Agency and Author: German Literature Beyond the Bestseller List By Rachel J.Halverson and Benjamin D.Schaper (Eds.), Berghahn Books. 2025, pp. 250. $135.00 (hardcover)

In their well-compiled and illuminating Agency and Author: German Literature Beyond the Bestseller List, Rachel J. Halverson and Benjamin D. Schaper focus on the concept of Literaturbetrieb (“literature industry”) in the German-language literary landscape to reconsider the notions of authorship beyond the writing process. The volume contains eight chapters and fundamentally examines the financial realities and arduous circumstances surrounding the profession. With an engaging discussion of literary production and literary prizes, the anthology aims to “provide case studies of up-and-coming authors and initiatives” (6) in a constantly evolving market. Diverging from the orthodox world of the German literary canon, the anthology includes contributions that examine the impact of the convoluted notions of authorship and the entwined network of the Literaturbetrieb on less- established German-language writers. To that end, Karin Bauer explores in chapter 1 Weiter Schreiben, an initiative that supports displaced writers and makes their work accessible to a wider public. The initiative aims to expand the literary public sphere and counteract the institutional ossification of the Literaturbetrieb to show that it is possible to open the gates of the established industry of book writing to refugee authors. Bauer notes that although this initiative rejects the label “exile author” or “migrant author,” the Literaturbetrieb persists in confining such writers “to the role of exile spokesperson for their culture,” (18) which distances them from the mainstream literary sphere. Rachel J. Halverson analyzes the success of the award-winning novelist, poet, and performer Martina Hefter, whose career trajectory is a showcase of the relationship between literary prizes, genre, and reputation. Halverson addresses Hefter's transition from novels to poetry, her switching of publishers, and the prizes she has received. The impact of Hefter's publishing house kookbooks on her fame as a poet proves the decisive role a mediator plays in the industry, because kookbooks has consolidated her popularity with their graphic designs, their unconventional formatting, and their successful marketing strategies. Halverson also explores how literary prizes indicate a cultural-political standing, entail monetary awards, and create a public presence for the granting institution. Yet, it is not to overlook the fact that Hefter's creative agency has contributed to her success as well. In an impressive chapter, Bethany A. Morgan analyzes the quantifiable influence of literary prizes on book purchases and an author's reputation. Morgan measures sales following a literary prize by the author's highest placement on the SPIEGEL-Bestseller list. Creating tables for Günter Grass, Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Müller, and Peter Handke, she analyzes the impact of the Nobel Prize on their book sales and place in the bestseller list. She creates similar tables for the Deutscher Buchpreis and the Chamisso-Preis. While all awardees of the Deutscher Buchpreis placed on the bestseller list, only one-third of Chamisso-Preis awardees from the same period (2000-2017) placed. This is a crucial point in that the bestseller list tells the reading consumer which books are selling the most but also implies which books they should be reading. Pursuant to Bourdieu's conceptualization of the “literary market,” literary prizes signal the merit or intrinsic cultural capital of a particular text. Due to the low profile of non-native authors, they do not have sufficient presence to freely contribute to the production of cultural capital and shape the literary culture. Morgan's case study validates Bauer's discussion of displaced authors and their place in German literature. In chapter 4, Sarah Koellner tracks the Viennese satirist Stefanie Sargnagel's professional journey. After receiving government-funded subsidies to finance her travels to Morocco, Sargnagel's Facebook profile became the target of a right-wing conservative hate campaign that took her writing out of context. However, these tensions established Sargnagel's engaged style of authorship in the digital literary sphere and brought her more fame, even though the hate campaign dismissed her artistic freedom and attempted to limit her digital presence. Yet, Sargnagel has created her own digital community, and her work has been compared to “Fanzines,” a portmanteau of “fan” and “magazine” that signals a collaborative, entertaining, and fan-oriented art (82). Sargnagel has reached out to a broader audience outside of Vienna by creating the “Kunstfigur” Sargnagel through the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis, where her competition text, Penne vom Kika, made her a voice for outsiders of the Literaturbetrieb. Jonathan Blake Fine peruses Shahak Shapira's social media presence through twelve selfies that display people posing, jumping around, and even juggling. Their backgrounds all feature the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. These photos have been gleaned without permission from apps such as Instagram, Facebook, Tinder, and Grindr. Shapira, the creator of the website Yolocaust, “had used Photoshop to extract each portrayed individual from the selfie and superimposed them onto images of corpses from the Nazi death camps” (105). For some, the project has raised awareness of the memorial's significance, but others have found it tasteless. Yet, it is precisely tastelessness that Shapira's memoir, You Will Probably Be Allowed to Write This: How I Became the Most German Jew in the World, observes in the act of taking selfies at the memorial. As Blake argues, Shapira participates in the German Literaturbetrieb through social media to establish his agency and stands out as a German Jewish voice. In chapter 6, prior to looking at globalization in Heike Geissler's Saisonarbeit, Katrina L. Nousek examines Geissler's website, interpreting her career as an example of authorial agency that asserts itself in the interconnected network of the 21st century Literaturbetrieb across a range of media that includes novels, podcasts, radio essays, and internet-based collaborations. Like her website, Geissler's novel, which narrates the precarious working conditions in an Amazon warehouse in Leipzig, has an experimental style that calls “readers’ attention to their active role in constituting her texts” (127) as active participants in the Literaturbetrieb. Benjamin D. Schaper writes on German Swiss author Benedict Wells’ career as an ideal test case to demonstrate how young authors, in their drive for financial success and artistic renown, interact with critics in order to negotiate their position in the literary landscape, make themselves visible in highly competitive market conditions, and gain literary fame in the Literaturbetrieb. Focusing on Wells’ novels, Schaper argues that Wells has been renowned in various circles, but not in academia and the canon of high literature, since he decided not to enroll in academic studies and chose to emancipate himself from literary circles. Unlike Wells, Rebecca Wismeg-Kammerlander's analysis of Wolf Haas's success in the final chapter of the anthology shows that strong and continuous interaction with diverse circles can establish an author's reputation. Haas has transported aspects of his Austrian background to the Literaturbetrieb in Germany. His successful branding of himself as a national child of Austria boosts his success across the networks of Austrian culture and beyond. Halverson and Schaper's Agency and Author is a rich study that not only illuminates the intricate ways of the publishing industry and the challenges lesser-known German-language writers face in the “literary industry” but also offers strategies of resistance against the established literary order. From literary prizes and publishing houses to digital platforms and media campaigns, this anthology displays the transformation authorship is currently undergoing. It is a coherent and insightful work and an excellent starting point for anybody interested in agency and authorship in the 21st century.