Tagged: German literature

Translated from German by Sue Vickerman It’s over. Don’t go there. is the second title by Kathrin Schmidt published by Naked Eye, and the second in their new translated literature series. You can read my review of Schmidt’s novel You’re Not Dying (translated by Christina Les) here, but today I want to talk to you […]

Translated from German by Abigail Wender (The Bureau of Past Management) and Katy Derbyshire (Madgermanes), V&Q Books, 2021 The autumn V&Q offering includes two excellent books by women, one that deals with inherited guilt from the Nazi era and the other that explores the fate of Mozambican workers who emigrated to Germany in the late […]

Translated from German by Christina Les (Naked Eye Publishing, 2021) Kathrin Schmidt’s You’re Not Dying is a prize-winning best-seller in Germany, where it was first published in 2009, and today the first English translation (by Christina Les) is published. The release of You’re Not Dying also represents the first foray into translated literature for independent […]

Translated from German by Annie Rutherford (V&Q Books, 2021) A funny, feel-good comedy of errors featuring characters ranging from the eccentric to the neurotic, a rambling castle in the Scottish Highlands, and a peacock gone rogue? Yes please. The Peacock felt like the book I’ve been waiting for – something to lift me out of […]

I had intended to post this piece in December, but the end of the year brought some unexpected challenges and I had to delay it until the new year. So although you may have left 2020 behind with relief, I hope you’ll still be willing to travel back there with me in books: 2020 will […]

Esther Kinsky, Grove, translated from German by Caroline Schmidt (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020) Grove is a story of mourning: the narrator has recently lost her love, and travels to places both familiar and unfamiliar to her in order to work her way through her grief. She visits cemeteries and attends unnoticed the funerals of strangers, observing death […]

Translated from German by Sinéad Crowe (V&Q Books, 2020) The new English-language imprint of V&Q Books offers another belter for its launch: following on from last week’s review of Paula (Sandra Hoffmann, translated by Katy Derbyshire), today I’m looking at Lucy Fricke’s Daughters, a book that manages to switch effortlessly between grief and humour and […]

Translated from German by Katy Derbyshire (V&Q Books, 2020) This week sees the launch of German publisher V&Q’s English-language imprint: spearheaded by Katy Derbyshire, the new imprint brings some of the most exciting new fiction in German into English. Two of the three launch releases are by women writers, and so this is the first […]

Jen Calleja is a translator from German to English, and a writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. She was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library (2017-2019), and in 2019 was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Marion Poschmann’s The Pine Islands (Serpent’s Tail, 2019).  How do […]

Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire (Oneworld, 2019) City of Jasmine – the title referring to Damascus – is a soaring, searing representation of the Syrian refugee crisis, following the lives of three young people whose fate is changed forever by the Syrian uprising. Above all, it is a superb story; Grjasnowa’s stark, gripping […]