Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig

December 16, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Tess Lewis. Peirene Press, 2011. Originally published 2006. 110 pgs. Library copy.  The publisher of Peirene Press, Meike Ziervogel, compared Hotschnig to Franz Kafka in her short introduction to this short story collection, writing that “here we have a Kafkaesque sense of alienation – not to mention narrative experiments galore!”. Having never read Kafka, I cannot comment on the similarity between Hotschnig and Kafka. What I can comment on is the […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Peirene Press, Short Stories, Translated • Tags: Alois Hotschnig, Tess Lewis

Dance by the Canal by Kerstin Hensel

October 9, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jen Calleja. Peirene Press, 2017. Originally published in 1994. Purchased. Born the daughter of a famous surgeon and a society hostess, Gabriela von Haßlau is expected to fulfill the high expectations of her parents and, later, the Communist leaders of the East German town of Leibnitz. But Gabriela finds herself unable to please either power structure in her life. To her parents, she is a failure at the violin and at rubbing […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Jen Calleja, Kerstin Hensel

The Last Summer by Ricarda Huch

August 7, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2016. Originally published 1910. 121 pgs. Purchased. Amid the political upheaval of the beginning of the twenty century in Russia, the governor of the state university in St. Petersburg shutters the university’s doors and decamps to his summer residence with his family. There, a letter arrives in the post, promising to kill the governor is he fails to take the “right” side by reopening the university. Concerned for […]

Categories: 20BooksofSummer, Crime, Europe, Fiction, German, Peirene Press, Russia, Translated • Tags: Jamie Bulloch, Ricarda Huch

You Would Have Missed Me by Birgit Vanderbeke

July 15, 2019 by Christina

Print – fiction. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2019. Originally published 2016. 154 pgs. Purchased. The early 1960s, a young girl arrives in West Germany from East Germany with her parents. The family is settled into a camp for displaced people where the little girl befriends a family unit consisting of a woman and two men, who instruct the little girl to refer to them as her aunt and uncles. Her parents attempt to sever this […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Birgit Vanderbeke, Jamie Bulloch

This Place Holds No Fear by Monika Held

July 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Anne Posten. Haus Publishing, 2015. Originally published 2013. 272 pgs. Purchased.  In 1964, a Viennese man named Heiner is called to Frankfurt to testify at the war crimes trial of former SS officials and guards from Auschwitz. Heiner was deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 for his membership in the Austrian Communist Party, and his testimony about typing death records in the prisoner’s infirmary is crucial to the prosecutor’s case. As […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Poland, Translated • Tags: Monika Held

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, Jamie Bulloch

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, Jamie Bulloch

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