Goethe-Institut New York | Current Writing Blog - Recommendations

Günter Grass' Eulogy for Christa Wolf

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:47:00 +0100

Foto: picture-alliance/ dpa/pa/dpa

We recommend a visit to the blog of the New York Review of Books, which yesterday published David Dollenmayer's translation of Günter Grass' eulogy for his friend and colleague, Christa Wolf. Grass delivered the tribute at the Academy of the Arts in Berlin last December. He titled the eulogy What Remains, after Wolf's 1979 story of the same name, the publication of which in 1990 ignited what Grass characterizes as an unfair and hypocritical barrage of criticism against Wolf that has continued even after her death.

Steinfest vs. Stuttgart 21

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:28:00 +0100

Austrian crime novelist Heinrich Steinfest's body of work has received great critical acclaim as well as numerous awards (including four "Deutscher Krimi Preise"). For his latest novel, Wo die Löwen weinen [Where lions weep], his publisher, Theiss, and the German literary website, literaturcafe.de, launched a 16-part podcast in which the author returns to the scene of the crimes, so to speak. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Stuttgart 21 initiative, a much contested urban redevelopment project, centered around Stuttgart's main train station, that has been in the works for over a decade. Steinfest has lived and worked in Stuttgart for the past twelve years and with this novel considers himself an "interpreter" of the project. In the podcast, the author offers insight into plot development as well as explains critical background information. This is an interesting marketing strategy that marries current events with crime fiction. Upon it's late February release, the novel entered Der Spiegel's bestseller list at #36, although what part the podcast played is not clear.

Crime Pays

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:43:00 +0100

Ferdinand von Schirach has worked as a criminal defense lawyer in Berlin since 1994, representing the accused in more than 800 criminal cases. In 2009 he published his first collection of short stories, Verbrechen, which he followed with Schuld last year (both Piper Verlag).

In an interview he gave in the most recent issue of New Books in German, he talks about the influence his work has had on his writing, "When you have been a Criminal Defence Lawyer your whole life, then you have quite a stock of typesetting cases full of people, events and little episodes. And I then put these together anew for a story. The only thing that I don’t change is the basic tone of a case, the motive, the atmosphere."

After the original spent weeks on German bestseller lists, an English translation by Carol Brown Janeway, Crime: Stories (Knopf) has recently been published. In his review for the A.V. Club, Vadim Rizov praises Crime for being "compulsively readable, though sleazy" and notes that Schirach "presents a compelling portrait of Germany in flux, adjusting to a new wave of immigrants and still quietly reckoning with its history."

While Crime is available for loan via our Library, you may also enter to win a copy from the German Book Office, who selected Crime as their January Book of the Month.

UPDATE: The New York Times weighs in with a review today as well!

10 Translations for 2010

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:11:00 +0100

Looking over the list of translations we bought for the Library this year, I am struck by several things. For one, the list is considerably longer than in past years. And while there are a number of translations representing the canon of German literature - think Rilke, Kafka, Mann - I am very pleased to note a strong showing on the part of contemporary German authors. Here then, without further ado, a list of 10 of our favorite 2010 literary translations that highlight the younger generation of German writers.

Jakob Arjouni: Kismet (Kismet)
Translated by Anthea Bell
Melville House

Alina Bronsky: Broken Glass Park (Scherbenpark)
Translated by Tim Mohr
Europa Editions

Jenny Erpenbeck: Visitation (Heimsuchung)
Translated by Susan Bernofsky
New Directions

Julia Franck: The Blindness of the Heart (Die Mittagsfrau)
Translated by Anthea Bell
Grove Press

Daniel Kehlmann: Fame (Ruhm)
Translated by Carol Brown Janeway
Pantheon

Andreas Maier: Klausen (Klausen)
Translated by Kenneth J. Northcott
Open Letter

Judith Schalansky: Atlas of Remote Islands (Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln)
Translated by Christine Lo
Penguin

Ingo Schulze: One More Story (Handy. Dreizehn Geschichten in alter Manier)
Translated by John E. Woods
Knopf

Juli Zeh: In Free Fall
Translated by Christine Lo
Nan A. Talese

German Book Office Launches Promo Videos for Rights List

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 18:33:00 +0100

Check out our Library in the background of some great videos the German Book Office produced for its Fall 2010 Rights List! The one below features none other than Michael Orthofer of the Complete Review.

See more book talk videos on the GBO's YouTube Channel.

Noteworthy New Graphic Novels

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:04:00 +0100

We're big fans of graphic novels at the Goethe-Institut New York Library, so I thought I'd share some recent acquisitions:

Hotel Angst
Text by John von Düffel; Illustrations by Isabel Kreitz

Isabel Kreitz's illustrations breathe new life into this 2006 John von Düffel story about the titular, formerly grand hotel on the Italian Riviera. After the death of his father, a son returns to the scene of many childhood vacations and ponders the merits of fulfilling his father's dream of reviving the hotel.

Castro
Text and Illustrations by Reinhard Kleist

Following on the success of his Johnny Cash biography, Reinhard Kleist spent several months in Cuba in 2008 gathering material for a biography of Fidel Castro. His impressions from this trip were published under the title Havanna. Written from the perspective of an exiled photographer, Castro follows the ups and downs of Cuba's most famous revolutionary.

Im Museum. Archive des Zerfalls
Text by Jan-Frederick Bandel; Illustrations by Sascha Hommer

This second Im Museum volume follows the zany adventures of a pair of siblings with a healthy dose of philosophical musings, literary references and cultural criticism thrown in for good measure. The strip ran daily in the Frankfurter Rundschau from 2007 through 2009.

Haarmann
Text by Peer Meter; Illustrations by Isabel Kreitz

Truly putting the graphic in graphic novel, Haarmann depicts the last months in the life of Fritz Haarmann, arguably Germany's most notorious serial killer. Abusing his position as a police informant in 1920s Hanover, Haarmann brutally murdered over 20 young men. Meter and Kreitz have crafted a gripping thriller that details the scandals leading up to Haarmann's eventual arrest and trial.

These and many other graphic novel titles are available for loan from our Library. You may search our catalog for exact titles using the call number (Signatur) 741.5.

No Man's Land Online Translation Magazine Celebrates 5th Issue

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:05:00 +0100

Per Berlin-based translator Katy Derbyshire's excellent love german books blog comes news of today's launch of the 5th edition of no man's land, the online magazine for new German literature in English.

Katy writes, "The 5th edition presents fiction by Volker Braun, Werner Bräunig, Dietmar Dath, Johanna Hemkentokrax, Kai Gero Lenke, Siegfried Lenz, PeterLicht, Milena Oda, Gerhard Roth and Lutz Seiler and poetry by Lars-Arvid Brischke, Ulrike Draesner, Jörg Fauser, Claudia Kohlus, Fitzgerald Kusz, Marcus Roloff, Ulrike Almut Sandig and Tzveta Sofronieva."

The site also offers a wealth of information for those just getting started in literary translation. And for residents of Berlin, there is a translation lab every first Tuesday of the month. Check it out!

A Global Start for Reckless

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:55:00 +0200

I've been a fan of Cornelia Funke since first getting my hands on a copy of Tintenherz some six or seven years ago. Having grown up reading fantasy novels from the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien, Piers Anthony, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, and Robert Heinlein, to name but a few, I was skeptical about Funke's talents, especially given the constant comparisons to J.K. Rowling (as though there weren't any other fantasy authors worth mentioning!). My enthusiasm for Funke was admittedly slightly dampened by the truly mediocre filmic adapation, Inkheart, but that hasn't stopped me from eagerly anticipating her newest novel, Reckless. I am hard pressed to remember the last book by a German author that was released simultaneously in 12 countries in multiple languages, as Reckless was this week. Funke is currently on a US tour to promote the book, but for those of you outside of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle, you can see her read portions of the book here.

New Translations Carry You to Summer's End

nospam@example.com (Edna McCown) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:08:00 +0200

Occasionally, we make our readers aware of new translations on the market. There are a number of recent titles out there, and we've selected a few as late summer reading recommendations.

First up is an unexpected find, or finds, really, which caught even the publisher unawares, according to one local bookseller: German-language author Hans Keilson, who has lived in the Netherlands since 1936, is 100 years old and has only just retired from his medical practice. The first of the two Keilson translations, Comedy in a Minor Key, is by Damion Searls, who will publish an article on Hans Keilson in the September issue of The Believer. The second Keilson is a reissue of The Death of an Adversary, and both were recently published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

While we're at it, Damion Searls is also the editor and translator of a selection of works by Rainer Maria Rilke, The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams (David R. Godine, 2010), a bilingual edition that includes Rilke material never before published in English.

Just last week Open Letter Books released Klausen, the first work by Andreas Maier to be translated into English (by Kenneth J. Northcott). According to the publisher, Klausen is "a town where one confusion leads to the next, where everyone is living in a fog of rumor, but where everyone claims to know exactly what’s going on, even if they’ve changed their story several times."

And finally, a bilingual volume of poetry we're looking forward to: Voices from the Bitter Core (Host Publications, 2010) by award-winning poet and novelist Ursula Krechel, and translated by Amy Kepple Strawser.

These titles, once we've caught our collective breath, will soon be available at the Goethe-Institut New York Library.

Falling for Juli Zeh's In Free Fall

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:33:00 +0200

As fans of Juli Zeh, we've been pleased to follow the reception of Christine Lo's translation of her novel Schilf (Schöffling, 2007), which was released in the US under the title In Free Fall by Nan Talese this April. As the reviewer for the blog Material Witness: Fiction for the Criminally Inclined puts it, "In Free Fall is not your average crime novel but it works very well as a mystery story, with the philosophical, physical and moral fault lines of the characters adding colossal emotional impact to the story." Sarah Weinman of Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: Crime fiction, and more chose the title as one of her Picks of the Week and summarized, "Give me a crime novel of ideas, where two physics professors, friends and rivals, opposites but startlingly similar, do emotional battle on an intellectual canvas, raise the stakes through betrayal, the possible kidnapping of a child, and embroil a romantic-leaning police detective in the complicated machinations of quantum theory, and holy hell, I think I have myself one of my favorite books of the year." If a copy isn't available from your local public library, the Goethe-Institut New York Library would be pleased to be of assistance.

GuteSeiten: A Good Site

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:56:00 +0100

We subscribe to a number of German magazines and journals in our Library, but I am always on the lookout for interesting, new publications.

Via one of my favorite blogs (rebel:art), I came across GuteSeiten, which was called into life in reaction to what they call the "dumb mainstream media industry". GuteSeiten aims to draw attention to innovative fanzines and independent magazines and, to that end, they recently held a juried competition for magazine of the year. The GuteSeiten-Award 2010 went to the Berlin-based Der Wedding, with an honorable mention to the literary magazine, Edit (to which we already subscribe!).

GuteSeiten functions as a great clearinghouse for underground titles - I'll be keeping an eye on them for sure and, given some of the very reasonable subscription prices, might even order one or the other for the Library.

Abrams Publishes Johnny Cash

nospam@example.com (Edna McCown) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:35:00 +0100

Our readers may have noticed that we're partial to graphic novels, a fledging market in Germany, but growing. There aren't too many German graphic novels in translation in English, but now Abrams' new graphic novel imprint, Abrams ComicArts, enters the fray with Reinhardt Kleist's Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness.

A Publishers Weekly review of the book, translated by Michael Waaler, stated: "Kleist taps into the mythic quality of the Man in Black's rise from impoverished farming in Depression-era Arkansas to his early success in the 1950s, pulling no punches depicting Cash's drug dependency and the gradual erosion of his first marriage....(T)his stark and stunning graphic novel—winner of several awards in Europe—is a marvel of visual storytelling...and is highly recommended for just about anyone intrigued by an American icon."

Celebrating 10 Years of Lyrikline

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:38:00 +0100

In February, we recommended that you check out the excellent poetry platform, Lyrikline. For those who need further convincing, what will you find there? According to the site: "At the moment lyrikline.org presents 600 poets, 5,500 poems, 50(!) mother tongues and 6,600 translations into more than 49 languages."

All the more reason to pay them a visit this week, as they are celebrating their 10th anniversary! Congrats! The week-long celebrations in Berlin will close this Saturday, October 31st, with readings by poets Nicole Brossard (Québec), Babangoni wawa Chisale (Malawi), Elke Erb (Germany), Claudia Keelan (USA), Nikola Madzirov (Macedonia), Thomas Möhlmann (Netherlands), Remi Raji (Nigeria), Daniel Samoilovich (Argentina), and Lutz Seiler (Germany). Even better, you will be able to follow the festivities via a live stream on the Lyrikline blog starting at 8pm CET.

GI Dossier: Communicating Literature in German Abroad

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:17:00 +0200

Our colleagues at the Goethe-Institut headquarters in Munich regularly put together wonderful dossiers on numerous topics relating to German culture and literature. One such example is Communicating Literature in German Abroad. Although I trust many of our readers will already be familiar with the institutions and people engaged in this worthwhile endeavor, I nevertheless recommend you have a look through this set of collected articles. It's always inspiring to see how others tackle common problems.

"Deutsche Klassiker": A Deutsche Welle Podcast

nospam@example.com (Katherine Lorimer ) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0200

A quick heads-up for fans of German literature: Last week, the Deutsche Welle launched a new audio series entitled "German Classics", which they plan to release as a free weekly podcast between now and the end of the year. This is certainly an initiative we can get behind, as it was conceived to bolster interest in and expand access to German literature and culture around the globe. The podcast series will offer representative works covering the spectrum of German literature -- from Till Eulenspiegel to Heinrich Heine to Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and more -- as read by stars of the stage and screen. Don't miss out: sign up for the RSS feed now or subscribe via iTunes.