Archives par étiquette : Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe (Bertelsmann)

ZUR SEE de Dörte Hansen

An intelligent, warm-hearted novel about an island in the grip of change, about ancient laws that have lost their meaning, and about upheaval and deliverance.

ZUR SEE
[To the Sea]
by Dörte Hansen
Penguin Germany, September 2022

The ferry takes an hour for the crossing from the mainland to the little North Sea island – sometimes longer, depending on how rough the sea is. The Sander family has lived in one of the island’s two villages for nearly 300 years. Hanne has raised three children, while her husband has given up both his family and his seafaring life. Now her oldest son has lost his captain’s licence, is plagued by premonitions and tidal data, and is waiting for the storm to end all storms. Her daughter Eske looks after veteran sailors and widows at the old people’s home. She fears the influx of tourists more than the sea, because the tourists are turning the island’s culture into mere folklore. Only Henrik, Hanne’s youngest son, is at peace with himself. He is the first man in the family never to have dreamt of going to sea, and instead spends his time collecting flotsam on the beach. Over the course of one year, the Sander family’s life is irrevocably changed – by an almost unnoticeable breeze that eventually grows into a full-blown storm.

Dörte Hansen, born in 1964, has a degree in linguistics. She has been an editor at NDR and written for both radio and print. Her debut novel This House Is Mine was voted the German Independent Booksellers’ Book of the Year in 2015, and was the Spiegel’s 2015 bestseller of the year. Her second novel, Mittagsstunde (« Midday Hour ») appeared in 2018, was also the Spiegel’s bestseller of the year, and won both the Rheingau Literature Prize and the Grimmelshausen Literature Prize. Both novels have been translated into numerous languages.

SCHLESENBURG de Paul Bokowski

The autobiographical debut novel by Paul Bokowski, about growing up on a council estate. Authentic, kind-hearted and darkly funny.

SCHLESENBURG
[Silesia Towers]
by Paul Bokowski
btb/Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, September 2022

« Silesia Towers » tells the story of refugees and natives, homelessness and finding a new home. A warm-hearted and bittersweet novel about the dream of fitting in and leading a good life – and about whether you can belong anywhere, if you don’t know where you’ve come from.

« ‘Silesia Towers’ is what they called it, our community on the edge of the city, where the Galówkas’ flat burnt down in the summer of ’89. Sixty families lived there, nearly all from Poland. And then, suddenly, we were worried: what if Romanians or Russian Germans move in? Half the estate looked down its nose at the building where they housed asylum seekers. They were so proud of themselves for having left it behind. That was the year the new girl moved into the estate, Darius disappeared and Mother read nothing but Heinz Konsalik novels, the year I realised – too late – that Father had his own plans for the burnt-out flat… »

Paul Bokowski, born in 1982, is an author, reader and storyteller. 2012 saw the publication of his unexpected bestseller Hauptsache nichts mit Menschen (« The Main Thing is It’s Got Nothing to Do with People »), which was followed by Alleine ist man weniger zusammen (« Alone You’re Less Together ») and Bitte nehmen Sie meine Hand da weg (« Please Take My Hand Away »). SCHLESENBURG is his debut novel. He lives in Berlin.

LONG COVID de Martin Korte

Covid’s serious neurological after-effects: causes, treatments, and your chance of recovery, by one of Germany’s best-known brain researchers, specializing in how inflammatory processes influence brain performance. Based on the latest research findings

LONG COVID
by Prof. Dr. Martin Korte
DVA, October 2022

Exhaustion, breathlessness, loss of taste, brain fog, problems concentrating: about ten percent of Covid patients report these and other similar symptoms, months after first catching the virus. It doesn’t matter if their original symptoms were mild, and even the young and usually fit and healthy are affected. Not only that, but the latest studies show that Covid can accelerate brain ageing, meaning that the number of people suffering from dementia could rise sharply in the next few years. This alarming discovery suggests that long Covid really is the new endemic disease, and doctors and scientists have issued warnings about the long-term consequences for both individual patients and society at large.
In his new book, Martin Korte, who is researching long Covid at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and Braunschweig Technical University, reveals how viral infections can damage our brains and cause lifelong conditions affecting people of all ages. He also explains how we can minimise the risk of long Covid, what treatments are available, and what we can do to regain our physical and mental fitness.

Martin Korte is one of Germany’s foremost neuroscientists. He is Professor of Neurobiology at Braunschweig Technical University and head of the Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration research group at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig. He specialises in the cellular basis of learning and memory, and the interaction between the immune and nervous systems in the context of Alzheimer’s. He and his research group were among the first to show that viral respiratory diseases can cause the immune system to overreact, causing long-term damage to the brain. He is currently involved in research into long Covid. Korte is a much sought-after expert, and will be familiar to many from his frequent talks and TV appearances.

BEUTEZEIT de Norris Von Schirach

An impressively topical novel about a post-Soviet society sinking into a swamp of corruption and terror. Through the lens of his hero Anton, von Schirach tells how the global conflicts between Russia, China and the West over mineral resources, power and influence are fought out with the hardest of sticks – and how the individual is ground down in the process, should he not follow the commercial codes of the new era.

BEUTEZEIT
(Prey Time)
by Norris Von Schirach
Penguin Verlag, September 2022

When Vladimir Putin becomes president in January 2000, Anton, a rich commodities trader, flees Moscow. Behind him lie eight breathtaking years in post-Soviet predatory capitalism, ahead of him yawning boredom in the well-off milieu of New York. But even at forty, Anton is still an incorrigible romantic in search of the next thrill. Then a headhunter makes him an enticing offer. Anton is to build up a steel company in Kazakhstan, which is so rich in mineral resources, with money from anonymous sources. The German embarks on the adventure and learns painfully how local clans and insatiable elites ruthlessly defend the loot they have amassed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Anton finds allies and makes a momentous pact.

Norris von Schirach, born in Munich in 1963, worked in London and New York after graduating from high school and completing a commercial apprenticeship. After his studies, he lived in Moscow from 1993 to 2003. There he experienced the euphoria and frustration of the Yeltsin years, when the border between organized crime and state institutions dissolved while large parts of the population became impoverished. Norris von Schirach has a son and now lives in Romania after extended stays in Kazakhstan and Australia.

WARUM ES SO SCHWER IST, EIN GUTER MENSCH ZU SEIN d’Armin Falk

Why we want to do the right thing, but do the wrong thing instead – and how to become a better person.

WARUM ES SO SCHWER IST, EIN GUTER MENSCH ZU SEIN
(Why It Is So Hard to Be Good)
by Armin Falk
Siedler Verlag, May 2022

Would you save a life for 100 euros? The answer has to be yes – doesn’t everyone want to do the right thing? But Armin Falk, Germany’s leading behavioural economist, shows that we often do bad things despite wanting to be good, and are far from being as good as we like to think.
Why is it that we don’t do the right thing day in and day out: help others, give to those in need, protect our climate or care for the well-being of animals? Using many concrete examples and the insights he has gained from years of research, the Leibniz Prize-winner reveals under what circumstances people are likely to act morally – or immorally – and the role that personality, gender, education and culture play. Once we have understood this, we’ll find it easier to change – not only ourselves, but the very fabric of our economy and society.

Armin Falk, born in 1968, is the director of the Institute for Behavioural Economics and Inequality (BRIQ) and of the Laboratory for Experimental Economic Research, as well as Professor of economics at the University of Bonn. He is one of the world’s most highly regarded economic scientists. His work has won him the 2009 Leibniz Prize (the ‘German Nobel’) and a 2013 Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, the world’s highest prize for economists.