Acclaimed author and playwright Sibylle Berg launches bestseller book “Grime” in the UK.
Published for the first time in English, Swiss-German author Sibylle Berg’s Swiss Book Prize-winning novel, “Grime” (St. Martin’s Press; on sale 12.27.2022), is poised to introduce them to an entirely new audience this winter.
Spending 25 weeks on European bestseller lists, Berg’s dystopian satire is ruthless indictment of contemporary society and manifesto of rebellion.
Hand in hand with the release, Berg also embarked on a sold-out live tour in front of thousands of spectators, critics, media and journalists in major European cities throughout 2019.
Delivering a breath-taking introduction to “Grime” across Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, Berg delved deep into the tone of the novel, embracing its themes and the arts within it.
Submerging herself in parts of British culture, and including many of the inspirations that were the catalyst to this latest piece of work, the novel took to the stage and included spoken word extracts of “Grime”, whilst music also played a starring role.
Celebrated UK grime collective Ruff Sqwad joined Berg on stage as they delivered an exclusive emcee set in an energetic and powerful performance, they were also joined by upcoming rapper T.Roadz.
Following the novel’s translation into English, Berg now embarks on the UK leg of her live tour with an all-star cast of talent.
The tour began in London on 2.7.2023 and featured Ruff Sqwad, Tofi The Poet, T.Roadz and an exclusive performance from grime royalty Devlin.
The second leg of the UK tour will move to the north of the country, as local talent from Salford and Manchester come together to celebrate and deliver an intimate launch from the very setting of the novel itself.
Set in Rochdale, the post-industrial town, mirrors the aura of many towns across Britain where poverty, violence, and squalor are the consequences of decisions being made at this very moment.
Berg wrote the novel 4 years ago, and most of the merciless surveillance technologies, the ever more brutal poverty, a virus and the decay of infrastructures have unfortunately become reality.
“Grime” is a multi-voice story of four teenagers haphazardly brought together by individual tragedy and a collective love of grime, the music genre that replaced punk as the sound of the angry and the dispossessed.
Despite the increasingly sophisticated workings of an authoritarian surveillance state, the four set out to exact revenge on the people they hold responsible for their misery.
But what starts out as a teen hit squad evolves into a makeshift family as the four kids attempt to create a home on the fringes–both physically and mentally–of society.
In this stylistically innovative epic, Berg explores where current hot-button issues–like climate change, artificial intelligence, the rise of right-wing populism, and the inexorable expansion of surveillance–will lead our world.
This dystopian satire is a merciless and surgically precise evisceration of neoliberalism, and beneath its rage and brutality beats a deeply human heart.
Quote from Sibylle Berg, “‘Grime’ – my first novel in English. It’s about anger, poverty, injustice, surveillance, stop and search. It’s for England’s forgotten youth and about their music and it belongs right here! To England. Now. Thank you to everyone who premiered with me!”