Stella

Takis Würger is a major up-and-coming international writer whose profile promises only to grow with this new book, a historical novel set in 1942 and partially based on real events. The inspiration for its eponymous character, Stella Goldschlag, was the subject of a 1993 biography and featured in a 2019 German docudrama, The Invisibles. Stella sparked a major media conversation about memory and historical representation when it was published in Germany in 2019. It became a bookseller favorite and hit the bestseller lists for thirteen weeks there.

Stella will appeal to fans of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and the TV series Babylon Berlin, based on the books of Volker Kutscher. In Germany, the novel was praised by Booker International shortlisted author Daniel Kehlmann, who said: “You may start this book feeling skeptical, but you will read gripped and startled, and you will finish it feeling real admiration.”

Würger’s previous novel, The Club, was the winner of the lit.Cologne prize for debut fiction and a major bestseller in Germany. Grove’s edition was well received by Adelle Waldman in the New York Times Book Review and Malcolm Forbes in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and New York Times-bestselling author Megan Abbott praised it as “cunning, sinuous . . . so wildly entertaining.”

The novel is translated by Liesl Schillinger, a New York-based literary critic, translator, and writer, who considers it one of the most exciting projects she has worked on. She is looking forward to getting the word out, including to writer friends such as Amor Towles and fellow literary critics.

Stella was the subject of major international publishing auctions and has sold in fourteen territories, including to Gallimard in France, Feltrinelli in Italy, and Salamandra in Spain. German rights were acquired by Hanser Verlag in a very competitive auction and German paperback rights were sold in a significant preempt.

In Germany, the novel was a major bestseller, reaching #4 on the Spiegel bestseller list and spending thirteen weeks on the list. It was also a bestseller in Italy and is due to be published in other territories in 2020 or 2021.

Books like All the Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale have shown the continuing readership for World War II stories, and while this novel operates in a much speedier mode, it will appeal to many of those readers, as well as fans of Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan and the works of Anna Funder.

Würger traveled to the US to promote The Club with the support of the Goethe Institut and Deutsches House/NYU, and we hope for their support with this new novel.

A talented journalist who works as a war reporter for Der Spiegel, Würger was named one of Medium’s “Top 30 Journalists Under 30” in 2010 and awarded a CNN Journalist Award in 2013. He has reported around the world, including warzones in Afghanistan, Libya, the Ukraine, and the Middle East.