Matthias Jügler

The Indigo Press is an independent publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, based in London. Guided by a spirit of internationalism, feminism and social justice, we publish books to make readers see the world afresh, question their behaviour and beliefs, and imagine a better future.

Matthias Jügler

Matthias Jügler studied Scandinavian Studies and Art History in Greifswald and Oslo, and Literary Writing at the German Institute for Literature at Leipzig University. He received several awards for both his novels Raubfischen and Die Verlassenen  including the Saxony-Anhalt Klopstock Prize for Literature 2022. Jügler was the Halle City Writer for 2023.

Mayfly Season is his third novel; it won the 2024 Rheingau Literature Prize.  He lives in Leipzig, where he works as a freelance editor. 

Jo Heinrich (translator)

Jo Heinrich translates from German and French, and she lives near Bristol with her family. Her translation of Katja Oskamp’s Marzahn, Mon Amour won the 2023 Dublin Literary Award; other recent publications include Half Swimmer, also by Oskamp, The Invention of Good and Evil by Hanno Sauer and How Wars End by Jan van Aken. She was one of a team of translators working on Angela Merkel’s memoirs, Freedom.

Mayfly Season

Mayfly Season

£12.99

What if the child you mourned had never died?

1978, near Leipzig, East Germany. For Katrin and Hans, every parent’s worst nightmare comes true when they are told that their newborn baby Daniel has died. Amidst the shock and horror of the news, Katrin doubts what the doctors have told her, feeling that they are lying and that Daniel is still alive: doubts which Hans refuses to acknowledge, and which lead to the end of their marriage.

After the collapse of the GDR, happy in a new relationship, Hans receives an unexpected phone call which prompts him to investigate the past. His research, which takes him deep into recent history, is met with resistance and silence at every turn, until at last a fishing expedition enables the family to start healing from their trauma.

Mayfly Season is an extraordinary portrait of totalitarian state cruelty, the promise of a new beginning and the infinite healing capacity shared by humanity and nature.

Matthias Jügler