Book Launch
We are very excited to host the book launch of Charlotte Gneuß’s newly translated novel Red Skies. Translator Lucy Lee Jones will be in conversation with Ambika Thompson to discuss Gneuß’s inaugural novel and what it means to translate complexity and clarity.
Red Skies is a literary thriller set in the former GDR. Karin Köhler is 16, experimenting with red lipstick and in love with Paul, an art school dreamer with a motorbike. But it’s 1976 in the former GDR, Karin’s parents’ marriage is on the verge of collapse as is the family’s Škoda, and Karin juggles school and her romantic life with caring for her toddler sister. When Paul’s road trip adventure leads to his disappearance, two policemen turn up at the family’s door and Karin, under suspicion and under pressure, becomes embroiled in a confusing web of misleading information. Unsure who she can trust, she has to navigate tense situations in which her double life threatens to unravel. Although the story is rooted in East Germany, its heart is universal – a young girl caught in a terrible situation, needing someone to listen but not knowing how to ask for help.
About Lucy Lee Jones:
Lucy Lee Jones is a translator and writer from the UK based in Berlin. She has translated works by fiction Brigitte Reimann, Ronald M. Schernikau, Theresia Enzensberger and Anna Seghers, among others, and is a co-founder of the translators’ collective Transfiction in Berlin. She used to host the reading-workshop series, Fiction Canteen. Her own texts have been published by SAND journal, LitMag, 3:AM magazine and Pigeon Pages NYC who nominated her for a Pushcart Prize in 2018.
About Ambika Thompson:
Ambika Thompson (they/them) is a Berlin-based writer with over 40 stories published internationally. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph (2019), served as fiction editor at SAND Journal (2022–2025), and, since 2024, teach creative writing and serve as Managing Director of The Reader Berlin, an international platform offering workshops and mentoring for writers.
About Charlotte Gneuß:
Charlotte Gneuß was born in 1992 in Ludwigsburg, after her parents left East Germany. She studied social work in Dresden, creative writing in Leipzig, and playwriting in Berlin. She is a guest author for ZEIT Online, winner of the Leonhard Frank Fellowship for new drama, and editor of the anthology Glückwunsch, published by Hanser Berlin. Her debut novel Gittersee was longlisted for the 2023 German Book Prize and won the 2023 Jürgen Ponto Foundation Literature Prize as well as the aspekte Literature Prize for best German-language debut. In 2024, she received the Nicolas Born Debut Prize from the state of Lower Saxony for Gittersee, followed by the 2025 Grimmelshausen Support Prize and the 2026 Wolfgang Koeppen Prize.
Tickets here.