Tag: Süddeutsche Zeitung

Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift by Franz Werfel

Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift by Franz Werfel

At the beginning of Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift (In a Woman’s Pale Blue Hand), life is going very well for Leonidas Tachezy as he celebrates his fiftieth birthday. Thanks to a lucky break in his student days, his natural abilities and discipline have led him to a high station in Austrian society in 1936. He is …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/25/eine-blasblaue-frauenschrift-by-franz-werfel/

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Holly Golightly knew how to make an impression. That’s the first impression that Truman Capote wants his readers to come away with. Years after Capote’s unnamed first-person narrator last saw Holly, he drops everything to go see a bar owner who called him out of the blue after not being in contact for quite a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/12/20/breakfast-at-tiffanys-by-truman-capote/

Mitsou by Colette

Mitsou by Colette

A funny thing happens when you hide a lieutenant, or indeed two, in your wardrobe. Mitsou is a performer in a Paris revue during the Great War, and the novella that bears her name opens backstage between acts, with the old stage manager trying to keep the young performers out of too much mischief and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/14/mitsou-by-colette/

Süddeutsche Series

Voices of Marrakesh by Elias Canetti

In early 2004, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany’s leading daily newspapers, began a new venture: publishing hardcover books. They began with a worthy and ambitious set of 50 great novels of the twentieth century, published one per week through to February 2005, when the series concluded with If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveler… …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/03/suddeutsche-series/

Schloss Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky

Schloss Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky

In Schloss Gripsholm (Castle Gripsholm) Kurt Tucholsky, one of Weimar Germany’s leading journalists and satirists tells of a summer idyll in Sweden, several weeks with a lady friend where they while the days away, a couple of friends come to visit, and various amusements take place. The book begins with a putative exchange of letters …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/24/schloss-gripsholm-by-kurt-tucholsky/

Der Verrückte des Zaren by Jaan Kross

Larger than life statue of Jaan Kross; next to that Doug Merrill holding a copy of Kross' book Der Verrückte des Zaren

The jacket copy from the Süddeutsche Zeitung edition of Jaan Kross’ historical novel The Tsar’s Madman, first published in 1978, is tough to beat for a concise summary. “In his diary, Jakob Mättik tells the dramatic story of his brother-in-law, the Baltic German nobleman Timotheus von Bock, who won not only renown in 1812 in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/07/der-verruckte-des-zaren-by-jaan-kross/

Softcore by Tirdad Zolghadr

Softcore by Tordad Zolghadr

In Softcore a first-person narrator, annoyingly also named Tirday Zolghadr, relates the weeks and days before the opening of a new and arty nightclub in contemporary Tehran, interspersed with his remembrances of earlier times in and around Iran’s capital city. The book has some funny bits, such as a running gag about the splittist tendencies …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/27/softcore-by-tirdad-zolghadr/

Das Haus an der Moskwa by Yuri Trifonov

Das Haus an der Moskwa by Yuri Trifonov

Das Haus an der Moskwa, known in English as The House on the Embankment and with the original title Дом на набережной, poses a question that it doesn’t really answer, or at least not directly. On a hot August day in 1972 Vadim Glebow has traveled out to a distant corner of Moscow to get …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/13/das-haus-an-der-moskwa-by-yuri-trifonov/

Heisser Sommer by Uwe Timm

Heisser Sommer by Uwe Timm

I came to Heisser Sommer prepared not to like it. A book by a male author in his forties, looking back on his glorious youth twenty years previous. That Timm chose not to use quotation marks for characters’ speech added to my annoyance. Worse, it’s set in the overexposed late 1960s, featuring a male protagonist …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/07/heisser-sommer-by-uwe-timm/

Reading Munich — München erlesen

München erlesen 1

The first great virtue of the 20-volume “München erlesen” (Selected Munich, with a bit of a pun on the German word for reading) series is the simple fact of its existence. There are not many provincial capitals that could support a literary series that runs to 20 books, let alone one with the quality of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/04/02/reading-munich-munchen-erlesen/