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Blood Book
- Author
- Kim de l'Horizon
- Narrator
- Sara Dunham
- Publisher
- Hodder & Stoughton
- Publish Date
- 28 August 2025
- Run Time
- 10 hours 34 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
'Powerful'
Times Literary Supplement
'Formally adventurous'
New York Times
'An exquisite inquiry into what it means to be an individual in a body, a family, a society, with all the attendant misery, humour, joy and enduring mystery'
Krystelle Bamford, author of Idle Grounds
As their grandmother slides into dementia, an unnamed narrator begins to ask questions - to fill in the gaps, to resist the silence that shrouds their family. Childhood memories resurface, revealing a path into the past, winding back through generations. This matrilineal line leads toward nature, witchcraft, freedom. Could this be where they belong?
What follows is an astounding quest for liberation - from generational trauma, class identity, the limits of language. It's a search for other forms of knowledge and traditions, other ways of becoming. Bold and expansive, Blood Book is an unforgettable reckoning with the past, and a mesmerising exploration of who we are.
'Everything about it is fantastic'
Die Welt
'One can only marvel'
Die Zeit
'An important new voice for a new form of writing'
Tages-Anzeiger
Published in the US as Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues
Critics Review
-
Although the novel chronicles experiences that are relatively niche, the narrator's struggles transcend the specificity of what they are describing. This, ultimately, is what makes Blutbuch so powerful: it's not simply about the unique struggles of someone who is gender-fluid, but about what it means to be human in a gendered, classist, and sexist world
Times Literary Supplement
-
Kim de l'Horizon has managed that rare thing: an honest love letter. At once kaleidoscopic and urgent, Blood Book is an exquisite inquiry into what it means to be an individual in a body, a family, a society, with all the attendant misery, humour, joy and enduring mystery
Krystelle Bamford, author of Idle Grounds
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A touching, literarily opulent, utterly fascinating book
Bayerischer Rundfunk
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Kim de l'Horizon has won the German Book Prize and everything about it is fantastic . . . it is a story about the search for the language of one's own identity, a story of becoming and being oneself
Die Welt
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A debut hard to be exceeded . . . A book of superpowers, of superheroines . . . This debut could move people like the great confessional texts by Édouard Louis, Annie Ernaux, Daniel Schreiber or Hanya Yanagihara did recently . . . With Blutbuch, Kim de l'Horizon has created something that belongs to the great promises of literature
The Jury of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation Literature Prize
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In Kim de l'Horizon's novel Blutbuch, the non-binary protagonist searches for their own language with an enormously creative energy. What narrative exists for a body that defies conventional notions of gender? Every linguistic attempt displays an urgency and literary innovation that provoked and enthralled the jury
The German Book Prize Jury
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Such a deep story with a gorgeous language. I am completely enthralled
Frankfurter Rundschau
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Language becomes as fluid as bodies and identities: it sweeps you along in its current
Süddeutsche Zeitung
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An irrepressible literary talent
Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin
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Blutbuch surprises and amazes again and again through the mutability of language, the play with forms and text flows, and above all through the clever and witty narrative style
Ö1 Kultur Aktuell
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One can only marvel at the literary mastery that de l'Horizon unfolds
Die Zeit
-
An important new voice for a new form of writing
Tages-Anzeiger
-
Formally adventurous
New York Times
-
Observing memory and the deconstruction of family, language, and the queer body, Blood Book is an atlas that takes on so many challenging points, with an omnipotence that never loses its vastness
Misha Honcharenko, author of Trap Unfolds Me Greedily
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A sensation in the German-speaking world. It's daring, free, contradictory and relentless. It speaks about so many issues that concern us today. But most of all, it made me believe that it's possible to write great literature, even from Zürich, where I'm from, and in your twenties.
Service95
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Kim de l'Horizon
- Narrator
- Sara Dunham
- Duration
- 10 hours 34 minutes
- Release Date
- 28 August 2025
- ISBN
- 9781399731461
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Hodder & Stoughton
- Genre
- Fiction in translation
Synopsis
WINNER OF THE GERMAN BOOK PRIZE, THE SWISS BOOK PRIZE AND THE JÜRGEN PONTO LITERATURE PRIZE'Powerful'Times Literary Supplement'Formally adventurous'New York Times 'An exquisite inquiry into what it means to be an individual in a body, a family, a society, with all the attendant misery, humour, joy and enduring mystery'Krystelle Bamford, author of Idle GroundsAs their grandmother slides into dementia, an unnamed narrator begins to ask questions - to fill in the gaps, to resist the silence that shrouds their family. Childhood memories resurface, revealing a path into the past, winding back through generations. This matrilineal line leads toward nature, witchcraft, freedom. Could this be where they belong?What follows is an astounding quest for liberation - from generational trauma, class identity, the limits of language. It's a search for other forms of knowledge and traditions, other ways of becoming. Bold and expansive, Blood Book is an unforgettable reckoning with the past, and a mesmerising exploration of who we are.'Everything about it is fantastic'Die Welt'One can only marvel'Die Zeit'An important new voice for a new form of writing'Tages-AnzeigerPublished in the US as Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues
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