Synopses & Reviews
Elmiger's breakout novel is a staring contest with History: an effort to map the resonances and frictions introduced to the world by the sugar industry. But can any writing project contain such devastation?
The narrator of Out of the Sugar Factory, Dorothee Elimger, is a writer and archivist — and possibly a hoarder — of objects and stories that speak to the profound impact of the sugar industry on the world. Seated in the room where her vast collection sprawls across the floor, she obsessively connects a violent global industry to our unsettled present and her own desires. Elimger's deeply researched and innovative novel brings together subjects as varied as the institutionalization of Ellen West, the Haitian Revolution, Chantal Akerman, and Karl Marx to uncover the vast network of entrenched relationships lurking just below the surface. Out of the Sugar Factory, in Megan Ewing's matchless translation from German, is a prismatic account of a writer's overwhelming need to tell a story that is true, to follow the sugar wherever it may lead.
Review
"It is already clear that Out of the Sugar Factory will be one of this year's most important books. This is because it delves into pressing issues, but deals with them in a hallucinatory way. And because of the precision and luminous beauty of her language." — Annie-Sophie Scholl, Die Zeit
Review
"Out of the Sugar Factory is W. G. Sebald meets Agatha Christie, with a remarkable touch all Elmiger's own. One of Switzerland's most promising young writers reminds us that history itself is one great, sordid mystery that must be continually reinvestigated, even if it can't be solved." — Jessi Jezewska Stevens, author of The Visitors
About the Author
Dorothee Elmiger was born in 1985 and lived and works in Zurich. Her debut novel Einladung an die Waghalsigen was published in 2010, followed by the novel Schlafgänger in 2014. Her texts have been translated into different languages and adapted for the stage. Dorothee Elmiger has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Aspects Literature Prize for the best German-language prose debut, the Rauris Literature Prize, a sabbatical from the city of Zurich, the Erich Fried Prize and the Swiss Literature Prize.
Megan Ewing is a translator and Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.