A bizarre and beautiful psychodrama about hospitality, control and domination... Overstaying is a joy to read. It's tautly written, caustically witty, and replete with imaginative insights. I'm already excited to read Koch's second book; she is so perceptive, convincing and poised a writer that it makes you feel grateful that such a talent shares your world -- Luke Kennard - Telegraph

A strange, brilliant fever dream... We might think of global conflicts, identity politics, border policing. But Overstaying refuses to give easy answers... It ought to outlast the current conversation about these issues. Given its intelligence, humour and originality, there's no doubt it will - Financial Times

A short novel of huge ambition... Hypnotic and masterly, this is a book that creates its own world, forcing us to look at our own through altered eyes -- Nina Allan - TLS

Better than Kafka, and Kafka was damned good -- Saša Stanišic, author of 'Where You Come From'

Comparing this magnificent first novel to the great Kafka does it no disservice - on the contrary - Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Full of dreamlike symbols of loneliness and alienation. Overstaying has the makings of a classic - Die Zeit

An intense, enigmatic - in the best sense of the word - debut of philosophical force - Süddeutsche Zeitung

A brave debut, remarkable in its literary aesthetics - Deutschlandfunk

Ariane Koch, born in Basel in 1988, studied fine arts and interdisciplinarity. In addition to novels, she writes theatre and performance texts. Her work has won numerous awards and been performed in places like Basel, Berlin, Cairo, Istanbul and Moscow. Overstaying, her debut novel, won the Swiss Literature Award and the Aspekte Prize for Literature, and is being translated into eight languages. Damion Searls has translated more than fifty books of classic modern literature, including works by Rainer Maria Rilke, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Elfriede Jelinek and Jon Fosse. His own writing includes fiction, poetry, criticism, The Inkblots and The Philosophy of Translation, forthcoming.