Siggi Jepsen, incarcerated as a juvenile delinquent, is one day assigned to write a routine German lesson on the ‘The Joys of Duty.’ Overfamiliar with these ‘joys,’ Siggi sets down his life since 1943, a decade earlier, when as a boy he watched his father, constable of the northernmost police station in Germany, doggedly carry out orders from Berlin to stop a well-known Expressionist, their...

'Wild Animal Tales' is a collection of fairy tales, where you can recognize each animal as a friend, neighbor, and sometimes yourself. In fantastic situations that develop around the characters of fairy tales, there is much more real, real life than it might seem at first glance. Wit, brilliant imagination, the ability to create stunning linguistic games - all these talents of Lyudmila...

Als Mira sich auf den Weg nach Südkärnten macht, steht ihr eine schwierige Aufgabe bevor: Sie muss ihre betagte Mutter auf den Auszug aus dem Haus vorbereiten, in dem sie vor Jahrzehnten mit den damals noch kleinen Kindern Obdach gefunden hat. Im Lauf der folgenden Wochen verdichten sich Miras eigene Erinnerungen an das Dorf und an eine als traumatisch erlebte Kindheit, geprägt von der rigiden...

Ein Mädcheninternat im Appenzell der sechziger Jahre. Gehorsam und Disziplin prägen die Ordnung des Hauses. Die heitere Landschaft vor den Fenstern treibt die vierzehnjährige Ich-Erzählerin zu stundenlangen einsamen Spaziergängen. Eines Tages erscheint eine Neue während des Mittagessens: Frédérique, schön, streng, verächtlich und voller Überdruss. Frédérique ist anders, etwas Leises und...

In Malina, originally published in German in 1971, Ingeborg Bachmann invites the reader into a world stretched to the very limits of language. An unnamed narrator, a writer in Vienna, is torn between two men: viewed through the tilting prism of obsession, she travels further into her own madness, anxiety, and genius. Malina explores love, 'deathstyles,' the roots of fascism, and passion.

Written when Ingeborg Bachmann was only eighteen, The Honditsch Cross—her second-longest completed work of prose after Malina—is a historical novella set during the final days of the Napoleonic occupation of Austria in 1813.

In this brief interlude, severed from reality, it seems as if M may finally escape from herself, from her past, from her nationality. Written in rich and hypnotic prose, The Disappearing Act oscillates between reality and dream, between an oppressive present and a lost past, between life and literature.

With the death of her aunt, the narrator is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and...

Srdan Srdic's collection of short stories, Combustions, establishes this author's position as one of the best prose writers in Serbia and across the region. This book consists of nine stories in which the author brings the reader face to face with the seamy side of everyday life, where, somewhere in the province, hopelessness and despair of the endless Balkan transition meet one another in the...

To my mind Maria Matios’ Sweet Darusya is the best contemporary Ukrainian novel written since Ukrainian Independence in 1991. It reveals a family saga that is much more dynamic than classical sagas and at the same time is much more touching and engaging. It is an emotional history of Ukraine with a very well researched and vivid historical background that gives the reader the opportunity to...

Set in a world of its own, Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs is both a mesmerizing work of fantasy and an allegory of the advent of fascism. The narrator of the book and his brother, Otho, live in an ancient house carved out of the great marble cliffs that overlook the Marina, a great and beautiful lake that is surrounded by a peaceable land of ancient cities and temples and flourishing...

Vasily Grossman wrote three novels about the Second World War, each offering a distinct take on what a war novel can be, and each extraordinary. A common set of characters links Stalingrad and Life and Fate, but Stalingrad is not only a moving and exciting story of desperate defense and the turning tide of war, but also a monumental memorial for the countless war dead. Life and Fate, by...