This month, the LitHAUS reading group will be reading
High as the Waters Rise (2018) by Anja Kampmann and the book discussion will take place on March 24th @ 6:30 PM. Please
register for the event beforehand and join the discussion.
We give away five copies of the month's book selection about five weeks before each LitHAUS discussion. These will be distributed on a first-come-first-serve basis and availability will be announced on our social media channels.
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Feel free to read the novel in English or German; the discussion will be in English.
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About the book
© Catapult
High As The Waters Rise by Anja Kampmann, translated by Anne Posten
320 pages.
ISBN 9781948226523
One night aboard an oil drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and companion, Mátyás, has gone missing. A search of the rig confirms his fear that Mátyás has fallen into the sea. Grief-stricken, he embarks on an epic emotional and physical journey that takes him to Morocco, to Budapest and Mátyás's hometown in Hungary, to Malta, Italy, and finally to the mining town of his childhood in Germany. Waclaw's encounters along the way with other lost and yearning souls—Mátyás's angry, grieving half-sister; lonely rig workers on shore leave; a truck driver who watches the world change from his driver's seat—bring us closer to his origins while also revealing the problems of a globalized economy dependent on waning natural resources.
High as the Waters Rise is a stirring exploration of male intimacy, the nature of memory and grief, and the cost of freedom—the story of a man who stands at the margins of a society from which he has profited little, though its functioning depends on his labor.
Summary by Catapult
German poet
Anja Kampmann was born in Hamburg and resides in Leipzig.
High as the Waters Rise is her first novel, for which she received the Mara Cassens Prize for best German debut novel and the Lessing Promotion Prize. She was also awarded the Bergen-Enkheim Prize and was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and the German Book Prize.
Anne Posten translates prose, poetry, and drama from the German. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, and her translations of authors such as Peter Bichsel, Carl Seelig, Thomas Brasch, Tankred Dorst, Anna Katharina Hahn, and Paul Scheerbart have appeared with New Directions, Christine Burgin/The University of Chicago Press,
Music & Literature, n+1, VICE, The Buenos Aires Review, FIELD, Stonecutter, and
Hanging Loose, among other publications. She is based in Berlin.
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