If you’re a former fan of Love German Books, you might know what to expect here: news, reviews, random thoughts and gossip on books written in German. I wrote the blog for ten years from 2008 on, then ran out of steam. Now, though, it is here at V&Q Books in a more collaborative form. …
Having looked back at 2024’s crop of German books, we’re now doing a spot of sooth-saying with translator Alex Roesch. As we step into 2025, German-language literature promises plenty to capture the imagination. A few upcoming titles have already caught my eye, each offering something refreshingly distinctive. From atmospheric stories set in untamed landscapes to …
Here comes another list of translators’ top favourites from this year – this time from Siobhán Dowling. Among many great reads this year (including Mithu Sanyal’s Identitti and Helene Bukowski’s Milchzähne), there were quite a few that dealt with aspects of life in the former East Germany as well as the fall of the Berlin …
The latest in our annual series of translators on their favourite German books of the year is Rachel Ward. My German book of the year was Junge Frau, am Fenster stehend, Abendlicht, blaues Kleid [Young Woman Standing at the Window, Evening Light, Blue Dress] by Alena Schröder (dtv, 2021). Hannah is a student in Berlin who suddenly discovers that …
Next up in our annual series of translators on their favourite reads of the year is Lucy Jones. Elias Hirschl: Content Hirschl’s humour is the driest kind. After Salonfähig, a grisly satire, he has now written a dystopian novel centred on young people who work for the Smile Smile content farm. Set in a ghost …
Second in our annual series of translators on their favourite reads of the year is Jamie Bulloch. As each year passes, the proportion of books I read that are in German seems to grow. This year I’ve had more to choose from than ever and haven’t managed to narrow it down to fewer than five. …
Continuing our annual series of translators on their favourite reads of the year, here is Annie Rutherford. Isabel Bogdan: Wohnverwandtschaften One of the things I love about Isabel Bogdan’s writing (which I, err, have spent quite a bit of time with – see The Peacock) is the way Isa draws her characters – endearing, slightly …
There was one novel that grabbed me so hard this year, it put all other books in the shade for months. You must know that phenomenon: a book so delicious, everything that comes after it tastes bland. Enough metaphors. It was Clemens Meyer’s Die Projektoren. As you may know, I’ve translated most of the author’s …
What treasures lie in wait among the nominations for Germany’s biggest literary award? A writer friend and I have an annual tradition, usually performed lying on towels at our local lido. On the morning of the announcement, we pick over the longlist for the German Book Prize and choose our favourite nominations, and also draw …
Short stories are such a big part of my life right now. I’m just finishing my translation of Judith Hermann’s We’d Have Told Each Other Everything – which isn’t actually a short story collection. What it is, I find hard to categorise, but it is a very beautiful and fascinating book about life and writing …
Summer’s the perfect time to focus on women’s writing in translation, with #WiTMonth running all August on social media – and hopefully on your bookshelves. The campaign’s been running for ten years now and we’ve seen a massive increase in women-authored books published in translation since Meytal Radzinski got the ball rolling in 2014. Back …