Bricks and Mortar

Clemens Meyer; Translated By Katy Derbyshire

ISBN 10: 191069519X / ISBN 13: 9781910695197

Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016

About this Item

Fitzcarraldo Editions, London 2016 / Paperback. UK First Edition and First Impression. As New Paperback Original with french flaps. Signed, Placed and Dated by the author directly to the title page.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1693072028008

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Bricks and Mortar
• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 191069519X
• ISBN 13: 9781910695197
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Bricks and Mortar is the story of the sex trade in a big city in the former GDR, from just before 1989 to the present day, charting the development of the industry from absolute prohibition to full legality in the twenty years following the reunification of Germany.

The focus is on the rise and fall of one man from football hooligan to large-scale landlord and service-provider for prostitutes to, ultimately, a man persecuted by those he once trusted. But we also hear other voices: many different women who work in prostitution, their clients, small-time gangsters, an ex-jockey searching for his drug-addict daughter, a businessman from the West, a girl forced into child prostitution, a detective, a pirate radio presenter…

  In his most ambitious book to date, Clemens Meyer pays homage to modernist, East German and contemporary writers like Alfred Döblin, Wolfgang Hilbig and David Peace but uses his own style and almost hallucinatory techniques. Time shifts and stretches, people die and come to life again, and Meyer takes his characters seriously and challenges his readers in this dizzying eye-opening novel that also finds inspiration in the films of Russ Meyer, Takashi Miike, Gaspar Noé and David Lynch.

About the Authors

Clemens Meyer was born 1977 in Halle and lives in Leipzig. Bricks and Mortar, his latest novel, was shortlisted for the German Book Prize, awarded the Bremer Literaturpreis 2014, longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, and shortlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. A collection of stories, Dark Satellites, appeared with Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2020.

Katy Derbyshire, originally from London, has lived in Berlin for over twenty years. She translates contemporary German writers including Inka Parei, Heike Geissler, Olga Grjasnowa, Annett Gröschner and Christa Wolf. Her translation of Clemens Meyer’s Bricks and Mortar was the winner of the 2018 Straelener Übersetzerpreis (Straelen Prize for Translation), longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, and shortlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. She occasionally teaches translation and also co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show.