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 …
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 …
By Rachel McNicholl Some of my friends know that I’ve been tipping away at Hotel Amerika by Maria Leitner for a number of years, offering it to English-language publishers with a sample translation and all that goes with it. So far without success, though a few recent developments (and Love German Books II) might help …
By Helen MacCormac This year marks the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death. Although he is one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, no one had ever heard of him when he died in 1924. Now, 100 years later, the man who brought us Gregor Samsa is being celebrated around the world. Events …
A review by Katy Derbyshire Dilek Güngör’s latest book launched a fortnight ago at a packed Berlin event, where the love flowing back and forth between the stage and the audience was palpable. Dilek – full disclosure: I think we’re friends, we’ve definitely been for a coffee together and I’ve translated an essay she wrote, …
A review by Katy Derbyshire I’m a major fan of the writer Irina Liebmann, especially her dogged devotion to one particular street in Berlin, about which more in a later post. The very first of her books that I read, however, was Berliner Mietshaus. It has been extremely cold in Berlin lately, the kind of …
By Katy Derbyshire This is a beautiful book combining a short satire by everyone’s favourite German 20th-century writer, reflections by one of my favourite 21st-century German writers, and lashings of typographical ginger beer. Like me, Sharon Dodua Otoo read a bit of Böll for her German A-Level. In her case, it was his short story …
Teresa Präauer: Kochen im falschen Jahrhundert A review by Katy Derbyshire Seeing as this is an old-school blog, I must start with a full disclosure: ten years ago I went Dutch with Teresa Präauer, drinking beer, Fernet Branca and pastis. It was a delightful evening, cementing my view of the Austrian author as a very …