Archives de catégorie : Nos incontournables

FÜR IMMER UND EIN WORT d’Anne Sanders

Is it possible to fall in love with someone’s words? A concealed notebook sparks off a major love story!

FÜR IMMER UND EIN WORT
(For Ever and A Word)
by Anne Sanders
Blanvalet/PRH Germany, August 2021

Bookworm Annie’s world has always been shaped by words. But her dream of writing a novel is long forgotten, and the man with whom she was supposed to spend the rest of her life has said ‘I do’ to someone else. She is devastated, and her friend persuades her to spend a few days in a hotel on Dartmoor to forget those painful events. One day, Annie stumbles across something very special: a notebook hidden in a red letterbox. Annie is deeply touched by what she reads in it, and when two pages that have been stuck together reveal the author’s address, she decides to track him down. Little does she suspect that her search will lead her to taciturn Jack, who is nothing like what she’d imagined the notebook’s author to be – but who nevertheless gets under her skin …

Anne Sanders works as an author and journalist. Under another name, she has already published bestselling novels for young adults. Summer in St. Ives stormed the hearts of readers and was in the Spiegel bestselling charts for weeks. My Heart is an Island and Summerhouse to Happiness were also successful.

WO AUCH IMMER IHR SEID de Khuê Pham

« A groundbreaking work in German literature. » Ocean Vuong

WO AUCH IMMER IHR SEID
(Wherever You Are)
by Khuê Pham
btb/PRH Germany, September 2021

She is 30 years old and her name is Kieu, like the girl in the most famous work of Vietnamese literature. But she prefers to go by « Kim » because it’s easier in Berlin. In 1968, her parents had come to Germany from Saigon. She often wished for a family that didn’t have to become German first, but simply was. The loss of her Vietnamese roots has never bothered her. On the contrary. Until she receives a message. On Facebook. From her uncle. Who has been living in California since he fled.
The whole family is supposed to meet for the reading of Kieu’s grandmother’s will. Kieu does not know these people. To her, the uncles and aunts are as unreal as the spirits of departed ancestors for whom her parents light a few incense sticks on Vietnamese New Year. It becomes a journey full of revelations – about her family, her origins and about herself.

Khuê Pham is one of the most important voices of the new generation of German-Vietnamese. She was born in Berlin in 1982 and studied in London at Goldsmiths College and the London School of Economics. After training at the Henri Nannen School of Journalism, she started as an editor at Die Zeit in 2009. Her stories often tell of how the lives of individuals are shaped by major political issues; she has won several awards for her journalistic work. In 2012, she published « Wir neuen Deutschen » (Rowohlt) with Alice Bota and Özlem Topçu, which is about immigrant children and their place in Germany. WO AUCH IMMER IHR SEID is Khuê Pham’s narrative debut – a literary approach to her own family, whose moving life journey she traces over five decades.

EINE ART FAMILIE de Jo Lendle

« It’s the story of a German family. My own, as it happens. » Jo Lendle

EINE ART FAMILIE
(A Kind of Family)
by Jo Lendle
Penguin Germany, August 2021

We don’t choose the times we live in nor the times that shape us. Neither did Lud and Alma. Lud, who was born in 1899, and his brother Wilhelm revere Bach and Hölderlin, and share the same unattainable ideals. Wilhelm, who joins the Nazi party early on, measures others according to its standards; Lud measures himself by them, which torments him for the rest of his life. Alma lost her parents when she was a child, and her godfather Lud – who is only a few years older than her – and his housekeeper become a kind of new family for her.
Lud is a pharmacology professor specialising in sleep and its induction, and while he spends his days at the university Alma is left home alone, unable to stop thinking about him. When he starts researching poison gas, he doesn’t tell her about it. His struggle with his lofty ideals grows ever more desperate – for he can’t get Gerhard, the man alongside whom he fought in the First World War, out of his head.
Taking us on a journey from the days of the German empire to National Socialism, the early days of the GDR and post-war West Germany, Jo Lendle’s scintillating novel is the story of a family falling apart, of guilt, of the meaning of science, and of the subtle difference between sleep, anaesthesia and death. It is the story of a German family – which just so happens to be his own.

Jo Lendle was born in 1968. After studying cultural education and animation culturelle, he joined the German Literature Institute in Leipzig, edited the literary magazine Edit and has been a visiting professor and lecturer at several universities. He was awarded the Leipzig Promotion Prize for Literature in 1997. Since January 2014 he is head of the Hanser publishing house.

HENRY de Florian Gottschick

Of a kidnapping by mistake teaching all involved in a delightful way not to run away from life, but to arrive at themselves.

HENRY
by Florian Gottschick
Penguin Germany, August 2021

Twelve-year-old Henrietta, whom everyone calls Henry, lives in Berlin’s Wilmersdorf district and is longing for adventure. When her overprotective mother leaves her brand-new BMW on the street with her daughter asleep on the back seat, a young man gets into the unlocked car and drives off. He was only going to drive it round the block, but when Henry wakes up she convinces him to drive on. Sven, his girlfriend Nadja and Henry take off on a road trip, and the exuberant, taboo-breaking trio become a close-knit team as they take a journey that will change their lives for ever.
A fast-paced, original, funny and vividly told novel by the award-winning filmmaker Florian Gottschick – the story of an accidental abduction, which teaches three young people the most important thing of all: if there’s a purpose to life, it’s living it. And it’s never too late to look for the place where you’ll find yourself.

Florian Gottschick has graduated from the Babelsberg Film Academy in 2013 with a degree in film directing. His films have been shown at more than 70 international festivals. His graduate feature « Nachthelle » (« Night Light ») was nominated for the Grimme Prize, and can be viewed online alongside his other films. His latest projects include three TV series for ARD and ZDF, as well as one of only three German Netflix Originals produced in 2020. He teaches screen acting, screenwriting and directing. HENRY is his debut novel, and he is currently working on his second book.

DIEBE DES LICHTS de Philipp Blom

The brilliant historical novel about murder, revenge, love, loyalty and betrayal, set in war-torn sixteenth-century Europe.

DIEBE DES LICHTS
(The Light-Thieves)
by Philipp Blom
Blessing/PRH Germany, October 2022

Sander has been on the run ever since 1572, when he saw his father murdered at the hands of the Spanish invaders in Flanders. He meets a master who teaches him how to paint flowers, while his brother Hugo, who hasn’t spoken a word since their parents’ death, mixes the paints for him. But Hugo is as unreliable and quick to anger as he is gentle, and when he commits a violent crime, he and Sander have to flee. They find refuge in an artist’s studio in Rome, witness the Pope’s dissipation, are caught up in the intrigues proliferating in the Neapolitan cardinal’s palace, and – both in their own special way – experience the joy of forbidden love. In the course of their adventures, Sander repeatedly finds a way out of seemingly hopeless situations …
A major new novel that vividly portrays the Renaissance and its key players, including Giordano Bruno, Caravaggio and high-ranking clerics.

Philipp Blom, born in 1970, studied philosophy, history and Judaism in Vienna and Oxford, and obtained his PhD from Oxford with a thesis on the reception of Nietzsche. He is the author of bestselling history books including « The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900–1914 » (2009) and « Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918–1938 » (2014), and has won the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Literature and the NDR Kultur Prize for Non-Fiction. DIEBE DES LICHTS is his first work of historical fiction.