Kummer aller Art

MARIANA LEKY
Kummer aller Art / Sorrow of All Kinds

Fiction, ca. 128 pages
Autumn 2022

#3 SPIEGEL-Bestseller-List
180,000 copies sold

“Mariana Leky is the kind of writer whose books you give away all the time, recommend to the person sitting next to you on the train without being asked, or even want to read to them without being asked. Because her sentences are so beautiful, the thoughts so clever and the comparisons and images so artfully oblique and at the same time appropriate. Because she has mastered the art of seeing the absurdities in the banal. Because the happiness in her books is never kitschy and the unhappiness never pathetic.” Judith Liere, ZEIT ONLINE

”Mariana Leky achieves the feat of taking the sorrow of everyday life seriously and at the same time stripping it of its power.“ Anne Burgmer, KÖLNER STADTANZEIGER

“Sorrow of All Kinds never fails to put a smile on our faces. These texts are like comforting plasters for soul pain, effective against fears, love trouble or insomnia.” Annemarie Stoltenberg, NDR


"Everyone seemed squeaky clean on the inside, only on the inside of us it looked like Hempel's under the sofa," kiosk owner Armin thinks to himself as he tries in vain to meditate successfully. And there is also disorder inside the other characters in these literary columns: Mrs. Wiese can no longer sleep, Mr. Pohl is permanently despondent, Lisa has her first lovesickness, Vadim's hands are trembling, Mrs. Schwerter urgently needs to relax, a sad patient has lost his flock and psychoanalyst Ulrich is messing with transience.
Grief of all kinds plagues the people who manoeuvre through everyday life, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But sorrow also unites them, for example when problems are not solved on walks, but at least come out into the open and into the light.
Clever, humorous and with a great sense of subtlety and absurdity, Mariana Leky portrays the situations of people who do not lack trustworthiness, but rather the courage to realise that, fortunately, one cannot permanently avoid life.

Rights sold to: Prostor (Czech); Dardanos Gutenberg (Greek)