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 …
You know when you love a TV show so much that you want to recommend books for all the characters to read? You do, right, it’s not just me? That’s what happened with BBC’s brand new drama series This Town, set in the West Midlands in 1981 as riots rage and a band forms, inspired …
The German-language literary magazine landscape is beset by similar challenges as the Anglophone one: funding is hard to find, energy is finite, so projects tend to peter out after a while. I took a trawl through the German-language litmags listed at Literaturport and noticed that a good few of them have folded since Covid, sadly. …
Next up in our series of translators’ tips from the wealth of German books in 2023 is the translator and literary scout Alex Roesch. German literature in 2023 has proven to be a year dominated by the distinct voices of talented women. My top picks offer up a trio of perspectives on life, identity and …