Clemens Meyer
All the Lights
Winner of the 2008 Leipzig Book Fair Prize
A man bets all he has on a horse race to pay for an expensive operation for his dog. A young refugee wants to box her way straight off the boat to the top of the sport. Old friends talk all night after meeting up by chance. She imagines a future together.
Stories about people who have lost out in life and in love, and about their hopes for one really big win, the chance to make something of their lives. In silent apartments, desolate warehouses, prisons and by the river, Meyer strikes the tone of our harsh times, and finds the grace notes, the bright lights shining in the dark.
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- With an introduction by Stuart Evers.
- ‘Of Dogs and Horses’, Katy Derbyshire’s translation of a story from the collection, was published in The Guardian.
- Novels by Clemens Meyer were longlisted for the 2017 and 2023 Man Booker International Prize.
- You may also be interested in reading an early interview with Clemens Meyer in English at signandsight.com.
- Clemens Meyer spoke to The New Statesman in 2023 about growing up in the GDR, the rise of the far-right and Germany’s ‘responsibility’ for the conflict in Gaza.
- You can read a 2023 interview with Clemens Meyer about his writing on The Booker Prize website.
- Translator Katy Derbyshire spoke to The Booker Prize in 2023 about her translation process and the importance of translated fiction – you can read the interview on their website.
Print status: Available
Author: Clemens Meyer
Original language: German
Format: B format paperback
Publication date: 1 July 2025
ISBN: 9781916751309
Ebook ISBN: 9781908276056
Reviews
Alex Rayner
The Guardian
‘Take the bare prose of Raymond Carver, apply the bleak outlook of Michel Houellebecq, place characters from an Irvine Welsh book on German streets, and you have something close to this collection of 15 short stories… His tales have an evanescent, impressionistic quality… Meyer thrills and rewards.’
Chris Power
The Guardian
‘Stories of brilliance.’
Die Welt
‘What Meyer manages to achieve leaves you speechless. These stories glow in the world’s darkness.’ Die Welt
Spiegel
‘Clemens Meyer writes the best crafted, toughest and most heart-rending stories in Germany.’
Die Zeit
‘Meyer tells us about people who normally are not “literary subject matter” […] Respect to him. He’s the real deal. We need storytellers like him.’
Praise for Clemens Meyer
‘[Meyer’s] stripped-back prose is suffused with meaning.’ The Arts Desk
‘[Meyer] is one of the strongest German writers.’ Heinrich Oemsen, Hamburger Abendblatt
‘Clemens Meyer’s great art of describing people takes the form of the Russian doll principle: a story within a story within a story…. So much is so artfully interwoven that his work breaks the mould of the closed narrative.’ Katharina Teutsch, Die Zeit
