Literature

Interstellar warfare, climate collapse, dangerous mutants: science fiction narratives frequently conjure up a dystopian future. Some writers have made it their business to counteract this – and create positive utopias.
 

Camping holiday? It's a horror trip for Benni. Only when his parents accept his fears and anger does it become a great holiday adventure for him.

New graphic novels demonstrate the diversity of the genre. Anke Feuchtenberger's magnum opus was honoured as literature, Sandra Rummler looks back on East Berlin and the post-reunification period. And the two Swiss authors Nando von Arb and Tobias Aeschbacher were awarded for works that could not be more different.

The setting for Friedrich Ani’s latest novel may be Munich, but this is not the Munich of the rich and beautiful. A murder case is also unravelled, though not solved.

In her explosive debut novel, Austrian author Julia Jost describes growing up in 1990s Carinthia, a place caught between its Nazi past and right-wing populist present.

Andreas Stichmann was born in Bonn and has seen plenty of water flow down the Rhine. His stories tell of people who live by the river, exploring their desires and yearnings – and the way they deal with reality.
 

Ilona Hartmann presents an anti-novel for young adults that breaks with the illusion that the years of our youth have to be just wonderful from start to finish. As a counterpoint, the author portrays the mind-numbing mediocrity of the daily lives of three young people who move to the big city.

300 years ago, on 22 April 1724, Immanuel Kant was born. In this anniversary year, he is being honoured, celebrated and critically examined as an important philosopher and pioneer of the Enlightenment. Here is a small selection of current books about him.

In a spectacularly designed graphic novel, the Croatian artist Danijel Žeželj tackles several Franz Kafka novels at once.
 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay, and we will have to learn to live with this omnipresent technology. Hannes Bajohr has conducted a bold experiment in narrative literature by getting an AI language model to write a novel.

16 years after the final novel in the Inkheart series was published, the author and illustrator Cornelia Funke has embarked on another foray into the world of Meggie, Dustfinger and co. And created a captivating sequel in which the written word is no longer the focus.

Realistic yet fantastical, full of adventure, exciting and informative: all of these attributes apply to our small selection of new children’s books.

The stories told in picture books these days are fantastical, full of adventures and fun. Animals drive construction vehicles and are puzzled by humans, while grown-ups are taught a lesson by children – and the Moon orders itself a dress.

With his new novel, Maxim Biller has created a touching literary memorial to his mother.

A farmhand, a mathematics students and a young aristocrat are teetering through war-drunk Vienna. A plot line spanning just 24 glittering hours in August 1914 is all that Raphaela Edelbauer needs to portray a country on the brink of an abyss that threatens to devour not only the young.

Drugs, guns, murders in a multistorey car park: there’s plenty going on in Kim Koplin’s debut crime novel. We are taken on a hectic trip through Berlin, where somebody is always on the run. And in amongst it all we have a detective with problems at home and a night watchman with a daughter and a past.

Charlotte Gneuss’s everyday drama set in East Germany is surprising for its oppressive intensity and extraordinary, ordinary protagonist.

A Frankfurt customs investigator finds an eel head on his doorstep. The next day, he doesn’t survive his fishing trip. The police say it was an accident. The public prosecutor thinks otherwise.

Hardly any other author writes as bluntly about the misery of the everyday as Heinz Strunk. His new collection of stories is no exception.

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.

Impulsive, stubborn and unforgiving – this was all part of Martin Walser’s character. He was a man of the 20th century and one of the greatest writers of his time.
 

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.

Awarding the German Book Prize to Tonio Schachinger is a very good decision. His novel “Echtzeitalter” is narratively mature, entertaining and full of esprit. A commentary.

How do you write about people who are neither male nor female? Kim de l’Horizon showed how in “Blutbuch” (Blood Book). At the award ceremony in Frankfurt, Kim shaved their head bald – and thanked their mother.

Being Black should be completely unremarkable in today’s multicultural Germany. Yet many people still struggle with everyday discrimination and sometimes even blatant racism. Their stories are increasingly finding their way into German literature.