Michael Hofmann
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A new collection of poems by Michael Hofmann-his first in twenty years. In style, his voice is as unmistakable as ever-sometimes funny, sometimes caustic; world-facing and yet intimate-and this collection shows a bright mind burning fiercely over the European and American imaginations. The poet explores where he finds himself, geographically and in life, treating with wit and compassion such universal themes as aging and memory, place, and the difficult...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"Werner Herzog, one of the most revered filmmakers of all time, in his first book in many years, tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who continued to defend a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War Two In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts there asked, whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"On a rainy Sunday afternoon in January the recently widowed Mrs. Palfrey moves to the Claremont Hotel in South Kensington. "If it's not nice, I needn't stay," she promises herself, as she settles into this haven for the genteel and the decayed. "Three elderly widows and one old man who seemed to dislike female company and seldom got any other kind" serve for her fellow residents, and there is the staff, too, and they are one and all lonely. What...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Based on a true story, this sweeping saga tells the tale of a working class couple in Berlin who decide to take a stand against the Nazis. More than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, even more than literature of the highest order, it's a deeply moving story of two people who stand up for what's right, and for each other. Hans Fallada wrote Every Man Dies Alone in a feverish twenty-four days, soon after the end of World War...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"More than almost any other writer, Franz Kafka has been credited with capturing the existential tragicomedy of the modern human condition. Now, for the first time in fifty years, the great short works - including "The Metamorphosis," "The Judgment," and "The Stoker"--Are given new life in an English free of anachronism." "The Metamorphosis and Other Stories reflects Kafka's virtuosity in a wide range of forms - from prose poems, sketches, stories,...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The last novel from the acclaimed author of The Artificial Silk Girl, this 1950 classic paints a delightfully shrewd portrait of postwar German society. Upon his release from a prisoner-of-war camp, Ferdinand Timpe returns somewhat uneasily to civilian life in Cologne. Having survived against the odds, he is now faced with a very different sort of dilemma: How to get rid of his fiancée? Although he certainly doesn't love the mild-mannered Luise,...
8) Seven years
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Alex has spent the majority of his adult life between two very different women—and he can’t make up his mind. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man would want. Intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious, she worked tirelessly alongside him to open their architecture firm and to build a life of luxury. But when the seven-year itch sets in, their exhaustion at working long hours coupled with their failed attempts
...10) Rebellion
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Andreas Pum, having lost his leg in the war, is rewarded with a permit to support himself by playing a barrel organ in the streets. At first the simple-minded veteran is entirely satisfied with his lot, and he even finds a widow to marry. But then a qurrel on a tram turns Andreas's life onto a rapid downward trajectory. As he loses first his beggar's permit, then his new wife, and even his freedom, he is finally provoked into rejecting his blind...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Following the publication of the widely acclaimed novel Seven Years comes a trove of stories from the Swiss master Peter Stamm. They all possess the traits that have built Stamm’s reputation: the directness of the prose, the deceptive surface simplicity of the narratives, and deep psychological insight into the existential dilemmas of contemporary life. Stamm does not waste a word, nor does he spare the reader’s feelings. These...
13) Michael Kohlhaas
Author
Series
New Directions paperbook volume 1473
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Michael Kohlhaas has been wronged. First his finest horses were unfairly confiscated and mistreated. And things keep going worse-his servants have been beaten, his wife killed, and the lawsuits he pursues are stymied-but Kohlhaas, determined to find justice at all costs, tirelessly persists. Standing up against the bureaucratic machine of the empire, Kohlhaas becomes an indomitable figure that you can't help rooting for from start to finish. Knotty,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The first English translation of Germany's leading contemporary poet.
...what is the whole surreal jokeshop
of terrors compared to the
infinitely chance little
tricks of a poem.
-from "MonoLogical Poem #1"
Born in Dresden in 1962, Durs Grünbein is the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, a place where, he wrote, "the best refuge was a closed mouth." In unsettling, often funny, sometimes savage lines...
15) Blood brothers
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Blood Brothers is the only known novel by German social worker and journalist Ernst Haffner, of whom nearly all traces were lost during the course of World War II. Told in stark, unsparing detail, Haffner's story delves into the illicit underworld of Berlin on the eve of Hitler's rise to power, describing how these blood brothers move from one petty crime to the next, spending their nights in underground bars and makeshift hostels, struggling together...
16) Storm of steel
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Widely viewed as the best account ever written of fighting in WW1, a memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but-more importantly-as a unique personal...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of his epic artistic career in a long-awaited memoir that is as inventive and daring as anything he has done before. Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing...
18) Kairos
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2023 Best Adult Fiction & Nonfiction (SCPL)
OBD 100 Notable Books of 2023 New York Times Book Review - Adult
OBD 100 Notable Books of 2023 New York Times Book Review - Adult
Description
"Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck's new novel Kairos-an unforgettably compelling masterpiece tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes...
Author
Language
English
Description
"All Days are Night is the story of Gillian, a successful and beautiful TV host, content with her marriage to Matthias, even if she feels restless at times. One night following an argument, the couple has a terrible car accident: Matthias, who is drunk, hits a deer on the wet road and dies in the crash. Gillian wakes up in the hospital completely disfigured. Only slowly, after many twists and turns, does she put her life back together, and reconnects...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Given a second chance with an old love, a coolly detached archivist questions the life he could have had, and whether it's not too late to live it. A poignant, ingeniously constructed new novel from "one of Europe's most exciting writers" (New York Times Book Review). Forty years ago-almost a lifetime-he confessed his love to a classmate and close friend, Franziska. Now, living in his late mother's house with the obsolete archive of the newspaper...