By Siobhan O’Leary

The wait will soon be over for those who have like me been trying to get their hands on one of Nobel Prize Winner Herta Müller’s sold-out titles this week. S. Fischer, Müller’s paperback publisher, has ordered reprints of the paperback editions of a number of her titles, including her latest, Atemschaukel (Everything I Own I Carry With Me), and they will be available starting this Wednesday, says the Boersenblatt. Four of the titles, including Herztier (The Land of Green Plums), will also be published in new hardcover editions by Hanser and available as of October 20th. Two out-of-print titles, Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen (The Pale Gentlemen with their Espresso Cups) and Heute wäre ich mir lieber nicht begegnet (The Appointment), will be available exclusively as Hanser hardcovers starting October 20th and November 9th respectively.

Meanwhile, BuchMarkt reports that German booksellers are up in arms over the Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels’ decision to offer Atemschaukel (Everything I Own I Carry with Me) as a free download on via Libreka! on October 15th as part of their Download Days promotion. As we reported last week, the MVB plans to make one title available for free download every Tuesday until November 10th. (They had already approached Hanser and other publishers of titles on the German Book Prize shortlist before the Nobel Prize announcement was made.) One bookseller said, “We want to sell the book and not have a subsidiary of our Publishers Association to give it away!”

Here’s a little story about serendipity: In the same week as  it was announced that Barack Obama was winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Berlin University Press published Obamas politischer Körper (Obama’s Political Body) by Ulrich Haltern, a nearly 600-page tome about the world’s fascination with Barack Obama. In it, Haltern, a German constitutional law expert, studies Obama’s influence and the European reaction to the man and his discursive model of politics, says the Boersenblatt.