This month's country is Germany and it's my 12th WorldReads post - a year of global reading! I have selected a variety of German books to showcase the country's literature including thrillers, a young adult novel and a rather strange travel book.
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I saw the film version of The Reader
at our then-local art house cinema when it came out and remembered the main revelation that would be made during the story. However, I found that this actually increased the poignancy of the earlier writing as I could completely understand some of the layers of meaning.
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An unexpected delight, I had expected a short story collection of micro-scale travel writings. This book is actually a scholarly survey of many examples of the genre written over the past two hundred years. Stiegler studied dozens of novels, essays and memoirs, mostly by French and German authors, who chose to look at the everyday and the mundane through the eyes of a visitor and a tourist and I was quite taken with the basic premise. The examples of 'flanerie' - exploring one's own familiar environment with new eyes - struck a chord.
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I thought this was a beautifully quiet and thoughtful novel although it is a depressing read overall. Hesse understands his unfulfilled protagonist completely and, since finishing, I have read elsewhere that Rosshalde does reflect his own circumstances at the time of writing.
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A short young adult novel in which photographer Elisa tries to discover who tried to run her car off the road as she returned to her Dusseldorf home. As all the oddly behaved suspects are her family, she soon struggles to know who can be trusted. This thriller wasn't entirely to my taste, but I think would be more appreciated by its target audience.
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This exciting post-Cold War thriller is set in well-evoked Laos. Vater sets up an intricate and complicated plot which I found it a joy to get lost in and also introduces interesting and believable characters, both male and female. The women in this novel aren't just eye candy!
That's it for April's WorldReads from Germany. I hope I have tempted you to try reading a book from this country! Please do Comment your own favourite German books below and if you fancy buying any of the five I have suggested, clicking through the links from this blog to do so would mean I earn a small commission payment.
You can join in my WorldReads Challenge at any time! Simply read 1 or more books from a different country each month, write a post about it/them, grab the button below and add it to your post. Don't forget to pop back here and Comment your link so I can visit!
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If you missed any earlier WorldReads posts, we have already 'visited' Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. In May I will be highlighting five books by Indian authors. See you on the 5th to find out which ones!
I'm only familiar with The Reader, to be honest. But it's great to see other books from specific countries I would otherwise, not know.
ReplyDeleteTraveling In Place is basically weird, but The Man With The Golden Mind you might enjoy :-)
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