Roskilde Bogcafé is an independent non-profit institution. It has existed since 1978, first as a bookstore and antiquarian bookseller, and since 1997 as a publishing firm under the name BATZER & CO. We started with the publication of a number of classics: Blake, Rimbaud, Kafka, Hesse, Dostojevskij, Tolkien, Rilke, Kerouac and Ginsberg – earning us a reputation as a high quality publisher. In recent years, our catalogue has presented mostly new literature, though. Six of our authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize: Imre Kertész 2002, Herta Müller 2009, Mo Yan 2012, Patrick Modiano 2014, Olga Torklarczuk 2018 and Peter Handke 2019.
Despite being a small publishing company with 15 publications each year and only two permanent employees, we hold a special position in the Danish literary world. Our books are reviewed in all the major newspapers, our authors regularly attend literary festivals, and the company enjoys a widespread respect. In 2010 several papers ran large features about ‘the small publisher that won more awards than the all the big publishing houses’. Even Neue Züricher Zeitung printed an article about Batzer & Company. https://www.nzz.ch/die_unsterblichen_koenige_von_roskilde-1.4226300?reduced=true
Our greatest stars are the Norwegian novelist Per Petterson, who has received multiple awards, among them the IMPAC-prize and the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2009, the Islandic authors Jón Kalman Stefánson and Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir, who won the Nordic Prize in 2018, Elizabeth Strout who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, the German authors Judith Hermann and Eugen Ruge, who won the Deutscher Buchpreis, the russian author Mikhael Sjijskin, who won a handful of Russian prizes, and the Nobelprize winner Imre Kertész.
In 2014 we published – among others – Michael Ondaatje and Teju Cole. Our Finnish author Kjell Westö won the Nordisk Literary Prize and our German author, Lutz Seiler, won the Deutscher Buchpreis.
In 2015 two of our authors were nominated for the Nordic Litteratur prize 2015: Jon Fosse and Jón Kalman Stefánsson. The prize winner was Jon Fosse.
In 2016 we published novels by Mo Yan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Judith Hermann and Tomas Espedal.
In 2017 we published novels by Eka Kurniawan, Peter Handke, Patrick Modiano and Tarjei Vesaas.
In 2018 we published novels by José Eduardo Agualusa, who won the Impac-prize, Neel Mukherjee, Maria Parr, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Emma Reyes and Audur Ava Olafsdóttir, who won the Nordic Literature prize 2018.
In 2019 we published books by Per Petterson, Tomas Espedal, Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir, Jon Fosse, Tarjei Vesaas, August Strindberg and Peter Handke. Handke won the Nobel Prize 2019.
In 2020 we published among many others: Marguerite Duras, Michael Ondaatje, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize 2018.
In 2021 we will publish books by: Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Audur Ava Ólafsdottir, Beate Grimsrud, Jon Fosse, Peter Handke, Judith Hermann, Patrick Modiano, Mo Yan, Lutz Seiler, Saša Stanišić, Merethe Lindstrøm, Kjell Askildsen, William Blake, Malin C. M. Rønning, Agneta Pleijel, Khalid Khalifa and Don DeLillo.
Link to our catalogue 2020: https://issuu.com/batzerco/docs/nyheder_batzer___co_2020
Link to our catalogue 2021: https://issuu.com/batzerco/docs/nyheder_batzer___co_2021