Even though Germany is the home of the Autobahn, traveling probably means riding a lot of trains. While you’re watching the romantic countryside slip by, you might as well take a few books off of your reading list.
Barnes and Noble is the perfect place to find books at a great price. Read this guide to find out if Barnes and Noble ships to Germany.
Here are a few to get you started.
The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett
Britt Bennett’s The Vanishing Half depicts the story of twin girls born into a light-skinned black community in Louisiana in the 1950s, which takes great satisfaction in its quest for whiteness.
The two ladies break free from the oppression of their community, a place imprisoned between its citizens’ rejection of their own identity and the savagery of a racist America.
Losing Skin by Regina Durig
Regina Dürig’s poetry novel “Losing Skin” dissects its female protagonist’s life, episodically, from early childhood to the present day. In minimalist words, the woman’s story is traced, and the author allows space for the unsaid for the reader to add richness, making it a unique reading experience.
This book provides a remarkable insight into contemporary womanhood, circling the sometimes impalpable yet systemic suffering women experience in our society. Despite never being explicit, it’s a language that cuts deep.
The Silent Angel by Heinrish Boll
The book I’m most enthusiastic about at the moment is Heinrich Böll’s first novel, The Silent Angel (Der Engel Schwieg), which was initially published in Germany in 1992. He wrote it between 1949 and 1951 when he returned to Cologne’s birthplace after six years as an infantryman for defeated Germany.
No publisher at the time was prepared to take the book on, fearing the true-to-life descriptions of a war-torn city were too distressing for the German audience to cope with.
Similar to Böll himself, the novel’s hero, Hans Schnitzler, returns to his wrecked city, homeless, poor, and emotionally drained after the war. He encounters a society where identities are bought and sold, and human kindness has drowned in a well of cynicism and self-interest.
Heinrich Böll won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972 and, regrettably, died before seeing The Silent Angel in print. It was initially published in English by Andre Deutsch Ltd. in 1994 and will be re-issued by Orion Paperbacks in 2022.
Schwitters by Ulrike Dresner,
While my favorite NBG recommendation spans the same period as The Magician and also involves the idea of exile, the experience is considerably different. Schwitters by Ulrike Draesner is a lovely, fictionalized chronicle of the life of Merz artist, poet, and polymath Kurt Schwitters.
Like Thomas Mann, he was born into comfort and security. Unlike Mann, he experienced exile as a heart-rending separation from his wife and his home language, with which he had enjoyed such a positive relationship.
He spent many years in transit from Norway through Scotland to the Isle of Man and London, ending in extreme poverty in the Lake District with most of his life’s work ruined and his status in the art world weakened. Lyrical, whimsical, and genuinely emotional, I was affected by Kurt’s good-natured charm and profound feeling of dislocation.