NBG‘s recommendation list celebrates a wide range of writing forms; it isn’t just limited to novels and non-fiction studies. Below you’ll find a list of short story collections and novellas which have recently made the NBG recommendation list.

Short stories

Novellas

For the purposes of the list, we’ve defined the novella as a short novel, so here you’ll find works of fiction which are under 200 pages.

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Jury recommendations: Autumn 2025

September 1, 2025

Our Autumn 2025 selection features book titles from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, handpicked by our expert jury as particularly suitable for an international audience.

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‘There is no such thing as objective experience . . . Like a kaleidoscope, the gaze falls on details from different angles, forming patterns that shift depending on how one looks.’ An Interview with Julia Franck

January 5, 2026

New books in German speaks to Julia Franck about her book Welten auseinander, her shift from fiction to biography and growing up in a divided nation

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‘It is always an attempt to make the incomprehensible somehow comprehensible.’ An interview with Thomas Melle

December 15, 2025

Thomas Melle, born in 1975 in Bonn, has established himself as one of the most incisive and stylistically daring voices in contemporary German literature. His work – including novels, essays, plays and literary translations from English – is marked by a fierce intellectual curiosity and an unflinching engagement with the psychological and social tensions that define modern life.

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Recap of a Virtual Translation Workshop

December 5, 2025

Riky Stock recaps a virtual translation workshop run by the Frankfurter Buchmesse, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut New York

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Where Poetry Meets the Novel: The Lyric Voices Shaping German Fiction

November 25, 2025

Sheridan Marshall, NBG’s Editorial Consultant, highlights some of the poet-novelists we have featured recently on the website.

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‘As for empathy for other societies and peoples, I think translated fiction has an essential role to play’ – an interview with François von Hurter of Bitter Lemon Press

November 14, 2025

François von Hurter of Bitter Lemon talks to New Books in German about why translated crime fiction resonates so strongly with readers. talks to New Books in German about why translated crime fiction resonates so strongly with readers.

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‘Creating a stage to talk about translation’ – an interview with Simon Pare

November 11, 2025

New Books in German speaks to literary translator Simon Pare about his career, communities of translators and making translation more theatrical.

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