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"Eight essays on literature, language, art, Europe and life from one of Germany's most revered living writers. After a visit to Putin's old postbox, the reader is taken to Dresden and Brixton, Gdańsk and Minsk, diverted to birds, bees, stray cats and pet dogs, confronted with Stasi and KGB, Proust and Jah Shaka, puzzled by overcoats and anoraks, Francis Bacon and Vermeer, and lost (then found) in service stations and memorial centres. Throughout, Marcel Beyer forges unexpected links and makes unpredictable leaps. Inspired by the great W. G. Sebald, Beyer's playful literary investigations wend through the high points and horrors of Europe's artistic history, towards a profoundly personal conclusion."--
A young girl navigates the joys and sorrows of rural life on the cusp of the modern world in mid-twentieth century Turkey. A close-knit family is transformed forever when its matriarch tragically dies, leaving behind a husband, Timur the blacksmith, and their three young daughters. The Blacksmith's Daughter follows the life of the eldest daughter, Gül, who is growing up in rural Turkey in the 1940s and '50s. When Timur remarries, the girls' new stepmother has none of their mother's warmth, so Gül feels compelled to take on the role of mother to her younger siblings. Their village upbringing is full of simple pleasures- summer evenings sat outside listening to the radio, games played in the...
Each of us has something that feels essential to who we are. For Hans Frambach, it's the crimes of the Nazi era, which have hurt him for as long as he can remember. That's why he became an archivist at the Bureau of Past Management; now, though, he's wondering if he should make a change. For his best friend, Graziela, that past was also her focal point – until she met a man who desired her. From then on, sexual pleasure became the key to her life; a concept she's now beginning to doubt. Hans and Graziela thought the Nazi crimes were the inheritance that neither could bear, but can we really blame Nazism for everything? Iris Hanika shows how the crimes of the Nazi era hold the Germans in their clutches to this day, and the absurdities to which institutionalising commemoration leads.Can a country manage its past, or ought we to remain helpless in the face of the horrific crimes of the Holocaust?
'Madgermanes' is what the Mozambican workers once contracted out to East Germany are called today. At the end of the 1970s, some 20,000 of them were sent from the People's Republic of Mozambique to the GDR to labour for their socialist sister country. After the Berlin Wall fell, almost all of them lost their residency status. Decades later, they are still waiting for most of their wages to be paid. Birgit Weyhe depicts their search for belonging and a place to call home, caught between two cultures and two states that no longer exist. Based on extensive interviews, she creates three fictitious narrators and transforms their stories into a visual language that skilfully interweaves African and European narrative traditions. Winner of the Berthold Leibinger Foundation Comic Book Prize and the Max and Moritz Prize for Best German Comic 'The book is a great document and a monument to the injustice that befell me and other contract workers in East Germany.' Emiliano Chaimite, Dresden 'Birgit Weyhe traces emotions and situations, translating them into overwhelming images by entering into an artistic dialogue between European and African culture.' Max and Moritz Prize
Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us into a war between kitchen and bedroom. He, an unemployed humanist, is trying to change the world and write a novel. She, a passable actress, has given up her safe job at the theatre to care for their child. He is delirious, she is on edge. With the rent overdue and violence looming on all sides, the two of them circle one another in a dizzying dance towards the abyss.
Francis Nenik's thrilling slice of narrative non-fiction "Journey through a Tragicomic Century" is about the life of the forgotten writer Hasso Grabner, told with great joy in language and love of absurdity. The journey takes us from the Young Communists in 1920s Leipzig to wartime Corfu, with Grabner falling from steelworks director to a vilified author banned from publishing his work in the GDR. Francis Neniks "Reise durch ein tragikomisches Jahrhundert" handelt vom Leben des vergessenen Schriftstellers Hasso Grabner — erzählt mit großer Freude am Fabulieren und Liebe zur Absurdität. Die Reise führt uns nebst anderen Stationen von den Jungen Kommunisten Leipzigs in den 1920er Jahren nach Korfu, ganz nah begleiten wir Grabner auf seinem wilden Ritt vom Stahlwerksdirektor zum verunglimpften Autor, dem es verboten war, sein Werk in der DDR zu veröffentlichen.
This is the first book to explore the full range of Kerstin Hensel's literary correspondences. Following careful examinations of her various intertextual writing practices, it offers a section on translation which includes English versions of a selection of her poems.
In the near future sci-fi world of Qualityland, algorithms help create an idyllic life for its citizens, but what if the perfect world wasn't built for you? Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it. In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a mac...
"Von der Una" ist der gelungene Versuch, ein persönliches Kriegstrauma schreibend zu verarbeiten und zu überwinden. Wir folgen der Hauptfigur des Romans durch drei Zeitabschnitte: Kindheit und Jugend in Jugoslawien vor dem Krieg, Fronterfahrung während des Bosnienkrieges und schließlich der Versuch, nach dem Konflikt ein normales Leben zu führen. In seiner sehr lyrischen, meditativen Prosa rekonstruiert Faruk Šehić das Leben eines Mannes, der sowohl Kriegsveteran als auch Dichter ist. Der Historiker lehrt uns, was geschehen ist, der Dichter, was für gewaltige emotionale Spuren es hinterlassen hat und der Ästhet, wie man auch noch aus den schmerzhaftesten Erinnerungen den maximalen Genuss ziehen kann. Parallel zu dieser Geschichte nehmen die Passagen des Buches über die Stadt am Fluss Una mythische, traumgleiche und phantastische Dimensionen an.
"You'll live out your lives in a foreign country," Gül is warned. But the whole world is foreign when you're far from your loved ones. The train ride to Germany ushers in the days of long-awaited letters, night-time telephone calls and blissful summers back home. The years of hard work will flow like water before her house in Turkey is built and she can return. Until then, there will be fireworks, young love, and the cassette tapes of the summer played on repeat. In these years, Gül will learn all kinds of longing: for her two daughters, for her father the blacksmith, for scents and colours and fruit. Yet imperceptibly, Factory Lane in this cold, incomprehensible country becomes a different kind of home. A novel about how home is found in many places and yet still eludes us.