„Anja Kampmann’s debut novel is an exquisitely lyrical tale of an oil platform worker whose best friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confront his past.

One stormy night aboard a drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and friend, Mátyás, has gone missing. A brief search of the rig confirms his fears that Mátyás has tumbled into the sea. Waclaw is given shore leave and begins to travel, at first rather aimlessly, meandering around the Moroccan town where he and Mátyás used to spend their time away from the rig. There he discovers what appears to be the body of his friend on the beach. Grief-stricken, he makes his way to Hungary, where he stays with Mátyás’s sister, Patrícia, and immerses himself in memories of his time with Mátyás. As he ruminates on the past, Waclaw finds himself returning increasingly to his own origins, and the circumstances that led him to take the job on the oil rig.

Anja Kampmann  is a german poet and author of fiction. She was awarded the MDR- Literaturpreis as well as the Wolfgang-Weyrauch-Förderpreis. Her work has appeared in Akzente, Neue Rundschau, words without borders, et al. Her first collection of poetry „Samples of Stone and Light” was published by Carl Hanser Verlag, 2016. „High as the waters rise“, her first novel, was nominated for the Leipzig Book Faire Prize, the German Book Prize and the aspekte- Literature Prize for the best debut novel written in german. The novel won the Mara-Cassens-Prize 2018 for the best german debut novel, the Lessing-Promotion Prize 2018 and the Literature Prize of the city of Lüneburg. She received the Literature-Prize Stadtschreiber von Bergen-Enkheim in 2019. 2020 Rainer Malkowski Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. High as the Waters Rise, translated by Anne Posten,  was a National Book Awards Finalist 2020.