There‘s a lot going on in QualityLand, the best of all possible countries. Every month is the hottest since weather records began, the drones are behaving very strangely and a billionaire wants to become president. Peter Jobless is finally allowed to work as a machine therapist and tries to solve the relationship problems of household appliances. Meanwhile, Kiki Unknown snoops into her own past and gets grief from a remote-controlled killer. And then there‘s the thing with World War III. Marc-Uwe Kling‘s funny dystopia about humans and machines in a big-data world enters its second round!
A book full of clever ideas, quirky characters and amazing plot twists.

QualityLand is a fun dystopia that plays in a near future. The novel takes the reader to an unspecified western country, which for reasons of image was renamed. In QualityLand work, leisure time and relationships are optimized by algorithms. QualityPartner knows who is best suited to you. The self-driving car knows where you want to go. And anyone who is registered with TheShop will receive all the products he or she wants, without having to order them, because the system knows what everybody wants. No one is forced any more to take difficult decisions – because in QualityLand the answer to every question is: OK.

Nevertheless, the machine-scrapper Peter begins to suspect that something is wrong with his life. If the system is really so perfect, why are there drones that suffer from fear of flight, or combat robots with post-traumatic stress disorder? Why did the system rate him at level 10, only one level above the single-digit range, where people are considered “useless”? Why does his girlfriend Sandra Admin unhesitatingly leave him during a romantic dinner when QualityPartner offers her a better partner as an upgrade? And why the hell does he get a pink vibrator in form of a dolphin from TheShop? Peter decides to return the unwanted product, but that’s not at all easy.

An astonishing futuristic satire about the promises and pitfalls of digitisation. Visionary, profound and very, very funny.

In The Kangaroo Chronicles (“Die Känguru-Chroniken”) the author Marc-Uwe Kling lives together with a kangaroo and writes funny songs and stories. His business model is to publish books that fiercely criticize capitalism and sell incredibly well. The kangaroo came to Germany as a guest-worker. It is a communist and an antifascist, but most of the time behaves like an anarchist. Like every real kangaroo it loves boxing, always carries boxing gloves in its bag and founded the “Fight Club”, where people are trained to fight Nazis. Its antipathy to capitalism is easy to understand when it plays Monopoly with Marc-Uwe: the kangaroo doesn’t accept any rules, refuses to pay the rent for entering a house and squats in it; then all houses, train stations, the waterworks and the electricity power station are claimed free for the public. The game ends surprisingly in a tie. It is really into Nirvana. It’s a classical Berlin flat-sharing community, where the deep questions of life are hotly debated: is lying in a hammock already a kind of passive resistance? Must the kangaroo place its pouch onto the conveyor belt at the airport security check? Did the kangaroo really fight for the Vietcong? And why is it addicted to champagne truffles?

In The Kangaroo Manifest (“Das Känguru-Manifest”) they are back again: the communist kangaroo and the stoic artisan. In their fight against the mysterious Ministry of Productivity they are not afraid of anything. A conspiracy at the lowest level. Spectacular revelations. Scandals. Something crazy about religion. Wonderfully slanting stories – with fun, excitement and champagne truffles.

The Kangaroo Revelation (“Die Känguru-Offenbarung”) is the fulminating sequel to the sequel: the marsupial and the minky artist on the hunt for the mysterious penguin. Get ready: This is the revelation of the kangaroos to show the Asocial Network what will happen in the near future.

The Kangaroo Apocrypha (“Die Känguru-Apokryphen”) will guide you through all of life situations. Whether it‘s a meeting with Donald Trump or Kim-Jong Un‘s birthday, you‘ll have the arguments on your side in small talk. This book teaches you how to become smarter, more self-reliant and slimmer in your sleep. It will influence your opinions on the following topics: Craftsmen, Coriander, Nazis, Potters, Social Democrats. There is also a kangaroo in it.

Marc-Uwe Kling has created a new novel universe together with his 12-year-old twin daughters Johanna and Luise Kling. The Clue Finder (“Der Spurenfinder”) is a fantasy crime comedy about an unusual trio of investigators.
“Elos von Bergen was not just any clue seeker. It was he who solved the riddle of the Obelisk of Tarnok. He brought the Countess of Oberlinden back her griffin. He caught the dream killer of Altschwanenberg. He was the most famous clue seeker of the Lost Provinces. Although he would never have called himself a clue seeker. Elos von Bergen was a clue finder.”
Elos von Bergen has actually given up clue-finding since a case with a vindictive night-wizard almost cost him and his children Ada and Naru their lives. That’s why the three of them have been living in Friedhofen, the sleepiest village in the entire kingdom (its name literally means “graveyard”), for several years now. There, Elos works on writing his twenty-volume memoirs – much to the chagrin of the children, who are bored to tears in such a backwater. But then a mysterious murder occurs in Friedhofen, of all places, which drags Elos into the trickiest case of his life. And if he thinks his children will stay at home and twiddle their thumbs in the meantime, he is very much mistaken.

And not only is Princess Head-of-Snot (“Prinzessin Popelkopf”) stupid, she’s also mean, which is why a little witch curses her and turns her into what her name means. From now on, the princess must actually wear a giant snot-filled head on her neck. Her father, King Stinkfoot Headof-Snot, suggests that she should change her name and thus her appearance by getting married. However, the picky princess does not wish to marry Prince Poop-Puss nor Sir Zit because she is in love with Duke Doofus.“ The rhymes in Marc-Uwe Kling’s cheerfully impolite children’s story, about superficialities and the power to change oneself, will have both children and adults laughing out loud. With imaginative and quirky illustrations by Astrid Henn.

Pain, whether it arises from a bodily malfunction or an intense psychic disturbance, whether it is brought on by a lost love or an unexpected death, always forces us to brutally realise we are not the person we thought we were anymore. It is only then that the possibility of being someone different arises. Pain enslaves the individual. Suffering is what the individual manages to do with pain. El enigma del sufrimiento (“The Mystery of Suffering”) is a dazzling book, it will touch a great many readers in many different ways. The highly respected Argentine essayist provides a fresh reflection on this unpredictable process, capable of transporting us from pain to a moment of intense personal enrichment.

In his poems, Kovadloff repeatedly returns to the themes of the Holocaust, man’s alienation, and transience. The essays make evident references to Jewish theosophy and Martin Buber, on whom he wrote his doctoral thesis, and who is mentioned in many of his publications.

In addition to his philosophical works, Kovadloff also writes wonderfully droll books for children. These stories carry children away to a bizarre, surreal world, which inspires them to make new discoveries.

Blood Harvest (“Safra de sangue”) is a rural novel whose main character is Agnes, the leader of a small community called Celeiro, a kind of healer and spiritual adviser to the farming families. She will do anything to bury her niece in one piece, since the child was killed by a soybean harvesting machine belonging to a large cooperative that exploits local workers. The girl, who had her hair caught in the machine’s combs and her scalp ripped off and then stolen, was left in the fields to die. Agnes will seek justice whatever the cost.

The breathtaking eco novel The Red Earth (“Água turva”), plays with the limits of truth and fiction. In an impressive narrative, Morgana Kretzmann portrays elements of recent Brazilian history and reveals the ambition of powerful men faced with one of our greatest treasures: the environment.
The story takes place on the border between Brazil and Argentina, in an area where the Turvo State Park is located, which has the largest longitudinal waterfall in the world, the Salto do Yucamã, a sacred place threatened by the illegal construction of a hydroelectric power station. Park ranger Chaya is responsible for preventing the hunt of wild animals in the park. Preta, her cousin, separated from the family as a child, is the leader of a much-feared group of hunters and smugglers in the Argentinian side of the border, the Pies Rubros. Olga, the parliamentary assistant of a greedy legislator, is forced to return to her hometown as a spokeswoman for the incoming environmental tragedy — until she realizes the chance to change the course of history is in her hands. From enemies to allies, the three women find themselves forced to overcome a troubled past in order to finally build a possible future for everyone. But they aren’t alone: Sarampião, the mythical figure of a park ranger and nature protector and not least Chaya’s grandfather, seems to accompany them and help them in battle.

Morgana Kretzmann’s debut novel To Dust (“Ao pó”), 2021 São Paulo Literature Prize winner, tells the story of Sofia, a young theatre actress who could have a brilliant career in Rio de Janeiro if she didn’t have to struggle with the shadows of her past. Even her boyfriend Carlos, a respected playwright, can’t help her; their relationship experiences ups and downs that eventually lead to a humiliating break-up. Sofia is also haunted by great feelings of guilt, because when she, barely of age, fragile and with no security, turned her back on her homeland to finally escape her uncle’s abuse, she left her younger sister Aline behind against her will – knowing that she would meet the same fate as herself. Sofia takes refuge more and more often in increasingly rampant alcohol binges, and when, after a concert, she allows all the men in the band to have sex with her, Carlos’s ego can no longer stand it. He changes the lock and sends her things in bin bags to a friend’s address. From then on, Sofia can’t shake off the thought of revenge, revenge on the men who destroyed her: Carlos, the band leader, and especially her uncle. To do this, she travels to São Paulo, to Belo Horizonte and back to her hometown of Tenente Portela in southern Brazil. There, her sister has just committed suicide, and in the end, it is the single mother, who had turned a blind eye to all the years of abuse, who avenges her daughters.

In Green Club and the Soil League: How it all began (“O Clube Verde e a Liga dos Solos: Como tudo começou”), four sixth-grade friends investigate a farm suspected of using illegal pesticides. Esperança, Joia, Clá, and Nim were merely attempting to complete a school project, but ended up involved in the rescue of an ancient being with special powers, a member of the Soil League. The League members are under threat, and the lives of everyone on the planet depend on them. They will join forces with the Green Club to try to stop the actions of powerful people who, driven by greed, are creating the most devastating pesticide, capable of destroying all types of soil in the world, thus leaving humanity without food.
With short, dynamic chapters narrated in the first person, renowned authors Morgana Kretzmann and Paulo Scott sensitively address themes such as first love, school life and friendship, as well as focusing on environmental crimes and reflecting on the relationship between humans and nature.
An adventure full of twists and turns suitable for readers aged 9 and up.