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‘The Mussel Feast’ by Birgit Vanderbeke
Fiction – paperback; Peirene; 105 pages; 2013. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Review copy courtesy of the publisher. Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast is a classic in the author’s...
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‘The Wall Jumper’ by Peter Schneider
Fiction – paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 139 pages; 2005. Translated from the German by Leigh Hafrey. One of the seminal events in my life was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I was 20 years...
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‘Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman’ by Friedrich Christian Delius
Fiction – paperback; Peirene Press; 115 pages; 2010. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. It is rare for me to read a book more than once, so it must be exceptional for me to read it three...
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‘Next World Novella’ by Matthias Politycki
Fiction – paperback; Peirene Press; 144 pages; 2011. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell. Review copy courtesy of the publisher. What happens when we die? Do we truly know the people to whom we...
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‘The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick’ by Peter Handke
Fiction – paperback; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 133 pages; 2007. Translated from the German by Michael Roloff. Austrian writer Peter Handke’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick was first...
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‘This Place Holds No Fear’ by Monika Held
Fiction – hardcover; Haus Publishing; 277 pages; 2015. Translated from the German by Anne Posten. Review copy courtesy of the publisher. Monika Held’s This Place Holds No Fear is an extraordinarily...
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‘Reunion’ by Fred Uhlman
Fiction – Kindle edition; Vintage Digital; 98 pages; 2012. Fred Uhlman’s classic novella Reunion — first published in 1971 — is a universal story about the friendship between two teenage school...
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‘The End of Days’ by Jenny Erpenbeck
Fiction – paperback; Portobello Books; 280 pages; 2014. Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky. Every November bloggers Caroline and Lizzy host German Literature Month, which is a good excuse...
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Five Fast Reviews: Heinrich Böll, Patrick DeWitt, Patrick Gale, Sven...
‘The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum or How violence develops and where it can lead’ by Heinrich Böll Fiction – paperback; Vintage; 140 pages; 2000. Translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz. First...
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‘Dance by the Canal’ by Kerstin Hensel
Fiction – paperback; Peirene; 122 pages; 2017. Translated from the German by Jen Calleja. Kerstin Hensel’s Dance by the Canal gives voice to the voiceless: a homeless woman living under a canal bridge...
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3 novellas by Nawal El Saadawi, Olivia Laing and Roland Schimmelpfennig
I do love a good novella. Wikipedia defines these books as “somewhere between 17,500 and 40,000 words”, but I generally think anything under 150 pages qualifies. Alternatively, anything I can read in...
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‘Twins’ by Dirk Kurbjuweit
Fiction – paperback; Text Publishing; 155 pages; 2017. Translated from the German by Imogen Taylor. Literature has long been fascinated by twins, but this German novella, first published in 2001 and...
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