MacLehose Press swoops for Otoo’s ‘astonishing’ German-language novel

British writer Sharon Dodua Otoo’s German-language novel Ada’s Realm, translated into English, has been acquired by MacLehose Press.

Publisher Katharina Bielenberg bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Markus Hoffmann at Regal Hoffmann and Associates, with publication scheduled for 13th April 2023.

Riverhead will publish the novel in the US and Canada, with rights there bought by senior editor Laura Perciasepe. The novel, written in German, is translated by US-American translator and academic Jon Cho-Polizzi.

Sharon Dodua Otoo was born in London and grew up in Ilford, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants to the UK. As a young woman she went to Germany as an au pair, moving there permanently in the late 1990s. She has lived in Berlin since 2006, where she works as a writer, literary festival programmer, and anti-racism activist.

Otoo has previously written two novellas in English. In 2016, her short story "Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin" ("Herr Gröttrup sits down") won one of the most prestigious German literary awards, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.

Ada’s Realm grew out of this short story and became her first full-length novel. She wrote it entirely in German, and it was first published in Germany in 2021 by Fischer Verlag.

Otoo said: “This is such an incredible honour. I am aware that translations of literary novels from German into English are a rare thing. And this situation – that a book written in a foreign language by a British author is beautifully rendered into her first language by a US-American translator – is particularly special. I already feel so blessed, and the book hasn’t even been published yet.”

Hoffmann said: “Ada’s Realm is an astonishing feat of storytelling that takes you on a journey across time and continents, tracing forms of oppression and the struggle for liberation from the coast of West Africa in the mid-15th century to the devastations of World War II and, finally, present-day Berlin. Four interwoven narrative strands follow four different (or are they?) protagonists – all of them called Ada – and converge in the here and now.”

Bielenberg described the novel as “highly imaginative, hugely playful and wholly immersive, engaging with big and vital themes and beautifully poised across several timeframes".

“Sharon is one of Europe’s most exciting literary voices with a great deal to say, and we look forward to publishing her extraordinary debut (in Jon Cho-Polizzi’s translation from German) as a standout novel on the MacLehose Press list,” she said.