Friday 5 December 2014

The Love German Books Incredibly Long Seasonal Gift List

Yes, folks, it is once again time to shower your English-speaking friends and relatives with books translated out of German. You know they love you for it. To help you find the goodies, I have trawled the internet for suitable gifts. Think of me as a German book elf. All the books below were published in 2014. Links are to publishers' websites. I haven't read all of the titles personally, but neither have I included anything I think is likely to be crap. Incredibly, there are over thirty to choose from! You're welcome.

For artistic types or blackmailers: Herta Müller – Cristina and Her Double (trans. Geoffrey Mulligan)

For the whimsical: Jenny Erpenbeck – The End of Days (trans. Susan Bernofsky)

For diary writers: Walter Kempowski – Swansong 1945 (trans. Shaun Whiteside)

For starters-over: Julia Franck – West (trans. Anthea Bell)

For geniuses: Clemens J. Setz – Indigo (trans. Ross Benjamin)

For misshapen acolytes: Alina Bronsky – Just Call Me Superhero (trans. Tim Mohr)

For bird-lovers: Marjana Gaponenko – Who Is Martha? (trans. Arabella Spencer)

For the highly-educated: Joachim Fest – Not I (trans. Martin Chalmers)

For refusers-to-be-categorized: Olga Grjasnowa – All Russians Love Birch Trees (trans. Eva Bacon)

For ambulance-chasers: Wolf Haas – Come, Sweet Death! (trans. Annie Janusch)

For non-scaredy-cats: Zoran Drvenkar – You (trans. Shaun Whiteside)

For historical questioners: Malte Herwig – Post-War Lies. Germany and Hitler's Long Shadow (trans. Jamie Lee Searle and Shaun Whiteside)

For historical re-assessors: Bettina Stangneth – Eichmann Before Jerusalem (trans. Ruth Martin)

For the altruistic: Stefan Klein – Survival of the Nicest (trans. David Dollenmayer)

For adventurous teens and adults: Wolfgang Herrndorf – Why We Took the Car (trans. Tim Mohr)

For Susan fans and foes: Daniel Schreiber – Susan Sontag (trans. David Dollenmayer)

For those who don't mind laughing at Hitler: Timur Vermes – Look Who's Back (trans. Jamie Bulloch)

For dopeheads and beat fans: Jörg Fauser – Raw Material (trans. Jamie Bulloch)

For nasally sensitive e-readers: Andreas Maier – The Room (trans. Jamie Lee Searle)

For Depeche Mode fans: Dennis Burmeister & Sascha Lange – Depeche Mode: Monument (trans. Lucy Renner-Jones)

For the lost-for-words: Mario Giordano – 1000 Feelings for Which There Are No Names (trans. Isabel Fargo Cole)

For hoarders of dark secrets: Alois Hotschnig – Ludwig's Room (trans. Tess Lewis)

For fifties fans: Ingeborg Bachmann – The Radio Family (trans. Mike Mitchell)

For the young at heart: Christa Wolf – August (trans. Katy Derbyshire)

For Sebald fans: Alexander Kluge – Air Raid (trans. Martin Chalmers)

For open-minded satirists: Herbert Rosendorfer – Letters Back to Ancient China (trans. Mike Mitchell)

For city bankers: Jonas Lüscher – Barbarian Spring (trans. Peter Lewis)

For America fans: Alex Capus – Skidoo (trans. John Brownjohn)

For brave kids: Otfried Preussler – Krabat and the Sorcerer's Mill (trans. Anthea Bell)

For Wes Anderson fans: Stefan Zweig – The Society of Crossed Keys (trans. Anthea Bell)

For young twins: Erich Kästner – The Parent Trap (trans. Anthea Bell)

For Finnish crime lovers: Jan Costin Wagner – Light in a Dark House (trans. Anthea Bell)

For boxing (and graphic novel) fans: Reinhard Kleist – The Boxer (trans. Michael Waaler)

2 comments:

Frank Beck said...

Thanks for this helpful resource. My only quibble is that you could have included a book for poetry lovers.

Sebastian said...

Thanks for this nice list. Oh, how I wish Die schwarzen Brüder has an unabridged English translation and The Outsiders of Uskoken Castle (Rote Zora und ihre Bande) is still in print.