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V&Q Books

@vqbooks

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Publishing remarkable writing from Germany. An imprint of @volandquist Verlag, Berlin.

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Yeahyeah! Wir sind Spitzenpreisträger des deutschen Verlagspreises 2026! ✨

Herzlichen Glückwunsch auch an @kunstanstifter und @merverlag für die anderen Spitzenpreise, @shift.books für den Nachhaltigkeitspreis und @mairischverlag für den Innovationspreis!

💕💕💕

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Now that autumn is in full swing, here’s a look back at some of our September highlights! 🍁🍂

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September reading brought some really interesting and unique gems - a relief as there is always so much to choose from during the UK’s biggest publishing push of the year.

Reading for me is always about being challenged both thematically and linguistically, and not being bored with my reading choices. Mixing new indie releases with bigger publishers, translated and not, short stories, poetry, non-fiction; September had it.

DREAMS OF AYN ARA - Sara Abou Ghazal, tr. from the Arabic by Katharine Halls, Mercier Press

AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT - Patrick Cottrell, And Other Stories

THE RUSSIAN TESTAMENT - Shumona Sinha, tr. from the French by Subhashree Beeman, Hope Road

HELL DAYS - Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Scribe

THE BEDEVILMENTS - John Gay, Ortac Press

UNDER A FUR COAT - Sonya Vatomsky, Manilla Press

FETCH - Colin Branwell, And Other Stories

BERLIN BABEL - Edited by Katy Derbyshire, tr. from various languages, V&Q Books

LA NUIT AU CŒUR [NIGHT PIECES] - Nathacha Appanah, Editions Gallimard

My main goal was to read both more non-fiction (achieved), and more not in English (doubly achieved). I clearly made some good choices as non-fiction and non-English books made some of my top reads of the month - with Appanah’s being a flawless work of both and I am genuinely excited for anglophone readers to discover it next year via Linden Editions.

WIMMY ROAD BOYZ - Sufiyaan Salam, Merky Books

I have been burned by commercial and popular fiction one too many times recently, but can gladly confirm that Wimmy Road Boyz is worth all the hype and more. Language, flow, and content were flawless and brought forward a fresh and interesting new voice in a setting very much worthy of more stories.

Sample writing

NO EDGES: SWAHILI STORIES - Multiple authors, tr. from the Swahili by multiple translators, Tilted Axis Press

Last but not least, Tilted Axis always has something I don’t know how else I would get my hands on. This time around, impeccably and thrillingly, short stories translated from Swahili (!) by a variety of authors and translators. This is one of the most exciting finds and really highlights the need for more works of fiction from non-Indo Europea

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🥂Hurra! Wir werden 2026 mit dem Deutschen Verlagspreis ausgezeichnet 🥂

Wir sind voller Dankbarkeit, wieder Teil dieses schönen Preises sein zu dürfen. Für uns ist der Deutsche Verlagspreis Anerkennung und Auszeichnung zugleich und liefert Motivation für die nächste Zeit!

Mit großer Spannung schauen wir jetzt in Richtung Frankfurter Buchmesse, auf der dann auch bekannt wird, wer zu den diesjährigen Sptizenpreisträgern gehören wird.
🤞

#deutscherverlagspreis2026 #volandundquist #volandquist

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Back at the Gardners Trade Show!

This is my third time at the @_gardners Trade Show, but my first wearing my @inpressbooks hat, joining hundreds of booksellers, publishers and exhibitors in Hinckley for the weekend.

It’s been great to see so many familiar faces today - booksellers I’ve known and worked alongside for years - and especially good to meet so many new faces, talk books and introduce more booksellers to some of the brilliant indie publishers we represent at Inpress.

And we’re back tomorrow for more. If you missed us today, we’ll be taking part in the @booksellersassociation Fever Pitches, sharing a quick-fire selection of books we think bookshops should have on their radar.

See you there!

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Inpress Books are at the Booksellers Association Conference and Gardners Trade Show 2026!

We’ll be at the Leonardo Hotel, Hinckley Island, all day today and tomorrow, joining the celebrations for 40 years of the @_gardners annual trade show.

This year brings together an incredible 460 booksellers and more than 100 publishers and exhibitors, with this morning kicking off with guest speakers Ben Macintyre and Ann Cleeves.

If you’re at the trade show today, make sure to come and say hello to the Inpress Books team. You’ll find us at stand P19 in the Paris Suite, with plenty of brilliant independent books and publishers to talk about.

And we hope to see even more of you tomorrow at the @booksellersassociation publishers Fever Pitch.

See you there!

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A few new bits from off the shelves!! Plus… we now do gift vouchers!!

#indiebookstore #indiebookshop #books #derby

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Last night we launched “Berlin Babel,” an anthology of new short stories about our city written in nine languages and rendered into English, edited by @katy_derbyshire_books and released by @vqbooks. I had the honor of co-moderating my fellow contributors at the glitzy @ballhausberlin in hand-me-down tails and an @ensemblekallisto t-shirt, then closed the lineup with this joint dramatic reading of an excerpt from my self-translated story “Waiting for Friedhof,” about a queer nightclub in a cemetery. The original Yiddish version is forthcoming in @morgnroyt, and you can now get Berlin Babel “wherever books are sold.” Thanks so much to Katy and @volandquist for a beautiful book and a memorable evening.

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🪩Thank you everyone who joined our Berlin Babel Book Launch @ballhausberlin ! 🪩

We had a wonderful time with you!
✨💕✨

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✴︎Berlin Babel goes Ocelot Bookstore! ✴︎

Yesterday the writers and translators of »Berlin Babel«were invited to sign some copies at the wonderful Ocelot bookstore in Berlin Mitte. Be fast to get your copy there, if you want one!

Oh and don't miss our Book Launch Gala at Ballhaus Berlin on September 8th 😊

Thanks for having us @ocelotberlin , we had a great time!

#berlinbabel #ocelot

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Happy publication day to V&Q Books and Berlin Babel, officially out today!

Edited by @vqbooks publisher and translator @katy_derbyshire_books, Berlin Babel brings together fourteen short stories to create a vivid portrait of contemporary Berlin, told by Berliners old and new.

Across clubs, graveyards, abandoned airfields and city streets, these stories ask what brings people to Berlin and, perhaps more importantly, what makes them stay. It’s a city of refuge and reinvention, history and nightlife, green spaces and housing shortages, club queues, bicycle thefts and shitty jobs. A place people escape to, are born into, fall in love with, struggle against and sometimes find their past catching up with them.

The writers themselves originate from Syria, Turkey, China, the UK, US, Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Germany, Italy and India, with stories translated from eight languages including Arabic, Chinese, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Yiddish. Together they offer something deliberately varied and sometimes contradictory: not one definitive Berlin, but many cities occupying the same space.

We’re big fans of V&Q, not least because they gave us one of our Opt Indie Book Club reads at the start of this year, @ivana.sajko1’s Every Time We Say Goodbye, translated by Mima Simić. That novel also carried us towards Berlin, while wrestling with migration, violence, memory and what it means to leave one place for another.

There’s something lovely about returning to the city from the opposite direction with Berlin Babel. Rather than following one journey towards Berlin, we find fourteen different perspectives already there, asking what it means to arrive, to stay and to call a city home.

Berlin Babel is out now. Pick up a copy from your best local book-slingers!

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🎉 Was für ein Tag! Heute erscheinen gleich 4 Bücher aus unserem Herbstprogramm 🎉

Wir feiern den Release von

»Gavdos« von Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus @tomerdr

»Berlin Babel« herausgegeben von Katy Derbyshire @katy_derbyshire_books @vqbooks

»Alles Schöne ist mit Mehl bestäubt« von Chris Lauer @chrislauer__ @editionazur

und
»Lemberg - Eine Vorstellung« von Ziemowit Szczerek @szczerekziemowit

#volandundquist #neuerscheinung #release

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