All the Lights - by Clemens Meyer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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." --Alex Rayner, The Guardian
"Stories of brilliance." --Chris Power, The Guardian
"What Meyer manages to achieve leaves you speechless. These stories glow in the world's darkness." --Die Welt
"Clemens Meyer writes the best crafted, toughest and most heart-rending stories in Germany." --Spiegel
"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." --Die Zeit

About the Author

Clemens Meyer was born in 1977 in Halle and now lives in Leipzig, both cities in what was East Germany. All the Lights won the prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2008, and was first published in the UK by And Other Stories in 2011. He has been twice longlisted for the International Booker Prize.