A round-up by Katy Derbyshire In the German-speaking world it’s not just autumn leaves that rain down as the days get shorter – literary awards come thick and fast as well. They tend to be national or regional and a lot of them are named after dead white men. Here’s a little run-down of 2023’s …
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 …
By Annie Rutherford This piece was originally commissioned (in German) for the exciting Trans|Droste project, where you can find English, Arabic, French, Farsi, Kurmancî and Turkish translations of the work of the 19th-century poet Annette von Droste Hülshoff, including by Annie Rutherford. I am writing this wrapped in a blanket on a day I have …
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 …
By Katy Derbyshire I haven’t done a write-up of the Frankfurt Book Fair for a few years, and this time was a little different; after two significantly smaller fairs dominated by Covid, this year’s was bigger and very much about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Amid the horror and helplessness over events in Israel and Palestine, focusing …
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. …