Blood Book

Although the novel chronicles experiences that are relatively niche, the narrator’s struggles transcend the specificity of what they are describing. This, ultimately, is what makes Blutbuch so powerful: it’s not simply about the unique struggles of someone who is gender-fluid, but about what it means to be human in a gendered, classist, and sexist world – Anna Katharina Schaffner * Times Literary Supplement *
Kim de l’Horizon has managed that rare thing: an honest love letter. At once kaleidoscopic and urgent, Blood Book is an exquisite inquiry into what it means to be an individual in a body, a family, a society, with all the attendant misery, humour, joy and enduring mystery – Krystelle Bamford, author of Idle Grounds
A touching, literarily opulent, utterly fascinating book * Bayerischer Rundfunk *
Kim de l’Horizon has won the German Book Prize and everything about it is fantastic … it is a story about the search for the language of one’s own identity, a story of becoming and being oneself * Die Welt *
A debut hard to be exceeded … A book of superpowers, of superheroines … This debut could move people like the great confessional texts by Édouard Louis, Annie Ernaux, Daniel Schreiber or Hanya Yanagihara did recently … With Blutbuch, Kim de l’Horizon has created something that belongs to the great promises of literature – The Jury of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation Literature Prize
In Kim de l’Horizon’s novel Blutbuch, the non-binary protagonist searches for their own language with an enormously creative energy. What narrative exists for a body that defies conventional notions of gender? Every linguistic attempt displays an urgency and literary innovation that provoked and enthralled the jury – The German Book Prize Jury
Such a deep story with a gorgeous language. I am completely enthralled * Frankfurter Rundschau *
Language becomes as fluid as bodies and identities: it sweeps you along in its current * Süddeutsche Zeitung *
An irrepressible literary talent * Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin *
Blutbuch surprises and amazes again and again through the mutability of language, the play with forms and text flows, and above all through the clever and witty narrative style * Ö1 Kultur Aktuell *
One can only marvel at the literary mastery that de l’Horizon unfolds * Die Zeit *
An important new voice for a new form of writing * Tages-Anzeiger *
Formally adventurous * New York Times *
Observing memory and the deconstruction of family, language, and the queer body, Blood Book is an atlas that takes on so many challenging points, with an omnipotence that never loses its vastness – Misha Honcharenko, author of Trap Unfolds Me Greedily
A sensation in the German-speaking world. It’s daring, free, contradictory and relentless. It speaks about so many issues that concern us today. But most of all, it made me believe that it’s possible to write great literature, even from Zürich, where I’m from, and in your twenties. – Nelio Biedermann * Service95 *

Kim de l’Horizon is a novelist, performer, and playwright, born in 2666 on Gethen, a planet much freer than this one. Their debut novel, Blood Book, won the German Book Prize, the Swiss Book Prize and the Jurgen Ponto Foundation Prize. It has been translated into seventeen languages and was an international bestseller.

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