Melnitz: the book that brought Charles Lewinsky international renown

The great Swiss-Jewish family epic, encompassing the fateful years from 1871 to 1945.

1871. Cattle-dealer Solomon Meijer has made a reputation for himself in Endingen, a rare Swiss town in which Jews are allowed to reside. He leads a largely untroubled life, but this is set to end when he answers a knock at the door in the middle of the night. On the doorstep stands his young distant cousin, Janki, half-dead and begging
for refuge. The pitiful figure is invited in and given a coveted place in the bosom of the family, but when Janki recovers and regains his ambition and his fine looks, he will change the Meijer family’s lives for generations to come ...

#1 on the Swiss bestseller list for three months. ›Prix du meilleur livre étranger 2008‹. 300’000 copies sold in the Netherlands alone. 

Published in 13 languages.

»A powerful arc of suspense, incorporating the greatest longings for advancement and the worst historical catastrophes.«
Ernst Osterkamp / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Charles Lewinsky’s Melnitz is not just a moving book, but a great one; it restores a vivid, sensory and precise language to our bewilderment in the face of history.«
Roman Bucheli / Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zürich

Rights currently sold:
Dutch (Meridiaan)
English (Atlantic Books)

Full English manuscript available.

 

Gerron: shortlisted for the ›Swiss Book Prize‹ 2011

An existential dilemma: play along — or die. A story that gets under your skin.

The actor and director Kurt Gerron was once a star — and now he’s just one amongst many concentration camp inmates. In Theresienstadt, he has to prove his proficiency one more time, by staging the existence there as happy Jewish life. Gerron sees himself faced with a momentous decision.

A ghostly episode of history, narrated in a haunting voice.

»Masterfully told by Charles Lewinsky, as though he himself were Kurt Gerron, that comic of banality who finds himself before the abyss, then surpasses himself.«
Ilja Richter / Die Welt, Berlin

Published in 6 languages

Rights currently sold:
French (Grasset & Fasquelle)
Italian (Einaudi)

Kastelau: nominated for the ›German Book Prize‹

One mountain village, one film team — and one goal: to survive.
How beliefs conform to the circumstances. A masterful game of deception.

A man stands on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame and destroys a star with a pickaxe. Why did he do it? The affair leads back to the winter of 1944: under the pretext of shooting a propaganda film, a Berlin film team sets off into the Alps. But in the village of Kastelau, the filming of an invented story increasingly becomes the invented story of a filming.

»A tragicomic story about love and betrayal, about ambition and cowardice.«
Manfred Papst / NZZ am Sonntag, Zurich

Rights currently sold:
Dutch (Atlas-Contact)

To the Earth and Back: children's book

When a child asks: »Why?«, it questions everything we previously thought to be true, turning the world on its head.

A 499 year old child comes from a distant planet, where instead of growing up in the course of their lifetime, the people become children – and therefore sensible beings. The child often finds the inhabitants of earth impossible to understand. Why do they want to disfigure the forest with a road? Why do people have to compete while playing sports, and why do they lock animals up in the zoo? The child tries to put an end to this nonsense. 

A book packed with wordplay and practical jokes; subversive, funny and clever, just as readers both young and old enjoy. Suitable for reading out loud with children, and for them to read alone.

Halfbeard: shortlisted for the ›Swiss Book Prize‹ 2020

A literary page-turner with a unique narrative voice that takes us into an archaic world.

A book that shows how stories become history, longlisted for the ›German Book Prize‹, shortlisted for the ›Swiss Book Prize‹ 2020.

Sebi, our teenage hero and narrator in Charles Lewinsky’s epos, is not exactly tailored to the rough medieval world he’s born into: gifted with youthful wisdom, he is more of a storyteller than a warhorse. With these qualities, he hardly meets the demands in the rural Swiss village in 1313. However from Halfbeard, a stranger from a distant region, the boy discovers both the good and the bad in humanity – and does come into his own as he dedicates himself to the power of narration: the truth is in the telling.

»That such a book is a page-turner in the best sense of the word, which you can hardly put down, shows the faculties of the author.«
Oliver Jungen / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Frankfurt

»Like this figure its creator Charles Lewinsky is a storytelling machine who proves his versatility in his new novel Halfbeard.« 
Tobias Sedlmaier / NZZ am Sonntag, Zurich

»The richness and depth of Lewinsky’s narrative guarantee its appeal to a broad readership.«
New Books in German 

Foreign rights sold:
Dutch (Meridiaan)
Italian (SEM Società Editrice Milanese)

English sample available

Midsummer's Day: ›Schiller Foundation Prize‹ winner

A microcosm filled with explosives, narrated with psychological sophistication.

After a teacher is suspended over an affair with one of his pupils, he retreats to a French village. It seems an idyllic setting, but appearances can be deceiving. A building project opens up ancient graves, and before the outsider knows what’s hit him, he’s embroiled in the intrigue. A web of crimes from long-gone days and very much-alive intrigue soon unfurls.

»Charles Lewinsky impressively demonstrates that life in the countryside is tranquil but no less dangerous.«
Sabine Doering / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Published in 2 languages.

The Stutterer: a book about the power of language, both philosophical and playful

Being a stutterer, Johannes Hosea Stärckle trusts entirely in the power of the written word and uses it ruthlessly, in self-defence and for his career. A fraud case – he calls it a writerly carelessness – puts him in prison. Using letters, avowals and invented stories, he tries to win over the people who have a say over his life behind bars: the prison chaplain, the drug boss, his publisher.

»Rare linguistic splendour and striking narrative virtuosity.«
Andreas Isenschmid / NZZ am Sonntag, Zurich

»An exhilarating read: intelligent, sophisticated – what else do you want?« 
Denis Scheck / ARD

» … a consistent and well-rounded intimate play and play on words.«
Daniel Lüthi / Literarischer Monat, Zurich

Rights currently sold:
Arabic (Al-Arabi)
Chinese/CN (Archipel Press)
Dutch (Meridiaan)

English sample available

Is That You?: an autobiography by his books

A great author provides an insight into the interaction between life and imagination. 

Charles Lewinsky gives surprising answers to the most frequently-posed question at his live readings. What of his own life does a writer smuggle into his books, either consciously or subconsciously? Charles Lewinsky sets out to discover the answer to this question, and is amazed by how much personal material has inadvertently crept into his novels. This gives him the opportunity, through anecdotes and confessions, to remember both the highs and the lows — as they are reflected in his own work.

»Charles Lewinsky is probably one of the hardest-working and undisputedly one of the most successful and diverse Swiss writers.«
Martin Ebel / Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich