The summer house, later - Judith Hermann

'This book is about the moment before happiness' Marcel Reich-Ranicki At long last, there is a very stimulating, stylish, entertaining new generation of German authors just emerging who are keen to tell good stories and have very good stories to tell, stories that will travel, stories that are not about the war, stories that are not paralysed by introspection. And the hottest young star of them all is Judith Hermann. Her debut, The Summerhouse, Later, has been the literary sensation of the year in Germany; so far it has sold over 200,000 copies. Hermann herself is an enigmatic, charismatic, sad-eyed creature whose languid manner and idiosyncratic remarks have only contributed to her aura. She's quite something -- dare I say the German Zadie Smith? And her book is principally set in what must be the most exciting city in Europe right now -- Berlin; and it's about an entirely new, young breed of German, possessed of a kind of attitude that that country has never seen before. This is the first time in ten years that Flamingo has cared this much about anything in German.;The book itself is sly, measured, chic, moving and reflective -- imagine a Geman version of Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies (of which we've now sold over 40,000 copies in B-format).