Blood Book

WINNER OF THE GERMAN BOOK PRIZE, THE SWISS BOOK PRIZE AND THE JURGEN PONTO LITERATURE PRIZE

'Powerful'

Times Literary Supplement

'Formally adventurous'

New York Times

'Everything about it is fantastic'

Die Welt

'One can only marvel'

Die Zeit

'An irrepressible literary talent'

Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazin

'An important new voice for a new form of writing'

Tages-Anzeiger

An unnamed protagonist is prompted by their grandmother's slide into dementia to investigate their family history. The more their grandmother forgets, the more the narrator tries to remember: what was it in their childhood that prompted them to feel so alienated from their body? Why is their grandmother struggling to differentiate between herself and her sister who died as a child? And what happened to their great aunt, who disappeared when she was young? But tracking down answers to these questions proves difficult in a family steeped in secrecy.

Blood Book traces the heritage we have no choice but to carry: gender, language, class, trauma. Singular in style and form, it blends biography and fantasy, fairy tale and history, transforming them into a deeply personal and poetic form of expression.

Published in the US as Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues

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 -- Anna Katharina Schaffner Times Literary Supplement
A touching, literarily opulent, utterly fascinating book Bayerischer Rundfunk
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
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
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
Such a deep story with a gorgeous language. I am completely enthralled Frankfurter Rundschau
Language becomes as fluid as bodies and identities: it sweeps you along in its current Süddeutsche Zeitung
An irrepressible literary talent Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin
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
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

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