"Michael Köhlmeier knows how to capture the great figures of world history in a mesmerizing way, and depicts imagined private moments, making them shine." - Wiebke Porombka, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"A wonderfully entertaining educational kaleidoscope. A ping-pong between knowledge, imaginings, and reality. A successful example of how to transmit a historical moment literarily, which in a fine, subtle manner establishes a relationship to political present. -
Sabine Dultz, Münchner Merkur
"A gripping, colorful, humorous panorama of the 20th century, the portrait of a special woman with a truly unusual life story."
NDR Kultur
"Painstakingly researched and written with a generous dose of fiction, Michael Köhlmeier tells of a particularly paranoid moment in Russian history. […] In the densely woven mesh of facts and fictions the panorama of a revolution emerges, whose ideals were betrayed by their authoritarian strategists, as well as the oppressive inner view of a society living under the rule of fear. […] 'The Philosopher’s Ship' is an exciting, intelligent novel told with great formal skill." - Karl-Markus Gauß, SZ
"Michael Köhlmeier glides in his new novel 'The Philosopher’s Ship' from the logistics of Trotsky's death to the Parisian bohème and back again." - Paul Jandl, NZZ
"With this clever and cunningly told story, Michael Köhlmeier creates a parable of leftist political terror. The novel is a masterpiece of narrative art, in which reality and fiction are skillfully interwoven – exciting, profound, and humorous at the same time. And as mentioned: highly topical." - Michael Luisier, SRF2 Kultur
Based on the true story of Lenin’s deportation of Russian intellectuals via »philosophers’ ships«
The story of a 100-year-old woman and an epic journey from Saint Petersburg to Vienna
For her 100th birthday, architect Anouk Perleman-Jacob invited Michael Köhlmeier to write her life story as a novel. Born in Saint Petersburg, she lived through the Bolshevik terror. On Lenin’s orders, she was deported as a little girl along with her family and other intellectuals on so-called »philosophers’ ships.« For five days and nights, their boat drifted in the Gulf of Finland until the last passenger sent into exile boarded: It was Lenin himself.
Sample translation in English available