W.: A Novel

“It’s the collaboration and tension between the reader and Woyzeck, rather than the attempts to find more profound motives, that makes this reading experience so strong.” * Svenska Dagbladet *“A sharp and hypersensitive novel about abandonment and violence. It’s a fantastic, spellbinding, and terrifying book.” * Dagens Nyheter *“This is fiction of true moral force, brilliantly sustained and achieved.” – Hilary Mantel * (on The Emperor of Lies) *“Cogent and affecting … In Mr. Sem-Sandberg’s fine novel, the tragedy is real but much more specific and conditional. It gives us, the readers, just enough of a loophole to evade its reckonings.” * Wall Street Journal *

Steve Sem-Sandberg’s novels include The Emperor of Lies, winner of the August Prize; The Chosen Ones, winner of France’s Prix Médicis étranger; and W., which was awarded the Eyvind Johnson Prize. His books have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into 30 languages. In 2020 he was elected to the Swedish Academy, the body that chooses the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Saskia Vogel is an author and translator from Los Angeles, currently living in Berlin. She was a 2021 PEN Translation Prize finalist and Princeton University’s Fall 2022 Translator in Residence. Her debut novel, Permission, was published in five languages, and she was awarded the 2021 Berlin Senate Grant for Non-German Language Literature for her writing.