Category: Auf Deutsch

Die Physiker by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Die Physiker (The Physicists) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Dr Miss Mathilde von Zahnd runs one of the most renowned, and one of the most expensive, private psychiatric clinics in all of Switzerland. The enormous fees paid by the rich clientele — in the stage notes before the play proper, Dürrenmatt speaks of moronic millionaires, schizophrenic authors, arteriosclerotic politicians — have enabled most of the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/12/die-physiker-by-friedrich-durrenmatt/

Mein litauischer Führerschein by Felix Ackermann

Mein litauischer Führerschein by Felix Ackermann

Mein litauischer Fürherschein — My Lithuanian Driver’s License — carries the subtitle “Ausflüge zum Ende der europäischen Union,” “Excursions to the End of the European Union.” He means one of the geographic ends of course, not the demise of the Union. I’m not sure I would have chosen Lithuania as the end of the Union …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/29/mein-litauischer-fuhrerschein-by-felix-ackermann/

Das Konzert by Hartmut Lange

Das Konzert by Hartmut Lange

Everybody who’s anybody among Berlin’s dead craves an invitation to Frau Altenshul’s salon. She has devoted her afterlife — much as she had devoted her life — to beauty, whether that was beautiful music, beautiful art, or the simple beauty of conversation among like-minded people. Max Liebermann was a painter who had lived a long life, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/21/das-konzert-by-hartmut-lange/

Die Welt hinter Dukla by Andrzej Stasiuk

Die Welt hinter Dukla by Andrzej Stasiuk

Without the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s set of 50 more great novels of the 20th century, it might have been a very long time before I heard of Andrzej Stasiuk, let alone read any of his books. Stasiuk was born in Warsaw in 1960, but he makes his home in a small town in Poland’s furthest southern …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/03/die-welt-hinter-dukla-by-andrzej-stasiuk/

Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum

Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum

A hotel, especially a grand one in the center of a major metropolis, can be its own world. Vicki Baum opens up one such world in Menschen im Hotel (lit. “People in a Hotel” but published under the better title of Grand Hotel), telling interlocking stories of people in Berlin’s finest hotel over the course …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/23/menschen-im-hotel-by-vicki-baum/

Stille Zeile Sechs by Monika Maron

Stille Zeile Sechs by Monika Maron

How much fury fits into 142 pages? Monika Maron tells her readers from the very first sentence that Herbert Beerenbaum dies, so a good bit of Stille Zeile Sechs (Silent Close Number Six — “Close” in the sense of a small cul-de-sac street, with six as the house number) is finding out who he his, how …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/15/stille-zeile-sechs-by-monika-maron/

Der Tod eines Bienenzüchters by Lars Gustafsson

Der Tod eines Bienenzüchters by Lars Gustafsson

The title — The Death of a Beekeeper — lets readers know right away that this will not be an overly cheerful novel. It is a moving story, eventually a beautiful one in its slightly off-kilter way. Which is only fair because the beekeeper, one Lars Lennart Westin, often called “Wiesel,” is a slightly off-kilter …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/05/05/der-tod-eines-bienenzuchters-by-lars-gustafsson/

Die Farbe der Rache by Cornelia Funke

Die Farbe der Rache by Cornelia Funke

“And they all lived happily ever after.” That wasn’t quite the ending of Cornelia Funke’s epic Tintenherz (Inkheart) trilogy — some 2000 pages of action in and between the author’s world and the world within the books, complete with characters who can cross the borders and others who can write the stories from within — but …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/03/31/die-farbe-der-rache-by-cornelia-funke/

Marzahn Mon Amour

Marzahn Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp

With Marzahn Mon Amour Katja Oskamp aims for a double re-evaluation: of her own writing, seemingly derailed after two novels and a story collection are followed by publishers’ rejections of the novellas that followed, and of the district of Marzahn in the northeastern corner of Berlin, far from the city’s hip party places or its …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/03/02/marzahn-mon-amour/

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/