THE LITTLE LILAC DOG – Great Literature in Detail

  • Details as a starting point for a journey through world literature: from Shakespeare over Tania Blixen, Nagib Mahfuz to Salman Rushdie.
  • Vividly told, full of stories and discoveries – and a lesson in mindful reading.
  • Rights sold to Italy (Meltemi).
  • 50,000 copies of Die Schlange im Wolfspelz sold!
  • English sample translation by award-winning Ross Benjamin available.

It is not just the devil that is in the details, but also the secret of great literature – if you know how to spot it. Michael Maar shows what the great works of world literature reveal to the attentive reader: how Sherlock Holmes’ method is different from Sigmund Freud’s, which German influence can be seen in Nabokov's Lolita, and what Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson and Dracula by Stoker are really about. What did Mark Twain think of Jane Austen, and how does Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway hint at her own fate? Daniel Kehlmann, Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie: Even modern works are full of often-overlooked details. And the little violet puppy? It appears casually in Tolstoy's War and Peace – and follows us through the book.

Michael Maar does not just bring to life famous works and their creators. He is also a great storyteller himself, offering a fascinating mix of real and fictional encounters, stories, and connections. The details are the starting point of a journey through world literature – one that shows how worthwhile it is to keep re-reading the great novels.

"Michael Maar is the most brilliant hermeneuticist of detail among German literary critics and historians." Deutschlandradio

"An elegant, almost novelistic book about novels." Süddeutsche Zeitung

Contact Foreign Rights
Rights sold to

Arabic World - Hayat | Italy - Meltemi

  • Publisher: Rowohlt Hardcover
  • Release: 12.08.2025
  • ISBN: 978-3-498-00291-6
  • 592 Pages
  • Author: Michael Maar

Awards

  • 2025: Michel Maar mit «Das violette Hündchen» auf der SWR Bestenliste im Oktober
  • 2025: Michel Maars «Das violette Hündchen» ist Ö1 Buch des Monats im Oktober

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Buchcover von THE LITTLE LILAC DOG – Great Literature in Detail: Große Literatur im Detail
Michael Maar THE LITTLE LILAC DOG – Great Literature in Detail
Portrait von Michael Maar
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Michael Maar

Michael Maar , born in 1960, is a Germanist, author and literary critic. He gained recognition with his work  Geister und Kunst. Neuigkeiten aus dem Zauberberg (1995), for which he received the Johann Heinrich Merck Prize. In 2002 he was accepted by the German Academy for Language and Literature, in 2008 by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and in 2010 he was awarded the Heinrich Mann Prize. Die Schlange im Wolfspelz was a Spiegel bestseller. Michael Maar has two children and lives in Berlin.