Simon Elson’s debut novel is a modern coming-of-age story: it reads like a 21st-century take on Goethe’s autobiographical classic, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and is a stand-out example of the auto-fictional genre that is so prevalent in contemporary German-language literature.  The protagonist of ‘Story of Disorder’ is born into a Hamburg-based family of anthroposophists in 1980. The family follow the beliefs of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, who maintained that an individual’s spiritualgrowthwas achieved through the ..read more

‘Lemons’ is an intriguing and deftly handled exploration of coercive control within a parent-child relationship, reminding us how relationship patterns can repeat through the generations.  August Drach grows up in a remote village with few inhabitants, where everyone knows everyone. His early years are marred by his violent father, who is affectionate only towards the dogs. Lilly, his mother, seems to show love predominantly when comforting August after his father’s rages. After the father disappears, Lilly only finds energy when August falls ill. She tends suffocatingly to his every need ..read more

Franziska Gänsler’s latest novel, set on the Côte d’Argent, is a haunting story of loss, grief, and new beginnings. Twenty years ago, when Zoey was still a child, her younger sister Oda vanished without a trace from the trailer park by the sea where they lived with their mother. Zoey returns to the French coastal town after her mother’s death, planning to scatter her ashes in the sea. Zoey’s memories of what happened to Oda all those years ago are disjointed and contradictory. She cannot be sure whether her sister is dead or alive, an ..read more

‘The Time of the Cicadas’ is a literary triumph: an arresting contemporary novel set in Germany and Italy, about the experience of aging and the desire for a change of place and identity.   Alex is in her early sixties when she retires, swapping her teaching career and attic apartment with roof garden for a tiny house on wheels and a relocation to the Baltic Sea. Johann, an undertaker in his mid-fifties, contemplates retirement and the possibility of taking up drawing and painting again. He escapes to Liguria, Italy, where he has inherited a house, to reflect on his stale marriage and his ..read more

A gripping and tense tale of a father-son reunion, dealing with a deeply sinister yet little-known GDR phenomenon.  Hans and Katrin have a son, Daniel, in 1978, but the day after the birth, doctors tell the couple the baby has died from a weak heart on the way to the children’s hospital. Katrin is convinced the doctors are lying and Daniel is still alive; she leaves Hans a few weeks later.   Shortly before Katrin’s death from cancer in 1987, she talks again to Hans again about Daniel, asking Hans to find him if there is ever the opportunity. When the GDR collapses, Han ..read more

In Bernhard Kegel’s thought-provoking science fiction novel, an unknown grass species sprouts up across Berlin and takes an aggressive hold over the metropolis, proving resistant to all herbicides. ‘Grass’ paints a catastrophic picture of the consequences of climate change, as nature rebels against centuries of human appropriation.   Nathalie, a postgraduate biology student, notices delicate, almost luminous green stalks of grass poking between the cobblestones of a square in Berlin. Fascinated, she starts to track the grass’s unusually fast growth. The square soon resembles an alpin ..read more

Gianna Molinari’s gem of a novel alternates between two equally captivating settings: a tiny Swiss village on the verge of disappearing, and an Arctic research expedition. The lyrical simplicity of Molinari’s prose invites readers to step right into ‘The World Behind the Hedge’, and to feel as though they belong there.  The few remaining inhabitants of an isolated Swiss village attempt to preserve its identity and future by obsessively tending to the giant hedge which is its distinguishing feature, and by caring for the village’s only two children, Lobo and Pina, who mysteriously stopped ..read more

Impressively researched auto-fiction, ‘Where Does the Light Go When the Day is Over’ tells the story of the persecution of the author’s family during the Nazi period and of her own upbringing in the shadow of her father’s suffering. Olonetzky’s grandfather and aunt were murdered in the Holocaust. Her father’s other siblings escaped to Palestine before the war began, and he managed to escape Germany by crossing the Swiss border in 1943. Olonetzky pieces together the complicated history of this persecution and weaves it into her father’s post-war attempts to receive restitution from the German g ..read more

Anna Neata’s powerful debut follows the lives of three generations of women in 20th and 21st–century Austria. Burden is a mesmerising novel, presenting a dynasty of strong female characters and the complex dynamics in their families as they live through the rise and fall of Nazism and experience how the decisions they make play out through the generations. The novel’s three main characters are Elli, a teenager during the Second World War, her daughter Alexandra, and Alexandra’s daughter, Eva, who is born during the 1980s. The narrative highlights the parallels and contrasting experiences ..read more

Longlisted for the German Book Prize, Necati Öziri’s Vatermal is a searing debut about family, trauma and coming to terms with the past. Its keen observations, striking imagery and skilled use of humour make this an immersive and memorable read. Arda, a university student of Turkish heritage, is critically ill in hospital. As he waits for a prognosis, he begins to write his life story, addressing it to his father, Metin, who abandoned the family before he was born. Arda and his sister, Aylin, grew up in Germany without citizenship, meaning their childhood was marked by bureaucratic c ..read more