Eighth-grader Tilde could not even imagine that one day her photo would end up on the 'Scary Girls' Instagram page. It is already quite difficult for the girl to adapt in a new school, and this event adds even more troubles. School beauty Yasmin also did not expect that one of her photos could be interpreted as scary, but when she found herself under this hashtag on Instagram, she was very...

Written in 1914, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with...

Joseph Roth paints a vivid portrait of Emperor Napoleon’s last grab at glory, the hundred days spanning his escape from Elba to his final defeat at Waterloo. This particularly poignant work, set in the first half of 1815 and largely in Paris, is told from two perspectives, that of Napoleon himself and that of the lowly, devoted palace laundress Angelica-an unlucky creature who deeply loves him....

Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal...

The first volume of the most famous French novel of the 20th century was published over a hundred years ago, in November 1913. The novel was called 'Towards Swann', and its author Marcel Proust did not yet suspect that his offspring would grow into a cycle 'In Search of Lost Time', on which the writer would work until the last hours of his life. The reader will have to evaluate the second novel...

The chronological structure of the stories written between 1916 and 1939 conveys a precise picture of Joseph Roth's literary development: the arc of his storytelling art spans from the early work The Preferred Pupil to The Legend of the Holy Drinker, »one of the most beautiful legends written in the 20th century became« (Marcel Reich-Ranicki), to the novella Der Leviathan, Roth's last...

The original version of the great anti-war novel was confiscated by the Russian secret service in 1949 and has now been found in Russian archives. Found, edited and provided with a documentary appendix by Carsten Gansel. A book, back from 70 years as a prisoner of war.

The story of nineteen-year-old Paul Baeumer, who went from school to the front as an unsuspecting war volunteer, is now common knowledge. But when you read it again, the impression is again shocking: how Baeumer experiences the whole brutality of the carnage and the senseless deaths of his comrades instead of the hoped-for enthusiasm for the war and a short adventure is touching and outrageous.

The painter and poet Fritz Schramm welcomes young people with artistic ambitions to his attic apartment. A friendship develops between him and the music student Ernst Winter, which is put to the test when Ernst falls in love with the opera singer Lanna. Remarque's debut novel: a touching portrait of the artist as a young man and the beginning of a great career as a writer.

The young soldier Ernst Graeber receives leave from the front for a few weeks - and meets the love of his life in the last days of the Third Reich. Fear, terror and persecution are only now making him realize the senselessness of the war. But it's too late - he has to go back to war...

The Leviathan tells of the Jewish coral trader Piczenik, who loves the real corals and yet falls victim to the fraud with the fake ones. The short stories The Triumph of Beauty and The Bust of the Emperor are added to this parable of human existence.