Вольфганг Хильбиг: The Females

WOLFGANG HILBIG (1941–2007) was one of the major German writers to emerge in the postwar era. Though raised in East Germany, he proved so troublesome to the authorities that in 1985 he was granted permission to leave to the West. The author of over twenty books, he received virtually all of Germany’s major literary prizes, capped by the 2002 Georg Büchner Prize, Germany’s highest literary honor.

ISABEL FARGO COLE is a U.S.-born, Berlin-based writer and translator. Her translations include Wolfgang Hilbig’s The Sleep of the Righteous, “I,” Old Rendering Plant (for which she received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize), and The Tidings of the Trees . She has also been the recipient of a prestigious PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and her novel Die grüne Grenze was a finalist for the 2018 Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse.

The Tidings of the Trees

Old Rendering Plant

The Sleep of the Righteous

Originally published as Die Weiber , Alte Abdeckerei , Die Kunde von den Bäumen by Wolfgang Hilbig, Werke, Erzählungen

© 2010, S. Fischer Verlag GmbH,

Frankfurt am Main

Translation © 2018 by Isabel Fargo Cole

Two Lines Press

582 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94104

www.twolinespress.com

ISBN 978-1-931883-76-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948090

Cover design by Gabriele Wilson

Cover photo by Millennium Images/Adrian Muttitt

Typeset by Jessica Sevey

Printed in the United States of America

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This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut.