German Literature Month 2024 Round-Up.
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
2M ago
This November I’m afraid I ignored the guidelines suggested by our hosts, Lizzie and Caroline, as I couldn’t really go there with the Kafka. Instead, I went for texts I really wanted to read—all five quite contemporary, and often touching ..read more
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Glorious People by Sasha Salzmann, translated by Imogen Taylor.
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
2M ago
This is my final book for #GermanLitMonth 2024 and it’s been a great read. The original was published in German in 2021 with the title Im Menschen muss alles herrlich sein—a quote from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. I read it in ..read more
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Lilly and Her Slave by Hans Fallada, translated by Alexandra Roesch
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
3M ago
Hans Fallada became known to a contemporary English language readership for his novel Alone in Berlin, translated into English in 2010 from the German Jeder stirbt für sich allein. This story of brave Otto and Anna Quangel, ordinary Berliners who ..read more
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Die Moeglichkeit von Glueck- The Possibility of Happiness- by Anne Rabe
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
3M ago
This is my first review for November’s German Literature Month 2024, always an enjoyable occasion, and a high point in my personal reading year. Die Möglichkeit von Glück was shortlisted for the prestigious German Book Prize in 2023, and was ..read more
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Seeing Further by Esther Kinsky translated by Caroline Schmidt.
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
4M ago
One of the pleasures of reading Esther Kinsky is finding oneself transported to unfamiliar corners of Europe, well away from the tourist trail—Italy’s Tagliamento Valley in Rombo, London’s River Lea in River. In Seeing Further, it’s the Alföld Plain, south-east ..read more
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Half Swimmer by Katja Oskamp, translated by Jo Heinrich
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
5M ago
Katja Oskamp won the Dublin Literary Award in 2023 with her book Marzahn Mon Amour, the story of a writer-turned-chiropodist working in Marzahn, the biggest housing estate in the former communist East Berlin. Half Swimmer, also set in East Berlin ..read more
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We would have told each other everything-Wir haetten uns alles gesagt- Judith Hermann
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
1y ago
I was a keen reader of German writer Judith Hermann a little while back, loving her cool, distanced tone and elegant sentences. After a little gap since Letti Park, she’s come back into my life, through the excerpt of Wir hätten uns alles gesagt in the Granta 165 Deutschland collection, translated by Katy Derbyshire, and then through Tony’s Reading List, where he reviewed her novel Daheim.  I was so taken by the Granta excerpt that I decided to read the book in its entirety, originally conceived as a series of lectures on poetics. The book is indeed about writing, and the connections bet ..read more
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Sisters in Arms by Shida Bazyar translated by Ruth Martin
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
1y ago
The writer Shida Bazyar told us at the recent Goethe Institut event that Sisters in Arms, longlisted for the German Book Prize 2021, was partly inspired by Erich Maria Remarque’s book Three Comrades. She’d been intrigued by the pull of the ‘buddy’ novel that seemed to fascinate men, and wanted to explore what a novel about female friendship would look like. The novel tells the story of Saya, Kasih and Hani who grew up together in Germany, and who’ve come together once more to celebrate a friend’s wedding. We, the readers, are straightaway pulled into their world by a text prefacing the novel ..read more
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Essays like Poetry- In Case of Loss by Lutz Seiler, translated by Martyn Crucefix.
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
1y ago
Since hearing Lutz Seiler read at Sheffield’s Off the Shelf Festival last year, I’ve been keen to learn more about his home state of Thüringen in the former GDR, and in particular the uranium mines that dominated the landscape and lives of so many people there. The essay collection In Case of Loss is illuminating on this, as well as on Lutz Seiler’s own family and upbringing: he looks back at his past, on memory, change and transformation. But across the individual pieces it’s also an account of his development as a poet. He discusses the work of German poets Peter Huchel and Jürgen Becker, an ..read more
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Deutschland- Granta 165
peakreads » Books in German
by mandywight
1y ago
It’s been such a pleasure to end the year reading this superb Granta collection. The writing includes fiction, auto-fiction, essays on culture and politics, poetry and journalism. It’s not just a collection of written pieces: there are also three series of photographs, each with an excellent introduction, and an essay on painter Neo Rauch together with several colour reproductions of his work. Several top translators have been engaged in the project: Katy Derbyshire, Ruth Martin, Karen Leeder, Michael Hofmann, Shaun Whiteside, to name but a few. And though many texts refer to historical and cu ..read more
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