For the new year the BSL is planning a workshop for young translators (from German into the various languages of the Baltic Sea region) to be held at Litorina Folk High School in Karlskrona, Sweden.

We are happy to announce our publication of a selection of works by Thomas Mann: two chapters from his Buddenbrooks, his novella Tonio Kröger and the lecture on his summer resort in Nidden, "Wüste Küste" (1931).

We are also working on two texts about the former Russian province of Ingria near St. Petersburg, one by Henrik Othman and another, written especially for the BSL, by Lida Starodubtseva.

One of our translators, Fiona Graham, was recently honoured by the Modern Language Association:
“Fiona Graham, a literary translator based in Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium, is receiving an honorable mention for her translation of Elin Anna Labba’s The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi, published by the University of Minnesota Press.”

The first chapter of The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow was originally published by the BSL (with a slightly different title) .

In other news, we congratulate Karl Schlögel for receiving the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2025! We are thrilled to publish his essay "Unser Atlantis, unser Pompeji" in the coming weeks.

Aino Kallas' Reigin pappi (The Rector of Reigi), a spooky novel from the Estonian island of Hiiumaa, is now available, even in Swedish.

We are preparing publications of Idyllen vom Baltischen Ufer by Ferdinand Gregorovius, originally published in 1856, and Bericht einer Flucht 1938/39 by Adolf Molnar.

For more on this, read Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke’s Hedersleben-Lecture on the literature of the Baltic States.

We wish you all the best for 2026!

The BSL team

Happy New Year with this yule goat from the Estonian island of Muhu