From the German Bookshelves

“Writing a fairy tale for adults requires a few solid characters who can withstand the horror, and the courage to open up a gulf between good and evil…”
In her book Boy with a Black Rooster, debut German novelist Stefanie vor Schulte adeptly upgrades the fairy tale genre for adults, with captivating characters, and seductive prose, set in a medieval backdrop.

“In countries that have very strong rules of censorship, literature and poetry indeed can play an important role to vent thoughts and experiences and pose questions that are not so easily addressed in public discourse.”
Journalist turned novelist Khuê Pham’s debut novel “Brothers and Ghosts” lifts the lid on Vietnamese families to reveal their diasporic angst as a result of the displacement from their war-torn home country.

“Kurdish people don’t immigrate; in most cases they are political refugees.”
Award-winning Kurdish-German author Karosh Taha’s In the Belly of the Queen is told from the perspective of two teenagers, Amal and Raffiq, and can be read from both ends of the book. What emerges is a broader picture of a community replete with themes of societal alienation, stifling patriarchy and embattled womanhood.

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, impressively translated by Michael Hofmann bares witness to a harrowing toxic love affair against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the final years of the GDR. Much like the novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors it displays the intricate power dynamics between young women and much older men.

Readers who first discovered German literature through Bernhard Schlink should check out Brigitte Reimann’s Siblings for a portrait of the 1960s in ‘the other Germany’.

In the delightfully crowded field of Nordic noir, this crime thriller set in Iceland commands a unique place. After all, what more perfect setting could there be for crime fiction than deserted snow deserts tainted by wine-red blood from murder? The sparse landscape - populated by mysterious characters where myths abound - is where Swiss-Icelandic writer Joachim B. Schmidt successfully tapped into the genre. His book Kalmann is as much a whodunnit as it is a character study of its eponymous protagonist, a socially awkward man navigating a murder mystery in the hostile countryside.

Intellectually stimulating and thematically rich: Wolfram Eilenberger’s The Visionaries is a collective biography of four women who helped to shape twentieth-century philosophy and literature, a book that will appeal to readers of Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting.

Readers who found solace and inspiration in Amy Liptrot's memoir The Outrun will undoubtedly enjoy A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter.

Ulrike Almut Sandig’s elegiac Monsters Like Us is set in the East Germany on the cusp of liberation and reunification but deals with childhood trauma and how it shapes individuals. The book is brimming with tenderness for its broken characters and has been translated by Karen Leeder with meticulous care to retain its mellifluous prose.

A treat for fans of satirical novelists like Jonathan Coe, The Peacock by Isabel Bogdan is a comedy of errors that skewers workplace relationships, perfectly blending German humour and a Scottish setting.

A complex narrative that is both haunting and relentless in its exploration of dark emotional themes, Nino Haratischvili’s debut novel, Juja, will appeal to fans of unflinching contemporary writers like Evie Wyld.

What happens when something is lost to the world? With whatever traces left behind, can one retrace the lost object? What will remain when things are lost? These are some questions Judith Schalansky’s insightfully astute book An Inventory of Losses attempts to tackle.

“(the) central questions of my novel are about the individual strength to love, the political power to improve society, and to fight for those who are too weak to fend for themselves…”
German writer and poet Nora Bossong’s Gramsci’s Fall is a tale of hopes and the heart-breaking disappointment of some revolutions.

In her debut novel The High-Rise Diver, German author Julia von Lucadou envisions a society where surveillance has become the norm, and an individual's worth is determined solely by their performance metrics, painting a thought-provoking portrait of a dystopian future.

If you didn’t want Zadie Smith’s novel NW to end, why not add Shida Bazyar’s Sisters in Arms to your TBR pile?

On the hundredth anniversary of his death, Franz Kafka’s life and work are being celebrated and illuminated. In his new graphic novel, illustrator Nicolas Mahler gives them a colourful brilliance – although it’s almost all black-and-white.
 

Coming to terms with absent fathers is the central theme of the novels by Necati Öziri and Deniz Utlu. One gives rise to anger, the other to melancholy.

In his new novel, Wolf Haas tells of a mother’s tragicomic life and sends his regards to the afterlife.

The Bosnian War: unsettling, brutal, forgotten by many today. Tijan Sila brings it back to life in his memoir. Years of violence, anger and grief lie between the siege of his native Sarajevo and his family’s flight to Germany.
 

Christian Handel and Andreas Suchanek take us along on a frenzied tour of two Berlins – one magical and one modern. But no matter where you are, devious intrigues lurk on both sides of the mirror.

Martin Suter’s latest novel has everything a good book needs – making it the perfect read for the summer holidays. This tale of a woman who disappears just before her wedding can be quickly devoured in a deckchair by the sea or in a hammock in the garden.

Julia suffers from asthma. And she has just lost her job. Back in the village where she grew up, she is struggling to make a fresh start. But that’s not possible without confronting the demands and expectations of her family and the drab reality of village life. When Julia meets the “guy from the city”, a glimmer of hope emerges amid all the hopelessness.
 

In her graphic novel debut, Helena Baumeister tells of her experiences with an online date.

The Austrian author Franz Schuh has written a new collection of essays in which the interest in death is mutual.
 

The moment they come near us, we swat them away. We regard them as the scourge of summer – yet they have almost only benefits to offer. Michael Ohl on wasps and the invaluable role they play in our ecosystem.

In his new novel, Lukas Bärfuss again focuses on the existential hardships of people in modern, capitalist society. Here he tells of the fate of a single mother.

They are three words, each of which means a beginning and an end: I love you. I’m leaving you. But what lies in between? In the case of the first-person narrator in Julia Schoch’s new novel, a 30-year relationship. First elation, celebration, then everyday life, children, betrayal, anger. 

In her second novel, Annika Büsing takes us on a fast-paced journey. To Leipzig, the flooded Ahr valley, a town on the Baltic Sea – a short trip turns into a road trip.

In Milena Michiko Flašar‘s new novel, a disorientated young woman finds not only an unusual new job, but also a substitute family.