IOWA – A Trip to America

  • More than 50,000 copies sold!
  • Longlisted for the German Book Prize 2024!
  • Laconic, witty, and disarmingly honest – bestselling author Stefanie Sargnagel on the USA.
  • 70,000 copies of Dicht and Statusmeldungen were sold. Rights for Dicht were sold to Sweden (It-Lit).

In 2022, Stefanie Sargnagel reluctantly trades her comfortable Viennese sofa for a plane ticket to the USA. She is to teach creative writing at a small college in the middle of nowhere, Iowa. In this town of 8,000 inhabitants, surrounded by endless cornfields, there is nothing much else. Accompanied by music legend Christiane Rösinger during the initial period, they set out to explore the void. They encounter bad food, overweight but friendly locals, vultures, and an old Austro-Hungarian nostalgia enthusiast. It's simply "the peculiar combination of desolation, fast food, and sunsets behind gas stations."

Stefanie Sargnagel's perspective on the USA is as unique as her writing: uncompromising, sarcastic, and brutally honest. In her distinctive voice, she vividly depicts the American Midwest's desolation and emphasizes the vital importance of friendships.

"That such a thing still exists, I can't believe it! A truly new voice in literature: Here it is." Elfriede Jelinek

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  • Publisher: Rowohlt Buchverlag
  • Release: 19.12.2023
  • ISBN: 978-3-498-00340-1
  • 304 Pages
  • Author: Stefanie Sargnagel

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IOWA – A Trip to America
Stefanie Sargnagel IOWA – A Trip to America
Apollonia Theresa Bitzan
© Apollonia Theresa Bitzan
Stefanie Sargnagel

Stefanie Sargnagel , born in 1986, studied painting in a class led by Daniel Richter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna but spent more time at her day job in a call centre. She has been a freelance author since 2016 – and has since spent more time with her tax advisor. She received the BKS Bank Audience Prize during the competition for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2016. Her two books, Statusmeldungen and Dicht , were bestsellers, with Statusmeldungen being adapted into a movie.