High As The Waters Rise

 

translated from the German by Anne Posten

National Book Awards Finalist 2020

An NPR Best Book of the Year

 

„So beautifully written, Anja Kampmann’s novel is one of those very rare things: a debut of a literary master . . . High as the Waters Rise is our time’s answer to the timeless Gilgamesh myth: a friend is lost, and a journey begins, teaching us with such passion about our world, its terrors, its injustices, its moments of piercing tenderness . . . Of any time, an epic. I am deeply grateful to Anja Kampmann for the gift to us that is this novel, and to her translator, Anne Posten, for the crisp and precise version in English. This is the book to live with.” —
Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

“This first novel by an established poet examines the marginalized lives of European laborers . . . Although Kampmann addresses current events, such as environmental degradation and the precariousness of modern Europe, her focus is on how ideas of masculinity affect one man’s ability to grieve.” —The New Yorker

“This gorgeously written novel by German poet Anja Kampmann, translated superbly by Anne Posten, focuses on Waclaw, a middle-aged oil rig worker. In the opening pages, Waclaw learns that his dear friend, Mátyás, has gone missing from the rig and is presumed dead. Waclaw, who has already been injured once in this dangerous line of work, begins an unintentional pilgrimage to places he and Mátyás made meaningful. Eventually, as he sinks deeper into grief, Waclaw returns also to the places that shaped him and that he fled in search of a better life.” —NPR

“An evocative road novel, a powerful account of grief and loss, and a subtle portrait of the dangers facing the working class. When you add an array of stark, beautiful sentences into the mix, the result is a thoroughly haunting, deeply moving novel.” —Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

“It is unexpected to encounter a modern–day Moby Dick with the same dangerous stakes, but, for workers under global capitalism, the sea remains as treacherous as ever. Capitalism’s disregard for human life is as deadly now as it was on the Pequod . . . Kampmann uses her gifts not to make the ugliness of global capitalism palatable, but to resist it, in the tradition of Audre Lorde . . . This novel fulfills the essentially radical task of poetry.” —Fiona Bell, Chicago Review

“Anja Kampmann’s novel, translated from the German by Anne Posten, is meandering — in a good way. You feel Waclaw’s pain and sorrow for his lost friend. You feel how terrible the oil drilling business is, and how it crushes the men who work on the rigs.” —Emily Burack, One of Hey Alma‘s Favorite Books for Fall

“Kampmann and Posten write gorgeous sentences, lavishing descriptive attention on the light cast on bird feathers, the brass balustrades of a Budapest hotel, ‘a sea bright as a blast furnace’ . . . The most vivid and memorable character is the oil platform itself. Kampmann has an astonishing command of the details of life on an oil rig, and High as the Waters Rise can be read as oblique climate fiction . . . Kampmann brilliantly conveys the industry’s reckless disregard for human life. The relationships she portrays best are not of friendship, love or family, but those between abusive systems and the people whose lives they extract, consume and wantonly discard.” —Jane Yager, The Times Literary Supplement

“This is climate fiction—a genre that explores climate change in fictional narratives—at its best.” —Amy Brady, Literary Hub

“The beautiful English–language debut from German poet Kampmann tells the story of a middle–aged oil rig worker’s emotional crisis after the death of his friend . . . As Waclaw digs up memories of his drilling throughout the world—in Morocco, Mexico, and Brazil—he ruminates on generations of workers who must eke out a living by exploiting the earth and its resources. Kampmann captures the visceral uneasiness that arises from second guessing one’s past.” —Publishers Weekly

“In her debut novel, German poet Kampmann touchingly and intimately illustrates the fallout of capitalism’s dependence on oil . . . This is a haunting exploration of the devastating costs all kinds of gig workers have to bear to feed themselves and the belly of the beast.” —Booklist

“The story of a man at the edge, a story of displacement and existential loneliness told with restraint . . . A poet’s novel in the richness of its imagery and the exquisiteness of the language.” —Library Journal

„In her debut novel, German poet Kampmann touchingly and intimately illustrates the fallout of capitalism’s dependence on oil. The true tragedy here is that Waclaw’s story is not unique. His plight is a perfect vehicle for Kampmann’s lyrical descriptions, which reach from dusty Moroccan cities to the brass-colored balustrades in a Budapest hotel . . . This is a haunting exploration of the devastating costs all kinds of gig workers have to bear to feed themselves and the belly of the beast.” ––Booklist

„Anja Kampmann’s novel does not limit itself to one topic that could be easily named, because it does not limit itself to psychology, does  HIGH AS THE WATER RISE stand out, and not only so this spring. Here can an author be discovered whose profound appropriation of the world by means of language would be best compared to Peter Handke’s writing furore. (…) Her prose’s linear progression is counteracted by her restriction of tempo and by means of images and the inserting of memories that resemble film stills. And, thus, a space is opened to see and to hear, to feel and to smell. A space in which time itself becomes tangible…”           Tobias Lehmkuhl, DIE ZEIT

“The beautiful English-language debut from German poet Kampmann tells the story of a middle-aged oil rig worker’s emotional crisis after the death of his friend . . . As Waclaw digs up memories of his drilling throughout the world—in Morocco, Mexico, and Brazil—he ruminates on generations of workers who must eke out a living by exploiting the earth and its resources. Kampmann captures the visceral uneasiness that arises from second guessing one’s past.” ––Publishers Weekly

 

“There are difficult questions asked in this novel, about responsibility, culpability, love, trust, and the weight of time and distance, and there are no easy answers––instead, we are treated to the most vivid particulars, the glory of specifics, the full human reality of a character whose attempt to wander away from deadening grief only reminds him time and time again of all the many ways he has and does and can still feel alive.” —Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers

High as the waters rise is a highly poetic exploration of male friendship and grief. It is a captivating read, delving into a lifestyle that will be unfamiliar to most readers, but which is becoming increasingly topical as oil becomes harder to find and extract.“
New books in german

„In its global reach and the beauty of its language, I found this book at times visionary- which I never thought I would say about a book which begins with men on an oil rig. It is this global reach which makes the novel unique and just waiting to be translated into English.“peakreads

“[A] poet’s novel in the richness of its imagery and the exquisiteness of the language. It’s as if the protagonist were a modern Odysseus returning to a home he no longer has.” ––Library Journal

“Prose with the brightness of poetry, in a splendidly lucid translation.“
Jennifer Croft, author of Homesick and co-winner with Olga Tokarczuk of The International Booker Prize for Flights

 The New York Times

 Der Spiegel

National Book Foundation

The New Yorker

Chicago Review of Books

The Times Literary Supplement

Asymptote Journal

 

Audio Audio Audio 

High as the waters Rise is also available as

 full lenghth audio book read by Stefan Rudnicki!

Auf 8 CDs ist der ganze Roman ungekürzt zu hören: 9 h 40 minutes of listening…

 

ABOUT:

„Anja Kampmann’s debut novel is an exquisitely lyrical tale of an oil platform worker whose best friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confront his past.

One stormy night aboard a drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and friend, Mátyás, has gone missing. A brief search of the rig confirms his fears that Mátyás has tumbled into the sea. Waclaw is given shore leave and begins to travel, at first rather aimlessly, meandering around the Moroccan town where he and Mátyás used to spend their time away from the rig. There he discovers what appears to be the body of his friend on the beach. Grief-stricken, he makes his way to Hungary, where he stays with Mátyás’s sister, Patrícia, and immerses himself in memories of his time with Mátyás. As he ruminates on the past, Waclaw finds himself returning increasingly to his own origins, and the circumstances that led him to take the job on the oil rig.

 

Anja Kampmann  is a german poet and author of fiction. She was awarded the MDR- Literaturpreis as well as the Wolfgang-Weyrauch-Förderpreis. Her work has appeared in Akzente, Neue Rundschau, words without borders, et al. Her first collection of poetry „Samples of Stone and Light” was published by Carl Hanser Verlag, 2016. „High as the waters rise“, her first novel, was nominated for the Leipzig Book Faire Prize, the German Book Prize and the aspekte- Literature Prize for the best debut novel written in german. The novel won the Mara-Cassens-Prize 2018 for the best german debut novel, the Lessing-Promotion Prize 2018 and the Literature Prize of the city of Lüneburg. She received the Literature-Prize Stadtschreiber von Bergen-Enkheim in 2019. 2020 Rainer Malkowski Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. High as the Waters Rise, translated by Anne Posten,  was a National Book Awards Finalist 2020.

Previous Works:
Proben von Stein und Licht (Hanser, 2016),

Fischdiebe (2017):

„The dog is always hungry“ Poems (in german) Hanser, spring 2021

 

Translation rights sold: France (Gallimard), Italy (Keller), United States (Catapult), Croatia, Turkey, Netherlands

rights informations:
Carl Hanser Verlag
Contact: Friederike Barakat
Tel: +49 163 7292 168
friederike.barakat@hanser.de

 

Translation Sample