This regular page brings you a selection of German-language titles that have just been, or are soon to be, published in English.
Clicking on the title of a book will take you to its page on the publisher’s website.
Have we missed anything?! Let us know by emailing Sarah at sarah@new-books-in-german.com
Fiction
Anneliese’s House – Lou Andreas-Salomé
Translated by Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger
Boydell and Brewer, June 2021
The legendary writer Lou Andreas-Salomé wrote six novels and many short stories and novellas. Although translations of some of her novels have been published in French and Italian, none has ever appeared in English before. Best known now for her involvement with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) first became famous for fiction and criticism that engaged provocatively with ‘the woman question.’
Chanel has just launched a new online book club, and they chose Andreas-Salomé as the first writer to focus on (with English subtitles):https://www.chanel.com/en_WW/fashion/event/literary-rendez-vous-lou-andreas-salome-portrait.html
The Passenger – Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
Translated by Philip Boehm
Pushkin Press, April 21
With all the money he can gather stuffed into a suitcase, Otto takes train after train across Germany, seeking to cross the border, every moment terrified a fellow passenger will discover his Jewish identity. An unbearably tense rediscovered classic, The Passenger is an unparalleled depiction of the terrifying atmosphere of Nazi Germany.
Translated by Annie Rutherford
V & Q Books, March 21
‘A peacock whodunnit meets Monarch of the Glen. Light-hearted and fun, to be enjoyed by the fire, with a whisky, of course. In Annie Rutherford’s translation, it’s hard to imagine it was originally written in German.’
Kari Dickson, translator of Karin Fossum
Translated by Jen Calleja
Unnamed Press, September 21
Helene Bukowski’s debut novel is about what it means to be a mother at the end of the world, about living with the impacts of climate change, and the way we view “outsiders.”
The Fluid Land – Raphaela Edelbauer
Translated by Jen Calleja
Scribe, August 21
‘A village that officially does not exist and that seems to be disappearing more and more … Anyone who embarks on this trip is safely guided by Edelbauer — on a fine line between madness and adventure.’
Christina Risken, BUCHHANDLUNG KRÜGER
Short listed for the German Book Prize in 2019, you can read our recommendation of the book here.
Love in Five Acts – Daniela Krien
Translated by Jamie Bulloch
MacLehose Press, April 2021
Interlinking stories about five middle-aged women in search of love and trying to make sense of their lives. This book was a New Books in German jury pick and you can read our original recommendation here. The book’s translator, Jamie Bulloch, discusses the book in his article on what makes a German- language book resonate with an English-language readership.
The High Rise Diver – Julia von Lucadou
Translated by Sharmila Cohen
World Editions, March 2021
You can read our original recommendation here.
Julia von Lucadou’s excellent debut about the psychological effects of secret surveillance chimes with the increasing interest in dystopian fiction, in particular works written by women.
Riva Karnovsky is a disaffected ‘high-rise diver’, a top athlete and media star, who has broken her contract with her promoters and is refusing to train. Hitomi Yoshida is the psychologist who has been hired to spy on her in her flat and via her online interactions, and to come up with a way of reintegrating her.
The Blacksmiths’ Daughter – Selim Özdoğan
V & Q Books, March 21
Translated by Ayça Türkoğlu and Katy Derbyshire
‘Reading it was like falling in love. If everyone read this book, the world would be a better place – more considerate, more liveable, more tolerant.’
Fatih Akın, director of The Edge of Heaven
Part one of a trilogy that traces out the life of Gül, a Turkish girl who grows up in 1950s Anatolia and then moves to Germany as a migrant worker.
Translated by Charlotte Collins
Picador, March 21
‘One of those rare novels that can move you existentially, and change you.’
SWR
A book about human lives – each one different, yet connected to countless others – that ultimately shows that life, for all its fleetingness, has meaning.
Translated by Lucy Jones
Scribe, April 2021
Written with dark humour and clarifying rage, Anke Stelling’s novel is a ferocious and funny account of motherhood, parenthood, family, and friendship thrust into battle. Lively, rude, and wise, it throws down the gauntlet to those who fail to interrogate who they have become.
Translated by Liesl Schilinger
‘Takis Würger is someone out of the ordinary and this book is like him: powerful, strong, painful. Stella is a book from which we do not emerge unscathed and in which he explores the depths of the human soul. I stayed in this book for a long time after turning the final page. Würger is surely one of the most important writers of our generation.’
Joël Dicker, New York Times bestselling author of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair
A novel of love and betrayal, set in Berlin in 1942.
Crime
Hotel Cartagena – Simone Bucholz
Translated by Rachel Ward
Orenda Books, March 2021
‘If Philip Marlowe and Bernie Gunther had a literary love child, it might just explain Chastity Riley – Simone Buchholz’s tough, acerbic, utterly engaging central character. ’
William Ryan, bestselling author of A House of Ghosts
Twenty floors above the shimmering lights of the Hamburg docks, Public Prosecutor Chastity Riley is celebrating a birthday with friends in a hotel bar when twelve heavily armed men pull out guns, and take everyone hostage.
Passenger 23 – Sebastian Fitzek
Translated by Jamie Bulloch
Head of Zeus, Feb 2021
‘Fitzek’s thrillers are breathtaking, full of wild twists.’
Harlan Coben
A detective gets a mysterious call from a woman on a cruise ship, who claims to know what happened to his wife and son, presumed drowned. Once on board, he gradually discovers the grisly truth about lawlessness on cruise ships.
Translated by Jamie Bulloch
Quercus Books, June 2021
Nadine helps a friend – and wife of her boss – hide the body of her murdered lover. But not all is what it seems, and as the mind games begin we learn more about Nadine’s troubled past.
Non-Fiction
A History of the Universe in 100 Stars – Florian Freistetter
Translated by Gesche Ipsen
Quercus, April 2020
‘An ingenious basic course in Astronomy.’
Die Welt
In 100 short, fascinating and entertaining chapters, Astronomer Florian Freistetter not only reveals the past and future of the cosmos, but also the story of the people who have tried to understand the world in which we live.
Translated by Shelley Frisch
Princeton University Press, June 2021
Before Billy Wilder became the screenwriter and director of iconic films like Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, he worked as a freelance reporter, first in Vienna and then in Weimar Berlin. Billy Wilder on Assignment brings together more than fifty articles, translated into English for the first time, that Wilder published in magazines and newspapers between September 1925 and November 1930.
The Beat of Life – Dr Reinhard Friedl
Translated by Gert Reifarth
Hero Press, April 2021
The heart is more than just a pump. In all major human cultures, it is seen as the source of love, sympathy, joy, courage, strength and wisdom. Why is this so? Eminent surgeon Dr Reinhard Friedl uses riveting personal stories to illustrate the complex relationship between the heart, the brain and the psyche.
Refugee A Memoir – Emmanuel Mbolela
Translated by Charlotte Collins
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2021
Persecuted for his political activism, Emmanuel Mbolela left the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2002. His search for a new home would take six years. While still countryless, Mbolela became an advocate for those around him. Since obtaining political asylum in the Netherlands in 2008, he has remained a committed activist. In Refugee, Mbolela provides an overlooked perspective on a global crisis.
An Inventory of Losses – Judith Schalansky
Translated by Jackie Smith
MacLehose Press, August 2020 and New Directions, December 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2021
‘A fine example of everyone’s favourite genre: the genre-defying book, inspired by history, filtered through imagination and finished with a jeweller’s eye for detail.’
John Self, Guardian
Each of the pieces in this book, following the conventions of a different genre, considers something that is irretrievably lost to the world, including the paradisal pacific island of Tuanaki, the Caspian Tiger, the Villa Sacchetti in Rome, Sappho’s love poems, Greta Garbo’s fading beauty, a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, and the former East Germany’s Palace of the Republic.
The Scent of Empires – Karl Schlögel
Translated by Jessica Spengler
Polity, May 2021
‘This book demonstrates once again Karl Schlögel’s remarkable ability to make the whole of society visible in the most inconspicuous details.’
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Can a drop of perfume tell the story of the twentieth century? Can a smell bear the traces of history? What can we learn about the history of the twentieth century by examining the fate of perfumes? This brilliant account of perfume and politics in twentieth-century Europe will be of interest to a wide general readership.
Translated by Stephen Brown
Haus, Feb 2021
Planned at the beginning of the 1920s as a garden city on the fringes of Jerusalem, the suburbs of Talbiyeh and Rehavia became a centre of emigration for German Jews from 1933 onwards. German Jerusalem is a story of a culturally distinctive community, and a fascinating biography of those who lived and worked there.
