What Darkness Was – Inka Parei

An old man close to death. A suspicious stranger on the stairs. The sounds of the endless night unsettle him, triggering images, questions and memories – the impressions of the day just past and his life. The old man wracks his brain over why he inherited the building he now lives in, why he left the city that was his home for so long: Is he here voluntarily? What brought the stranger here? Why were the butcher and the pub landlord nailing together a new door out in the backyard that morning? His precise observations tell a story that seems strangely interwoven with the story of his life, at its center his own war guilt. The old man’s wish to solve the puzzle of the stranger’s identity is to be his last task in life. The German original of “What Darkness Was” won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2003. Translated by: Katy Derbyshire

The Nameless Day – Friedrich Ani

After years on the job, police detective Jakob Franck has retired. Finally, the dead-with all their mysteries-will no longer have any claim on him. Or so he thinks. On a cold autumn afternoon, a case he thought he’d long put behind him returns to his life-and turns it upside down. The Nameless Day tells the story of that twenty-year-old case, which began with Franck carrying the news of the suicide of a seventeen-year-old girl to her mother, and holding her for seven hours as, in her grief, she said not a single word. Now her father has appeared, swearing to Franck that his daughter was murdered. Can Franck follow the cold trail of evidence two decades later to see whether he’s telling the truth? Could he live with himself if he didn’t? A psychological crime novel certain to thrill fans of Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo, The Nameless Day is a masterpiece, a tightly plotted story of contemporary alienation, loss, and violence. Copyright information: Der namenlose Tag: Suhrkamp Verlag The nameless Day: Seagull Books Founded by Naveen Kishore in 1982, Seagull Books is an independent publishing house specializing in books on art, theatre, cinema and academic titles on culture and society. Since 2005, Seagull Books London Limited has ventured into English translations of fiction and non-fiction stories by African, European, Asian, and Latin American writers. Goethe-Institut has collaborated with Seagull books to bring to its patrons content-rich, contemporary German-language literature in English. Naveen Kishore has been editing this series of books since 2009. Most of the book covers have been designed by Sunandini Banerjee.