Joanna Bators neuer Roman erzählt von weiblichen Lebensentwürfen. Und wie sie scheitern. Im drängenden, sarkastischen, an Elfriede Jelinek erinnernden Ton entfaltet sich das Drama der zornigen Frauen, die ihr Geheimnis durch die Generationen weitergegeben haben. Krieg, Gewalt und privates Unglück haben die Angst und Bitternis hervorgebracht, aus deren Bannkreis erst die Jüngste, Kalina,...

März 1946. In Blakendorf in der Lüneburger Heide versucht der Kriegsheimkehrer Schmidt sein Leben neu einzurichten. Er wird in eine Baracke eingewiesen, die auch zwei junge Flüchtlingsfrauen, Grete und Lore, bewohnen. Die Not ist so groß wie die Verachtung der Einheimischen für die Flüchtlinge. Gemeinsam versuchen sie, über die Runden zu kommen. Schmidt, der an einer Biografie über Fouqué...

Heinrich Düring, Gemeindebeamter in Fallingbostel, führt ein Doppelleben: Er verachtet das NS-Regime und den Alltag des deutschen Kleinbürgertums, nach außen aber gibt er sich angepasst. Seinen Ausgleich findet er in der Natur, durchstreift unermüdlich die geliebte Heidelandschaft, liest Wieland und Tieck. Im Wald entdeckt er eine Hütte und bezieht sie als Versteck für sich und seine...

Von einer Zeit, in der die Hoffnungen auf radikale Veränderungen in der Ukraine begraben werden. Als »Barrikadenpianist« hat er die Revolution zu Hause unterstützt. In der Emigration verdient er sein Geld als Salonmusiker - Josip Rotsky, ein Mann unklarer Identität, dessen Name sich auf Trotzki, Brodsky und Joseph Roth reimt. In einem Schweizer Hotel muss er für den Diktator seines Landes...

Dina Rubina’s book ‘White Horses’ is the second volume of the trilogy ‘Napoleonic convoy’. If ‘The Rowan Wedge’ - the first book of the series - was the beginning of the action, from which we learned about the origin of the love of two heroes - Aristarchus and Nadezhda, modern Orpheus and Eurydice, then ‘White Horses’ is the culmination in the development of their relationship.

‘Angel's Horn’ is the third and final part of Dina Rubina's saga ‘Napoleon's convoy.’ Aristarchus and Nadezhda, who fell into love of such strength that not everyone could bear it, were scattered by fate in different directions. Both she and he had to to go their own - separate from each other - paths: risky, dangerous. And finally, the meeting took place, 25 years lived apart, proved that...

Akram Aylisli is a classic of modern Azerbaijani literature. What is this book about, which includes selected stories, the famous trilogy ‘Men and Trees’ and the novel ‘Stone Dreams’? One thinks that it is about ‘the creation of a wonderful country, which is irrevocably part of our common experience,’ and that ‘the fairy tale that soared above the earth never took root on the earth’ (L. Anninsky).

The stories in the collection ‘The Swim,’ written in the late 1970s and early 1980s, show the emergence of Sorokin optics. Frozen Soviet life, tired people accustomed to doublethink, worn-out concepts come to life at the slightest author’s provocation. ‘National Economy’, ‘flying’, ‘swim’ turn out to be a fragile shell of suffering, burlesque and absurdity.

Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos—an unforgettably compelling masterpiece—tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans....

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix their own marriage. There's a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to...

The author is a former spy. The subject of his book is the Russian scientist, Vitalii Vorontsov. As he attended a symposium in Germany, American agents tried to recruit him as a spy.