Centaur

  • A light novel about a heavy topic: death as transformation
  • Ingeborg Bachmann Competition 2025 and Hamburg Literature Prize 2023
  • For readers of Grief is a Thing with Feathers, Karen Köhler and Jasmin Schreiber
  • Topics: Magical Realism, Grief & Loss, Mother-Daughter Relationships
  • Recommended for translation by New Books in German
  • English sample by Jamie Lee Searle available

Centaur is a wonderful, sometimes angry, and often humorous book about a mother-daughter relationship in an exceptional situation.

Georg has been dying for far too long. While his wife Ruth selflessly cares for him at home, she becomes estranged from their 15-year-old daughter Lea, who just wants a normal teenage life. But then, something unexpected happens: instead of dying, Georg transforms into something quite different. Confronted with this absurd new reality, Ruth and Lea must navigate their fractured relationship and find a way to finally let him go.

‘Welcome, Nefeli Kavouras, to German-language literature. What a tender commotion you have created here!’ - Saša Stanišić

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  • Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
  • Release: 12.02.2026
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-00870-8
  • 240 Pages
  • Author: Nefeli Kavouras
Centaur
Nefeli Kavouras Centaur
Stephan Obel
© Stephan Obel
Nefeli Kavouras

Nefeli Kavouras , born in 1996, works for mairisch publishing house and curates literary programs. In 2023, she was awarded the Hamburg Literature Prize for the manuscript of this novel, and in 2025, she read an excerpt from it at the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.