Verlagen at a Glance

You’d probably have an easier time finding a good Chinese restaurant in Berlin than recalling the names of all the German houses, let alone what they do. A quick primer on some notables.

Hanser: A fiercely literary house that has managed success by making strategic commercial choices. Throw in a maverick, Straus-ian figure in publisher Michael Krueger, and you’ve basically got a German FSG—without the Holtzbrinck backing.

Suhrkamp: Traditional literary house with a strong flavor of branded paperback series. Penguin Classics, anyone?

DVA: Think Public Affairs. The house specializes in journalistic nonfiction, a rarity in Germany, with books like Plan of Attack. Helped slightly by formal (but not editorial) connection to the patrician Faz newspaper.

Fischer: Probably the German house most likely to appear in the same sentence as the word “venerable.” Known for its contemporary German fiction.

C.H. Beck: The company's profitable strand of science and technical publishing mixes with its trade list. A German Norton?

Rowohlt: The most Random House of German houses—a big house that does respected American authors like Stewart O’Nan, Paul Auster and Jonathan Franzen. Caused a media stew last winter when it canceled a novel about Nazi pornography

Random House: Somewhat different from Random U.S.—more small imprints—but not as boutiquey as the company insists, more like Penguin in these Portfolio/Gotham/Sentinel/Penguin Press days.

Diogenes: Swiss-based house that has hit on the unusual idea of controlling foreign rights in non-German territories.

Eichborn: Hodge-podgy and uncategorizable, like an S&S. Popular novelists join with career counseling, food criticism, anatomy-driven humor and a Clinton-sized project on Alexander von Humboldt.

Aufbau: Old-school Berlin house—it was the first publisher founded in Berlin after WWII—specializing in Jewish issues.