existential confusion his characters suffer, Fosse has given the novel a tint of black humour that has more in common with Gogol than Hamsun or Ibsen.” — Eimear McBride, The Observer “Whereas Septology was profound and meditative, Vaim is more mysterious and playful. The translation by Damion Searls is, as ever, excellently judged in its rhythms and tones.” — Rónán Hession, The Irish Times “Through Damion Searls’s deft translation, Fosse’s signature style returns: a single, unbroken current of thought… Vaim is a breathless line of prose that resists the conventions of contemporary fiction in which a character’s wants and desires neatly propel the hero, or antihero, along a familiar, predictable arc.” — Bomb “Mesmerising, unexpectedly funny, rather creepy. Excellent work!” — Bookmunch Publisher / UK Publisher / Amazon / Bookshop.org Also by Jon Fosse: Septology A Shining Melancholy I-II Aliss at the Fire Morning and Evening Scenes from a Childhood (stories) A Silent Language (the Nobel Prize lecture) How It Was (play)