Out now
Worlds Apart
Born in East Berlin, Julia is eight when her actress mother uproots her family of four girls, by different fathers, heading West in search of a better life. Their eventual landing in the remote countryside of Schleswig-Holstein solves no problems for this fractured household.
Desperate to escape a childhood of rural poverty, neglect and shame, the lonely child becomes addicted to writing. Aged 13, she leaves her family. At school in West Berlin, she finally encounters love. In this gripping novel based on her youthful diaries and early life, Julia Franck shows why and how a great writer found her voice.
This ‘astonishing chronicle of recent German history’ (Julia Pascal), ’seamlessly translated’ by Imogen Taylor has been described by historian and journalist Katja Hoyer as ‘one of those books that involves you both intellectually and emotionally.’ It is ‘one of the most bizarre life stories I have ever come across’ yet also ‘moments of humour, curiosity and desire surface. At times I laughed out loud ...'
Julia Franck’s powerful novels of family and motherhood delve deep into the nation’s tumultuous past. Her work has won numerous prizes; her novel Blind Side of the Heart won the German Book Prize 2007, was translated into over 40 languages, filmed and has sold over a million copies in Germany alone. She lives in Berlin.
‘A superlative storyteller’ The TLS
Compact and vivid, this powerful novel of migration, identity and loss is deeply informed by the fall of the Eastern block and by Iris Wolff’s own family history in the Banat.
‘The lives in this compact marvel of a book are presented “so vividly you think you remember them yourself”’ The Guardian
‘She is a master of the teasingly slow dramatic build-up … memorable prose, subtle and mesmerizing’ The TLS
‘This novel, with the breadth of an epic and the lightness of touch of a fairytale, is a pocket history of 20th-century Romania’ The Guardian
‘These lives are delicately and intimately drawn; sometimes tragic, though never melodramatic’ The Irish Times
Nominated for the 2026 Dublin Literary Prize. Available as a paperback and eBook:
Books open doors and cross borders
Church door in Semlac © Iris Wolff
MOTH BOOKS publishes outstanding fiction and non fiction with a strong emphasis on women’s voices. Founded in London in 2023, we cross borders and make connections, particularly with Europe.
The imprint's first book, Monique Charlesworth’s candid and witty memoir Mother Country: a story of love and lies, was one of three shortlisted for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2024. Moth Books has also published a paperback edition of Monique’s acclaimed novel, The Children’s War, with a new ending.
Out next month: another magnificent novel of family and conflict in the heart of Europe: Worlds Apart by Julia Franck, translated by Imogen Taylor
Coming in June: Iris Wolff’s new novel, Clearing, short-listed for the German Book Prize and a best-seller in Germany, translated by Ruth Martin.
Also available
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Coming Soon: Worlds Apart
A fractured childhood, four siblings and a mother who doesn’t seem to care: at last Julia discovers love, and a world apart.In this highly praised coming-of-age novel, a child moved from East to West, from the Marienfeld transit camp to North Germany then back to West Berlin, saves her soul by writing.
This ‘astonishing chronicle of recent German history’ (Julia Pascal) is out on February 5 in paperback and as an e-Book.
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Mother Country
The true story of the passionate and tragicomic relationship between a mother running away from her past in Hitler’s Germany, and a daughter running towards it. Now available as a Moth Books paperback, ebook and audio book. -
The Children's War
A moving and powerful coming-of-age novel set in war-torn Europe, this is fiction at its most gripping. Now available as a Moth Books paperback, ebook and audio book, updated with a new ending.
Authors
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Monique Charlesworth
Born in Birkenhead, Monique Charlesworth is half German and her work has a European bias. A graduate of the National Film and Television School, she spent a decade writing scripts for film and television. Fluent in French and German she started her working life as a journalist and has published four acclaimed novels. She is currently working on a novel that completes her German trilogy.
Image: © Alex Lifschutz
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Iris Wolff
Iris Wolff, born behind the iron curtain in the medieval town of Sibiu, Transylvania in 1977, is an award-winning writer whose work carries the reader deep into her former homeland. The fate of those who stay and those who choose to migrate is the constant and powerful theme weaving through her novels.
Image: © Max Goedecke
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Julia Franck
Julia Franck is a celebrated author and journalist living in Berlin whose work has been translated into more than forty languages. The recipient of numerous awards, she has written five novels, short stories and has edited essays. Two of her novels have been made into feature films. Her work is deeply preoccupied with recent German history, family and motherhood.
Image: © Mathias Bothor