THE LIKE OF US

  • 25,000 copies sold!
  • The latest novel by the award-winning author Inger-Maria Mahlke.
  • A captivating multi-generational family epic exploring identity, belonging, gender, class, power dynamics, and love relationships.
  • Her novel Archipel was awarded the German Book Prize in 2018, with 140,000 copies sold in Germany and rights sold to 7 countries.
  • English sample translation available.

Are you familiar with Buddenbrooks?

A family from Lübeck, rich in children, conservative, loyal to the emperor: the Lindhorsts. In 1890, Marthe is born in the spacious patrician house on Königstraße amidst her older brothers whose freedoms will not be hers. And yet, it is a life with brilliant prospects. Until a bestselling novel, written by the son of a deceased acquaintance, makes it clear to the respectable Lindhorsts that even after two generations, they are still seen as "the Jews" in their environment. Unsereins is the novel of a city and its society, its citizens and wage earners, the craftsmen, and above all, its women. Whether a maid, housewife, seamstress, or writer, whether manic-depressive like Marthe's mother, or vulnerable like Marthe herself, who struggles with her own and others' expectations.

Inger-Maria Mahlke tells a story of identity and belonging, of gender and class, of power dynamics and love relationships – of everything that shaped and held together not only Lübeck, the former "smallest state of the German Empire".

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Sample Translations
  • Publisher: Rowohlt Hardcover
  • Release: 14.11.2023
  • ISBN: 978-3-498-00181-0
  • 496 Pages
  • Author: Inger-Maria Mahlke

Please be advised that the book cover may be used in its original design only. Details and distortions are not permitted under copyright law.

THE LIKE OF US
Inger-Maria Mahlke THE LIKE OF US
Conny Friedrich-Meyer
© Conny Friedrich-Meyer
Inger-Maria Mahlke

Growing up in Lübeck and Tenerife, Inger-Maria Mahlke studied law at the Free University of Berlin, where she worked in the criminology department. She won the 2009 edition of Berlin’s Open Mike event as well as the 2010 Klaus Michael Kühne Prize for her debut novel Silberfischchen . On submitting an excerpt from her novel Rechnung offen for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, she won the Ernst Willner Prize. In 2014 she received the Karl Arnold Prize of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and the Arts. Wie ihr wollt was shortlisted for the German Book Prize, which she received in 2018 for the novel  Archipel.