Star 111

“A rich, vivid tale about new beginnings and fractured utopias.” —Ángel Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times “A Best Book of 2023, Fiction in Translation (UK Edition)”The fragmentary style of Star 111 recalls much of the later work of Grass […] The great ingenuity of Seiler’s narrative lies in the displacement that it effects between Carl’s exploits and those of his distant parents, from whom he receives regular letters written in a floridly formal style.” —Stuart Walton, The Hong Kong Review of Books“The author’s shimmering, ironic and musical prose—impeccably translated by Tess Lewis—captures a moment both archaic and profoundly real. Utopian and matter-of-fact, it is both timeless and obsessed with the minutiae of its time.” —Karen Leeder, Times Literary Supplement“Seiler’s dry wit and command of language, which can itself be musical, keep the pages humming.” —Kirkus Reviews “There aren’t many books that can be cited as the missing link between Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries and Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, and still fewer that could live up to the comparison, but Lutz Seiler (with impeccable assistance from Tess Lewis) makes it look easy. Star 111 is a brilliant, immersive, sometimes funny, slyly moving book with a main character who walks through the new reality he finds himself in like an astronaut exploring alone beneath a strange, harsh, beautiful sun. A stellar achievement.” —Will AshonSeiler crafts a fascinating intergenerational exploration of German reunification, as Carl comes to see his parents as people with wants and dreams like him, “as if they’d only just begun to exist.” It’s an exceptional story of fresh starts. —Publisher’s Weekly “These days, it’s hard to envision what Seiler’s translator, Tess Lewis, calls “the heady atmosphere of hope and disorientation” that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Luckily, Seiler’s STAR 111 brings it all vividly back.” — Alida Becker, The New York Times Books Review

Lutz Seiler is a German poet, novelist, and essayist. He was born in Gera in the German state of Thuringia and first developed an interest in literature while completing his national service in the East German army. He has been awarded the 2023 George Büchner Prize, the 2014 German Book Prize for his debut novel Kruso, and the 2020 Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Star 111.

Tess Lewis is a translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Philippe Jaccottet, and Christine Angot, and a collection of essays by Walter Benjamin for NYRB Classics. She is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2022 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.