15th September 2026 — Bitter Lemon Press, recently awarded the CWA Dagger for the Best Crime & Mystery Publisher for 2026, is delighted to announce the launch of Labyrinth Press - a new imprint for ambitious international literary fiction, largely but not exclusively in translation, standing apart from the award-winning crime list that made Bitter Lemon Press's name. The first title publishes in early 2027.
The imprint will launch with Ósmann, Ferryman of the North by Joachim B. Schmidt, a luminous work of historical fiction inspired by the true life of Jón Magnússon Ósmann (1862–1914), a legendary ferryman from northern Iceland. Ósmann blends history, myth and human vulnerability to evoke a vanished way of life at the edge of the Arctic. Beautiful, moving and quietly powerful, it confirms Schmidt — already well known to English-language readers for Kalmann and Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain, published by Bitter Lemon Press — as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European fiction. The new book will be translated by Jamie Lee Searle and will be published in hardback next February in the UK and March in the US. New Books in German described the novel as ‘A beautiful and moving literary treat by a hugely talented author.’ WEL rights to Ósmann were acquired from Swiss publisher Diogenes Verlag.
Since 2003, Bitter Lemon Press has built an international reputation for publishing acclaimed crime fiction and thrillers that expose the darker side of foreign places, introducing English-language readers to some of the world's most compelling contemporary authors. Labyrinth is the next stage in that journey: a dedicated home for literary fiction, away from the crime and thriller genre, that challenge conventions, reward curiosity, and linger long after the final page.
"The labyrinth has always been a powerful literary symbol," said publisher and co-founder of Bitter Lemon Press, François von Hurter. "It represents both the pleasure of becoming immersed in a story and the excitement of discovering unexpected paths. That’s the tradition we’re claiming with this list: international fiction you enter at your own risk, that gets under your skin before it lets you go. Every book we choose has to earn its way to the centre’"
In early 2028, Labyrinth Press will also publish Une forêt by the leading art critic and essayist Jean-Yves Jouannais - a strikingly original philosophical novella in the tradition of Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard and a major critical success on publication in France this year. Set in February 1947, Captain Jacob Michael Lenz - a civilian lawyer serving in the US Army Reserve - arrives in the ruins of Bremen, summoned to a special juridical mission whose nature remains unexplained. Post-war Germany is deep in denazification: a bureaucratic theatre of questionnaires and amnesty. Lenz learns his case concerns the myna birds of Hasbruch forest, gifted mimics who have learned the Nazi anthem and still sing it, passing it to their descendants. Performing it remains a criminal offence under German law. Is Lenz, in effect, the birds' defence counsel? As the tribunal's absurdist proceedings unfold — Lenz arguing that no myna bird ever joined a Nazi organisation, as millions of actual Nazis are quietly rehabilitated — a quieter story surfaces: the secret of his own estranged daughter, Virginia, a gifted, unsettling child who once conversed with every bird in her garden. (photo: Jean-Yves Jouannais, credit Myriam Tirler)
Jouannais writes with an essayist's rigour and an art historian's eye — precise, melancholic, exact. WEL rights to Une forêt were acquired from French publisher Albin Michel, and the book will be translated into English by Sam Taylor who has translated more than seventy books, including works by Michel Houellebecq, Laurent Binet and Leïla Slimani. He is the translator of Bitter Lemon's two Joseph Incardona novels, Holy F*ck (published in 2026) and Consumed (due for publication in 2027). The novel will be published in both the UK and US.
For review copies, interviews, or further information, please contact: Alex Hippisley-Cox on 07921 127077 or email at alex@ahipcoxpr.co.uk
For more information about Bitter Lemon Press and Labyrinth Press, visit https://www.bitterlemonpress.com/
