Foreign Rights

News

Millay Hyatt has been awarded the Ilse Schwepcke Prize 2025 for her book Days on the Night Train.

Michael Donhauser receives the Eichendorff Literature Prize 2025 and his anthology Unter dem Nussbaum (Under the Walnut Tree) is on the longlist for the Austrian Book Prize 2025.

Yevgenia Belorusets has been awarded the Alice Salomon Poetry Prize 2025.

Frank Witzel receives the Joseph-Breitbach Award 2025.

Byung-Chul Han has been awarded the Princesa de Asturias Prize 2025 for Communication and Humanities.

Walburga Hülk has been nominated for the German Non-Fiction Prize 2025 with her biography Victor Hugo. Man of the Century.

Irina Rastorgueva has won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2025 for non-fiction for her book Pop-up Propaganda. Epicrisis of the Russian Self-Poisoning.

Recent Sales

The Long Shadow of the Guillotine by László F. Földényi to Bulgaria (SONM Publishers) and English world (Zone Books)

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė to Romania (Alice Books)

The Palliative Society and In the Swarm by Byung-Chul Han to Thailand (Sam Yan Press)

The New Barbarism by Viktor Jerofejew to Finland (Siltala)

Without Respect. A Social Crisis by Byung-Chul Han to Czech Republic (Karolinum Press), Spanish World (Paidós), Catalan (Paidós), Poland (Krytyki Politycznej), Brazil (Vozes), Greece (Opera), the Netherlands (Ten Have), Italy (Einaudi), Korea (Gandhi Academy Publishing), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos)

Reading Hegels 'Logic'. A Self-experiment by Patrick Eiden-Offe to English world (Verso)

The Future of Reading by Christoph Engemann: Chinese Simplex rights (Orient Publishing Centre)

Freud's Beasty Boys by Oxana Timofeeva: Hebrew rights (HaKibbutz)

Modern Animal by Yevgenia Belorusets to Croatia (Mala zvona)

Places of the Living Death and The Painter and the Wanderer by László F. Földényi to Russia (Jaromir Hadlik Press)

Beyond West and East by Yuk Hui and Milan Stürmer to Japan (Chuokoron-Shinsha) 

Seaweed. A Portrait by Miek Zwamborn to French world (La Baconnière)

Writing Life. Warlam Shalamov: Biography and Poetics by Franziska Thun-Hohenstein to Sweden (Ersatz)

The Future of Reading by Christoph Engemann to Korea (HEYBOOKS)

Burnout Society  and Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han to Slovenia (Družina)

Praise of Melancholy by László F. Földényi to Russia (AST)

Hitler, Philosophy and Hatred by Peter Trawny to Estonia (Postimehe)

Land and Dispute by Judith Kasper to French World (Verdier)

Ancestors by Anne Weber to Italy (Mondadori)

Pop-up Propaganda by Irina Rastorgueva to Hungary (HVG) and Russian rights (Babel Publishing)

Speaking about God by Byung-Chul Han to the Netherlands (Ten Have), Romania (Contrasens), Italy (Nottetempo), Korea (Gimm-Young), Portugal (Relógio D’Água), Russia (AST), Spanish World (Paidós), Catalan (Paidós), Brazil (Vozes), Arabic (Mominoun Without Borders), French (Actes Sud), English World (Polity), Turkey (Ketebe), Hungary (Typotex), Slovakia (Minor), Chinese complex (Locus)

School of the South by Onur Erdur to Russia (Ad Marginem) and French World (Philo Éditions)

Infocracy by Byung-Chul Han to Greece (Opera)

Days on the Night Train by Millay Hyatt to English World (Haus Publishing)

The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han to Hungary (Typotex)

On the Soul. Notes from the Platonic Underground by Oxana Timofeeva to Denmark (Mindspace)

Melancholy, Praise of Melancholy and The Long Shadow of the Guillotine by László F. Földényi to Turkey (Ketebe)

Something Better Than Optimism by Guillaume Paoli to Turkey (Metis)

Being a Failure by Nora Weinelt to to Korea (Saramin) and Turkey (Metis)

Inverting into the Opposite by Sylvia Sasse: Russian rights (Lohvinau), Ukrainian (Nika-Centre)

The Sun. A Discovery by Sibylle Anderl & Claus Leggewie to Italy (Il Saggiatore)

Shalamov or The Laws of Life by William Vollmann to Italy (Il Saggiatore)

Octopuses by Svenja Beller to English World (Greystone)

The Labour of Enjoyment by Samo Tomšič: Russian (Skifia-print)

The New Barbarism by Viktor Jerofejew: Russian (Vento Book)

A Garden (Ein Garten) by Alma de l'Aigle to Spanish World (Periférica)

The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han to Sweden (Ersatz)

The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han to Norway (Slow Fire Press)

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė to Bulgaria (Musagena)

Praise of Melancholy by László Földényi to Italy (La Vita Felice)

Freud's Beasty Boys by Oxana Timofeeva to Spanish World (Mármol Izquierdo)

(Berlin, Miami) by Hannes Bajohr to English World (MIT Press)

After Woke by Jens Balzer: Spanish rights, Latin America (Biblos)

The Long Shadow of the Guillotine by László F. Földényi to Russia (AST)

The Burnout Society and Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han to Azerbaijan (Qanun)

Freud's Beasty Boys by Oxana Timofeeva to Turkey (Tetes)

The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han to Romania (Contrasens)

Modern Animal by Yevgenia Belorusets to Sweden (Ersatz)

Male Phantasies by Klaus Theweleit to Korea (Geulhangari)

Matthes & Seitz Berlin is a German independent publishing house founded in 2004 by Andreas Rötzer that publishes about 100 titles per year in fiction and non-fiction. It was established in the tradition of Matthes & Seitz Munich, a publishing house founded by Axel Matthes and Claus Seitz in 1977.

The fiction list includes contemporary German-language authors, like Anne Weber (winner of the German Book Prize 2020), Frank Witzel (winner of the German Book Prize 2015), Joshua Groß, Esther Kinsky, Philipp Schönthaler, Lola Randl, Matthias Senkel, Anna Weidenholzer and Levin Westermann. Contemporary French authors such as Emmanuel Carrère, Constance Debré, Éric Vuillard, Mathieu Riboulet, Céline Minard, Nastassja Martin and Abel Quentin form another focus of the publishing house's literary program alongside Russian literature, including Viktor Jerofejew, Alexander Ilichevsky, Alexander Goldstein and Olga Slavnikova. In addition, Matthes & Seitz Berlin publishes classics in new translations by authors such as Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Benjamin Constant, Michel Leiris as well as multi-volume editions of works by Gerhard Rühm, Warlam Schalamow, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jean-Henri Fabre and Henry David Thoreau.

The extensive non-fiction program in the humanities with a focus on philosophy, political theory, anthropology, literature and cultural studies includes, among others Heike Behrend, who won the Leipzig Book Prize in the non-fiction category in 2020 with her book Incarnation of an Ape, Rebecca Solnit, Jürgen Goldstein, who also won the Leipzig Book Prize in 2015 with his biography of Georg Forster, Patrick Eiden-Offe, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Andreas Malm, Klaus Theweleit, Donatella Di Cesare and László Földényi.

The essay series Fröhliche Wissenschaft (Joyful Wisdom) has been published since 2007 and now comprises more than 240 volumes with texts by Byung-Chul Han, which have been translated into 38 languages, by Jens Balzer, Marcus Steinweg, Hannah Arendt, Hannes Bajohr, Roberto Simanowski, Judith N. Shklar, Alexander Pschera, Jean Francois Billeter, Luise Meier and Jule Govrin, among others. The essays offer historical and contemporary contributions and impulses for current political, philosophical and social debates.

In 2013, the first volumes of the Naturkunden (Natural Sciences) series edited by Judith Schalansky were published: lavishly designed books that passionately explore nature and thus prominently mark the program's focus on nature, movement in space and ecology. In addition to the beautifully designed portraits of animals and plants such as crows, donkeys, wolves, pigs, oysters, rhinoceroses and nettles, which have been translated into many languages, the series also includes classics of nature writing, primarily from English-speaking countries (including J. A. Baker, Robert Macfarlane, Nan Shepherd, Aldo Leopold) and non-fiction as well as illustrated books (Korbinian Aigner, Jean-Henri Fabre).

Since 2017, the publishing house has been awarding the German Prize for Nature Writing together with the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, the German Environment Agency and the Art and Nature Foundation to encourage new German-language literary and essayistic writing about nature.

To read more about Matthes & Seitz Berlin: Jürgen Boos in conversation with Andreas Rötzer