The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke

May 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 1990. 112 pgs. Library copy. At the start of Vanderbeke’s novella, a mother and her two teenage children sit down to enjoy a feast of mussels, a meal laboriously prepared for the husband who loves mussels and is expected to shortly arrive home with news of a promotion. The scene is set to be one of domestic tranquility, of the home that every German […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Birgit Vanderbeke

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

March 25, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Translated from the German. Read by Frederick Davidson. Blackstone Audio, 2009. Originally published 1812. 10 hours, 18 minutes. Library copy. Wyss’ novel follows a Swiss family figuring out how to survive on an uninhabited island after a violent storm wrecks their ship among the rocky outcropping of an uninhabited island. The rest of the crew headed to Port Jackson, Australia via the East Indies abandoned the family, taking all the lifeboats but leaving the livestock and provisions […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, German, Juvenile, Oceania, Translated • Tags: Johann David Wyss

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius

December 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2010. Originally published 2006. 125 pgs. Library copy. In January 1943, a young, pregnant woman named Margherita takes a walk through the streets of Rome. Such a walk would be unremarkable where it not for the fact that she came to Rome to be with her husband, a member of the German Army fighting in North Africa. Her German nationality affords her certain benefits in Rome – a […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Italy, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Friedrich Christian Delius

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (Part Two)

October 17, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann. Melville House, 2009. Originally published 1947. 540 pgs. Purchased. It took me exactly a month but I finally stopped dragging my heels and finished Part Two of Fallada’s novel entitled “The Gestapo”. Anna and Otto Quangel have begun distributing postcards encouraging Germans to question the authority of the Nazis. This act of civil disobedience threatens the lives of the Quangels and anyone found in possession of a postcard because the Nazis […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Abandoned, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Translated • Tags: Hans Fallada

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (Part One)

September 17, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann. Melville House, 2009. Originally published 1947. 540 pgs. Purchased. Fallada’s book has garnished particular attention since its publication because the book was written by a non-Jewish German victim of the Holocaust and was one of the fist books written by a German addressing the Holocaust. The book is based on a true story of a working class couple in Berlin who decided to take a stand against the Nazis. Their fictionalized […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Abandoned, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Translated • Tags: Hans Fallada

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

August 27, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the German by Helen B. Dole. Grosset & Dunlap, 1927. Originally published 1880. 316 pgs. Gift. Little orphan Adelheid — better known as Heidi — moves in with her reclusive grandfather at the age of five. Originally resenting Heidi’s arrival, this adorable little girl manages to pierce his hardened shell all the while falling in love with the Swiss landscape she roams with her best friend, Peter. At the age of eight, Heidi is sent […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Classics, Europe, Fiction, German, Juvenile, Translated • Tags: Johanna Spyri

The Silent Angel by Henrich Böll

November 26, 2011 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from German by Breon Mitchell. St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Originally published 1992. 182 pgs. Library copy. Böll finished the manuscript that would later become this novel in August 1950. But publishers at the time were unsatisfied with the novel, concerned that the German public would have no taste of novels dealing with World War II and its aftermath. Published as Der Engel schwieg in Germany, this novel would not be published until 1992 in time for […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Translated • Tags: Henrich Böll

Jews in Nazi Berlin by Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon, and Chana Schütz

April 20, 2011 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from German by Caroline Gay and Miranda Robbins. University of Chicago Press, 2009. 392 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “From Kristallnacht to Liberation”, this book is surprisingly colorful and photographic exploration of life in Berlin, Germany during the reign of the Nazis. The book is divided into ten parts — 1938, emigration, Aryanization, the yellow star, Zionists, forced labor, deportation, betrayal, survival, and Jewish organizations. Stories of individuals and families are used in some instances while other subjects […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Textbook, Translated • Tags: Beate Meyer, Chana Schütz, Hermann Simon

The Terezín Album of Mariánka Zadikow by Mariánka Zadikow May and Debórah Dwork

April 6, 2011 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the Czech and the German by Mariánka Zadikow May. University of Chicago Press, 2008. 280 pgs. Library copy. Secretly crafted from pilfered materials at the Terezín (known as Theresienstadt by the Germans) concentration camp in September 1944, twenty-one-year-old Zadikow’s autograph book is a collection of signatures, poems, and drawings by her fellow inmates. In several instances, people signed her book the day before their deportation from Terezín to Auschwitz. Many of them did not serve. This […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Czech, Europe, Genocide, German, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Textbook, Translated • Tags: Debórah Dwork, Mariánka Zadikow May

The Appointment by Herta Müller

March 30, 2011 by Christina

Fiction – eBook. Translated from German by Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm. Picador, 2010. Originally published 1997. 212 pgs. Winner of the Nobel Prize, Müller’s novel is set in Communist Romania under dictator Nicolai Ceauşescu’s regime and follows an unnamed narrator on her way to an appointment with the secret police. As a worker in a garment factory, the unnamed narrator (who’s name we never learn) has been summoned repeatedly by the secret police for sneaking marriage proposals into pants before shipment to […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, German, Nobel Prize, Translated • Tags: Herta Müller

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

April 12, 2009 by Christina

I saw the movie version of Schlink’s novel on accident; “Frost/Nixon” wasn’t playing at the local theater so my friend randomly selected “The Reader” from the list. Because I liked the movie so much,  I placed myself on the wait list at the library for the novel. When fifteen-year-old Michael Berg falls ill on his way home from school, he is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover, enthralling him with her passion, […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Translated • Tags: Bernhard Schlink