This highly poetic and socially critical novel intertwines different time levels and plot lines: present-day Slovenia, texts by prisoners from the Yugoslav war, an emerging novel about war-ravaged Europe in the 18th century, and diary entries by prisoners in a writing class. »A book set in a European future, but
The ceremonial Opening of the 22nd international literature festival berlin. Writer, playwright, historian, and journalist David Van Reybrouck has received multiple awards for his ground-breaking work »Congo: A History«. The book »Revolusi: Indonesia and the Making of the Modern World« on the beginning of the decolonization in Indonesia was recently
War has been raging for ten years; the narrator’s two sons have disappeared. Now he and his wife relocate to the Transparent City, where transparency is the top priority. A peaceful life seems possible. But the narrator resists a world without secrets. A dystopian novel, awarded the Premio Alfaguara de
Winner of the 2021 “International Prize for Arabic Fiction”, this novel depicts a world of poverty and uprooting: a bookseller who has lost his store gets lost in the identities of characters from novels and commits several crimes until he meets a woman who changes his life. »Despite this, the
Author and translator Anne Weber, most recently awarded the German Book Prize 2020 for her novel »Annette ― ein Heldinnenepos« [tr: Annette ― An Epic of a Heroine], offers insights into her literary work and discusses the productive risk of writing between two languages: her native tongue German and the
A love-starved sea goddess lands on an island inhabited by eunuchs. A girl from Martinique moonlights as a Grace Jones impersonator. In the short stories of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize winning author, offbeat characters find themselves in extraordinary situations that catapult them into lifeaffirming, life-changing, or even life-destroying realms
In her novel »Relocation« Ayelet Gundar-Goshen describes the insecurities of a mother: Lilach Schuster feels at ease in America, far from the everyday danger in her native Israel. But then a classmate of her son Adam dies at a party. The more she learns about the circumstances of the death,
Magical realism from the highlands of Oaxaca: in his poetic narratives, Zapotec poet Pergentino José modernizes mythologies to illuminate the historical struggles of Mexico›s indigenous communities. Claustrophobic interiors and ants and worms crawling under the skin suggest that the threats they faced have not disappeared today. The densely written, often
Marco Carrera is a hummingbird ― constantly on the move, even when seemingly stationary. With psychological finesse, this novel, which won the 2020 Premio Strega, recounts his life and that of his family. »›The Hummingbird‹ is combative and amusing, is both comedy and tragedy, with one laughing eye and one
Ito — a character strongly based on the author — lives in California with her husband and three daughters. She regularly flies to Japan to visit her parents, who are in need of care. She finds distance from her hectic everyday life at night. The novel, which was published in
In his second novel, the awardwinning playwright tells the tragicomic story of a postal worker on Lanzarote who, since the invention of the Internet, no longer sorts letters but only junk mail. When his son leaves for Barcelona and loneliness overtakes him, the title character forges a bold plan together
On a walk, Vesta Guhl, the widow of a professor, finds a note that includes some lines about the murder of a woman named Magda. Vesta tries to investigate. The novel takes us deeper and deeper into the mental edifice that Vesta creates around the crime, until she herself ultimately
