While We Were Dreaming
Startlingly raw and deeply moving, While We Were Dreaming is an extraordinary coming of age novel by one of Germany's most ambitious writers, full of passion, rage, hope and despair.
Rico, Mark, Paul and Daniel were 13 when the Berlin Wall fell in autumn 1989. Growing up in Leipzig at the time of reunification, they dream of a better life somewhere beyond the brewery quarter. Every night they roam the streets, partying, rioting, running away from their fears, their parents and the future, fighting to exist, killing time. They drink, steal cars, feel wrecked, play it cool, longing for real love and true freedom.
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Katy Derbyshire, originally from London, has lived in Berlin for over twenty years. She translates contemporary German writers including Inka Parei, Heike Geissler, Olga Grjasnowa, Annett Gröschner and Christa Wolf. Her translation of Clemens Meyer's Bricks and Mortar was the winner of the 2018 Straelener Übersetzerpreis (Straelen Prize for Translation), longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, and shortlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. She occasionally teaches translation and also co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show.
''[Meyer's] stripped-back prose is suffused with meaning.'
-- The Arts Desk
'[Meyer] is one of the strongest German writers.'
-- Heinrich Oemsen, Hamburger Abendblatt
'Clemens Meyer's great art of describing people takes the form of the Russian doll principle: a story within a story within a story. ... So much is so artfully interwoven that his work breaks the mould of the closed narrative.'
-- Katharina Teutsch, Die Zeit
