Beyond the Station Lies the Sea (8 page)

JUTTA RICHTER has written more than twenty books for young readers, and has won several awards, including the German Youth Literature Award, the Herman Hesse Prize for her body of work, and the Pied Piper's Prize of Hamelyn. In 2008,
The Cat, Or, How I Lost Eternity,
her second book with Milkweed Editions, was named a Batchelder Honor Book by the American Library Association. She lives in a castle in Münsterland, Germany, and also in Lucca, Tuscany.

 

ANNA BRAILOVSKY is a widely published translator. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Also by Jutta Richter

Translated from the German by Anna Brailovsky

Every morning on her way to school, Christine encounters an old white cat. The cat can talk and she explains the ways of the world. But can Christine really believe everything the cat says?

 

“Untimely in the way of a Grimm fairy tale recast by Franz Kafka,
The Cat
is quite unlike any other work of fabulist fiction that I have read. Clearly, Jutta Richter is a distinctive writer.”—Joyce Carol Oates

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Milkweed Editions's translation of
Beyond the Station Lies the Sea
was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut that is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

MILKWEED EDITIONS, a nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from Anonymous; Emilie and Henry Buchwald; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; the Dougherty Family Foundation; the Ecolab Foundation; the General Mills Foundation; the Claire Giannini Fund; John and Joanne Gordon; William and Jeanne Grandy; the Jerome Foundation; Constance and Daniel Kunin; the Lerner Foundation; Sanders and Tasha Marvin; the McKnight Foundation; Mid-Continent Engineering; the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; Kelly Morrison and John Willoughby; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Navarre Corporation; Ann and Doug Ness; Ellen Sturgis; the Target Foundation; the James R. Thorpe Foundation; the Travelers Foundation; Moira and John Turner; Joanne and Phil Von Blon; Kathleen and Bill Wanner; and the W. M. Foundation.

Interior design by Connie Kuhnz, BookMobile Design and Publishing Services

Typeset in Adobe Gramond Pro

Printed on acid-free Glatfelter paper

by Friesens Corporation

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

© Carl Hanser Verlag München Wien 2001
© 2009, English translation by Anna Brailovsky

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.

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Please turn to the back of this book for a list of the sustaining funders of Milkweed Editions.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Richter, Jutta, 1955–

[Unter dem Bahnhof liegt das Meer. English]

p. cm.

Summary: Trying to get to the beach where it is warm, two homeless boys enlist the aid of a rich woman who gives them money in exchange for a guardian angel.

eISBN : 978-1-571-31866-4

[1. Homeless persons—Fiction. 2. Guardian angels—Fiction.]

I. Brailovsky, Anna. II. Title.

PZ7.R41544Be 2009

[Fic]—dc22

2009018135

 

This book is printed on acid-free paper.