Category Archives: Books

2 German Crime Ladies: Charlotte Link and Petra Hammesfahr

Posted in Books, German Literature, Psychological Thriller by

There are two German crime writers who are more famous than most others in Germany and these are Charlotte Link and Petra Hammesfahr. While Charlotte Link is probably by far the most read German author she has so far not been translated into English. That’s why I was so pleased when I saw that finally it’s going to happen. Her novel The Other Child – Das andere Kind will be published at the beginning of 2012. Here is the blurb:

A suspenseful and atmospheric new psychological crime novel from ‘Germany’s most successful living female author’

An old farm, a deserted landscape, a dark secret from times past with fatal consequences for the present. In the tranquil northern seaside town of Scarborough, a student is found cruelly murdered. For months, the investigators are in the dark, until they are faced with a copy-cat crime.

Charlotte Link is such a good example for another type of genre that German writers excel at and that is historical fiction. The amount of books and authors is amazing.

Link is famous for her psychological novels in the vein of Mary Higgins Clark and for her long family sagas and historical novels. The Other Child which I have not read yet – I wanted to but 700 pages were not feasible for German Literature Month – combines both. The story is set in 1970 – 2008 and during WWII in England. Young women are being killed, the crimes resemble each other and the trace to the killer seems to go back to WWII. One of the themes is the children that were sent to the country during the war.

Link has an easy but very gripping way of writing. I’ve read many of her psychological thrillers of women who are being stalked by ex-lovers. Her world is often one in which men are predators, but her descriptions are great and atmospherical and the pace is appealing. If this is really, as it seems, her first novel in English, I’m not sure how good a choice it is. It’s cunning to test the waters with a genre blend, I suppose, because if this book is loved, chances are high that her psychological thrillers and her historical novels will be equally liked.

For German Literature Month I picked up a slim volume of short stories by Petra Hammesfahr. While these stories have not been translated, Hammesfahr’s novels are slowly available in English and seem as succesful as they are in her native Germany. While Link is strong on plot and pace, Hammesfahr is even stronger on psychology. Whenever I start one of her novels, I don’t want to stop. I had the same experience when reading her short stories. Accurate descriptions, psychological insights and a surprising ending. Good people turn into criminals because the monotony and madness of daily life becomes too much to bear or highly dysfunctional people become delinquent because there was just this one moment that made them snap.

Hammesfahr, unlike Link, combines the very ordinary with the uncanny, the sick, the revolting. The outcast who may not be guilty, the housewife who may be.

The novels available in English so far are The Sinner – Die Sünderin and The Lie – Die Lüge. I would hope that others will be translated. Most of all Der stille Herr Genardy.

Of the three German crime novelists I reviewed, Noll is the most literary, Link, the most mainstream, and Hammesfahr is somewhere in between. For you to choose what you prefer. I like them all, depending on my mood.

The review is part of German Literature Month Week II – Crime

Wednesdays are wunderbar – It’s Crime Time – Jakob Arjouni Giveaway

Posted in Books, Crime by

Today we have another special treat for you, courtesy of Melville House Press we give away one set of Jakob Arjouni’s Kayankaya series to one lucky winner.

This is a great series and anyone who will win it will surely like it.

The giveaway is part of German Literature Month and  is open internationally but if you would like to enter you have to hop over to Lizzy’s blog where the giveaway is taking place.

Good luck!

Ingrid Noll: The Pharmacist aka Die Apothekerin (1994) La Grande Dame of German Crime

Posted in Books, Crime, German Novel by

As much as I like to savour a book, it’s wonderful, once in a while when you start something and the next time you look up the 300 pages have already been read. That’s pretty much what happened with The Pharmacist aka Die Apothekerin by Ingrid Noll. The book is currently only available in English as cheap used paperback or library copy. It has been made into a movie starring Katja Riemann and Jürgen Vogel.

Noll is something like the grande dame of German crime that’s why it’s fitting to kick off the crime week of our German Literature Month with a review of one her books. Not only does she write well, she is famous for her macabre ideas, black humour and psychologically complex characters. These are not whodunnits but explorations of the criminal mind with a twist. A little bit of Patricia Highsmith with a whole lot of very distinctly Ingrid Noll.

The story starts bizarre enough with the narrator Hella Moormann lying in a hospital bed and starting to tell her whole life to a complete stranger, her bed neighbour, the elderly and seemingly inoffensive Rosemarie Hirte. Why Hella is in hospital is not told and it strikes us as uncanny that she would start to tell the most incredible details to someone she doesn’t know.

Hella has two striking features. People constantly die around her and she always falls for the wrong man. Occasionally this is connected, sometimes it isn’t. She is a pharmacist and very well versed in potions and poisons. It seems that her latest lover was far more interested in this feature than in any other of her charms if there are any. Hella is a very unreliable narrator and distorts most things, we can only assume that she is far less attractive than she thinks.

Levin, the young man she moves in with, is studying to become a dentist. His uncle is an extremely rich man and Levin is his only heir. He has a cunning plan involving false teeth and poison but he needs Hella’s assistance.

Until the end of the book, we never really know whether Hell is as naive as she pretends. And while the story progresses we are more and more intrigued by Rosemarie who starts to get a bit too interested in Hella’s story.

The only thing we know for sure is that people keep on dying. I really enjoyed following Hella’s tale, guided by Ingrid Noll’s acerbic wit and fascinated by the incredible pairing of  striking descriptions with gross exaggerations. On top of all that this is a tale about fast cars, a big beautiful house, criminal people, accidents, pregnancies and a narrator who may or may not be innocent.

This isn’t the first Ingrid Noll novel I’ve read. There was none that I didn’t like. In Germany she is compared to Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar and Joan Aiken. In any case, Noll is for those who like their crime to be on the more literary side of the genre.

Do you know Ingrid Noll? Do you have favourite German crime writers?

The review is part of German Literature Month Week II – Crime

German Literature Month Week I Wrap-up and The Winners of the Heinrich Böll Giveaway

Posted in Books, German Literature, Novella by

This post has two parts. First is the wrap-up of Week I of our German Literature Month – focussing on literature from Germany. Please do not just skip it. It’s a tribute to all our participants. We have already seen some really amazing contributions and I would like to thank all of you for this.

There have been a lot of interesting lists and contributions made during October. They are HERE. This is the wrap-up of Week I.

Here are all of this weeks’ links with my impressions:

Week I

Lizzy has made a post on how to find German books in translation and a review of a very unique sounding book by Alina Bronsky.

The Magic Mountain of German Literature

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

Caroline – I have compiled a post with 14 women writers that shouldn’t be missed and reviewed Sebald’s book on the absence of the description of the destruction of German cities during WWII from German post-war literature. The book leads us to the Böll readalong on November 26.

14 Women Writers You Shouldn’t Miss

On the Natural History of Destruction – Luftkrieg und Literatur by W. G. Sebald

The Participants

Neer (A Hot Cup of Pleasure) shares her German Literature Month inspired Wishlist.  That’s always a risk with events like this. You may end up with far more books than before.

Christina from Ardent Reader hopes to be able to keep up with her Reading plans.

Danielle (AWork in Progress) introduces her choices. A list with descriptions. Plans for German Literature Month 

Emma (Book Around the Corner) wrote an enthusiastic review of  Fame by Daniel Kehlmann that she calls a “strange exhilarating book”.

sakura (chasing bawa) is thrilled by her discovery of Dark Matter by Juli Zeh  and adds (after having been tracked down by the German Literature Month Police , i.e. me) an Introduction.

Jackie (Farm Lane Books) wrote a very appealing review of the WWII novel Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson. Not an easy read, highly literary but rewarding.

Guy Savage (His Futile Preoccupations) dethrones Goethe in his musings on  On Goethe’s Elective Affinities and reestablishes him again – at least in parts – in  On Goethe’s Elective Affinities Part II. The review is to follow.

Rise (in lieu of a field guide) reviewed Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck and compares it to the passage of time chapter in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

Harvey (Leben, Kochen, Bier u. Fussball) offers a list with interesting choices Introduction with choices.

Eibhlin (Mar gheall ar a léim) shares he reading plans in Eibhlin’s reading plans.

Fay (Read, Ramble) reviews  Herta Müller – Land of Green Plums describing how she wanted to give up after a little while but was rewarded by her persistence.

Rikki (Rikki’s Teleidoscope) enjoyed The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky as much as Lizzy. She captures the unusual voice of the narrator very well.

Susanna P (Susie Bookworm)  has added her reading plans German Lit Month Kick off. She already read Lotte in Weimar and is about to pick something else soon.

Priya (Tabula Rasa) shares her reading plans Plans.

Alex The Children’s War wrote an in-depth review of The Oppermann’s by Lion Feuchtwanger. He writes  “What makes The Oppermanns so interesting is that it has the distinction of being the first story of its kind to tell about life under the Nazis and how it affected people opposed to Hitler.”

Parrish (The Parrish Lantern)  wrote a thoughtful review On The Joys of Morphinism by Fallada. Introducing first the life of the author and then writing about the book.

Mel u (The Reading Lives) announces German Literature Month and reviews a very interesting short story by Gerstacker, a lesser known author. His review is proof that it is worth looking for the lesser known.  Announcing German Literature Month and Short Story by Gerstacker

Tony (Tony’s Reading List) has really liked Alois Hotschnig’s – Maybe This Time and already read it twice but he doubts that he will re-read  All the Lights by Clemens Meyer. Although he didn’t mind reading it at all, he doesn’t seem to be convinced it’s all that literary.

Liz (Tortoisebook) shares he reading plans. German Literature Month Plans

Vishy (Vishy’s Blog) has reviewed a wide range of short stories and novellas. A really wide range. Both Lizzy and myself were stunned. This is pretty much an introduction to the most important German writers.  A Wide Range of German Short Stories

Stu (Winstonsdad’s Blog) I was equally amazed about the wide range of books reviewed by Stu. There are some wonderful books to discover here.  An early novel by the Nobel Prize winner Nadirs by Herta Müller , a novella by the author of Perfume The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind, a poetical novella Jarmila by Ernst Weiss and a novel of a Swiss writer A Perfect Waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer.

Amateur Reader (Tom) Wuthering Expectations wrote one post on the melancholic story Flagman Thiel by Gehart Hauptmann (also reveiwed by Vishy) and two posts on Hauptmann’s play Gerhart Hauptmann-Before Daybreak – Gerhart Hauptmann’s characters.

Effi Briest Readalong

Week I

The following people have posted so far, some freestyle, some answering our questions.

Andrew

Caroline

Danielle 

 

Fay

Eibhlin

Iris

Lizzy

Sarah

Tony

This and That

Yes, we were also featured on the web.

Melville House Press on What to drink when reading Heinrich Böll 

The Millions announce German Literature Month

kulturplease announces German Literature Month

love german books – Kid – On German Literature Month

The Victory Stitch – Peggy  If I were reading

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And here, finally, the winners of the Heinrich Böll giveaway courtesy of Melville House Press.

The winner of The Train Was on Time and The Clown is

Priya from Tabula Rasa

The winner of Group Portrait with Lady and Billards at Half-Past Nine is

Guy from His Futile Preoccupations

And the winner of The Irish Journal and The Safety Net is

Stu from Winstonsdad’s Blog

Happy reading Priya, Guy and Stu!

Please send me your address via beautyisasleepingcat at gmail dot com.

The giveaway is part of German Literature Month.

The next giveaway will take place on Wednesday 9 November 2011. Remember… It’s crime week…. there are some great books to be won. And, yes, those who won already can still participate.

German Literature Month – Effi Briest Group Read Week I

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This is the first week of our Effi Briest Group Read. The questions have been provided by Lizzy (here is her post).

I’ve read Effi Briest before and liked it a lot. I was eager to find out what I would think of it this time. Out of the three tragic heroines – Mme Bovary – Anna Karenina and Effi Briest – she was always my favourite. I’m glad to discover a book that I like even more than the first time I read it and a heroine that touches me even more deeply. This is strange as I have nothing in common with Effi. And it is also interesting as once more it shows that there is no such thing as a spoiler in literature. On the very contrary, to know the outcome gives you a chance to pay more attention to other things than plot.

1: Welcome to the 1st German Literature Month Readalong!  Had you heard of Theodor Fontane and Effi Briest before now?  What enticed you to readalong with us?

I think I will skip this question.

2:  Which edition/translation are you using and how is it reading?

I’m reading a German paperback edition. It has an appendix of 100 pages but I didn’t read them this time around.

3:  Is the novel living up to your expectations?

As I wrote in the intro, I read this before and liked it a lot. For me to re-read a book it needs some very specific elements. Liking isn’t one of them. I didn’t “like” Mme Bovary but I read it three times. I did however like Effi Briest but it’s also a very subtle novel, a novel from a mature author, one of the best of German literature, it offers a lot, still, re-reading is the ultimate test. And it passed the test. It’s as wonderful as the first time or even better. I was much more attentive than when I read it 6 or 7 years ago.

4:  What do you make of Effi Briest and Baron von Innstetten.   What motivates them?  What do you make of their match?

It has been said that Effi was very much the product of her upbringing. I tought this is obvious in the way she speaks about this marriage. I think she is very estranged from herself and doesn’t really know what she wants for herself, although, she has an idea. She isn’t an intellectual, she knows as much. Effi isn’t a contemplative heroine who likes to read and brood, this is a lively young girl who likes entertainment and fun, yet society and her family want her to be successful and successful means attract a successful husband. As she says “Anyone is the right one as long as he is aristocratic, has a high position and is looking good”. I wasn’t sure what to think of Instetten at first. I thought for a while that he wasn’t so bad but he is very condescending. There are these little remarks about Effi’s intellect that are extremely hurtful. He belittles her constantly, even when he pays her a compliment it’s a trapdoor.

5:  How are you reacting to Effi’s parents?

“Das ist ein zu weites Feld” or “This is a vast field” (I don’t know how it is translated) is the pet sentence of Effi’s father. He uses this sentence constantly all through the novel and I think a person like this in real life would drive me up the wall. He avoids every conversation of problematic topics but the sentence also shows that he is well aware that things are not as they seem. Of the two (mother and father), he is the more likable and also the much more understanding. It’s the mother I  have a real problem with. It’s this attitude of having your own child experience what you went through, for the sake of society, that I find revolting. She infuriates me. She knows very well that poor Effi is far too young for Instetten.

6:  Are there any secondary characters to whom you are particularly drawn?  Any to whom you are adverse?

I love Frau Kruse and the black chicken and Gieshübler is an interesting person. He is the antithesis for me to all the other characters, someone who stayed good despite adversity and doesn’t pass on the bad things he may have experienced.

7: Effi Briest was originally serialised in 6 parts.  I’m assuming that its 36 chapters were published in 6 monthly parts of 6 chapters each and the novel so far seems to bear this out.  How does the mood of the first part (chapters 1-6) contrast with that of the second (chapters 7-12)?

The first chapters are playful and light. We meet an exuberant Effi, one who does only know good things, is sheltered and child-like. She loves the idea of getting married and climbing the social ladder. She is a bit wary of Kessin, as there might not be a lot of entertainment but she is still looking forward to it. Once she is there that changes rapidly and she feels like an animal in a cage.

8:  We finished our first reading at the end of chapter 15 or the middle of part 3.  Where is Effi in terms of her psychological development and how does this bode for the future?

I think that she has to a certain extent realized that she made a mistake but she hopes for a change through her child.

Please leave a link to your post in the comments section or in the Mr. Linky. (To see the participants, you have to click on Mr Linky. It’s Mr. Linky for wordpress – meaning NOT sophisticated)

W.G. Sebald: On the Natural History of Destruction – Luftkrieg und Literatur (1999)

Posted in Books, German Literature by

During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns were targeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened. Six hundred thousand German civilians died a figure twice that of all American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans were left homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W. G. Sebald asks, why does the subject occupy so little space in Germany s cultural memory? On the Natural History of Destruction probes deeply into this ominous silence.

This is one of the most amazing books I have read this year. For numerous reasons. It is in line with the topic of my reading projects and readalong and contains descriptions that I have never read like this. On the other hand it gave me the opportunity to see another side of Sebald. One that I didn’t expect. If you are familiar with his fiction, notably if you have read them in the German original, you know that he is a very challenging writer. His sentences follow a rhythm that is very much his own. He tends to use old-fashioned and also invented words. And as far as I know he is not very humorous. The two essays contained in the German original of this book, the first on the description of the destruction of the German cities in German literature  – or rather its absence – and the second on Alfred Andersch are so different from his fiction. The style is fluent, accessible and he is extremely funny. The essay on Andersch made me laugh out loud. Sebald’s analysis and description of this conceited writer is hilarious. But that essay is not the topic of my review. I’d like to focus on Sebald’s Luftkrieg und Literatur whose English title is On the Natural History of Destruction.

The book is based on Sebald’s lectures which he held at the university of Zürich in 1997. Those lectures had the impact of a bomb. What Sebald stated was outrageous and had never before been said like this and analyzed with so much detail and force.

What Sebald does in this book, and that is why it is so amazing, is showing what post-war German literature failed to do and doing it at the same time.  It is a reproach and a demonstration how it should have been done.  Some of the descriptions are not for the faint-hearted, they are quite gruesome.

When I started to read I was puzzled at first because he wrote that hardly any German writer had tried to describe the enormity of the destruction of the German cities. I thought he was wrong in stating this but soon enough I understood why I thought so. I’ve always loved Heinrich Böll. Especially in my early twenties he was my favourite German writer and I read most of his books, one of them The Silent Angel. For some reasons I didn’t know that this book had been written in the 50s and was never published because editor and writer thought the topic was inappropriate. Together with Gert Ledig’s novel The Payback (possible choice for next year’s Literature and War Readalong), it is the only Western German book that chose the massive bombing and its aftermath as topic. Only, The Silent Angel had to wait almost 40 years for its publication.

Sebald analyzes in great depth why these were two of the few books. If I hadn’t seen the corny TV production Dresden I wouldn’t have had such a good idea about what it meant to bomb a city as radically as the German cities were bombed. That’s why I would urge you to watch Dresden (forget about the romance).

There are a few things that Sebald underlines. First how widely those cities were bombed. The RAF flew 400’000 missions dropping one million tons of bombs on 131 cities, some of which were flattened completely. 600’000 civilians lost their lives, 7’500’000 were homeless.

The second thing Sebald shows is that these are simply numbers. They seem enormous but they don’t let you experience what it meant to have been in one of those cities during the bombing or to have lived in one of them afterwards. There are accounts of this, like in the books of Nossack, but apart from that a lot of the documentation comes from foreign journalists. German writers and diarists hardly mention anything. As mentioned before, one of the rare writers who didn’t shy away from the topic was Gert Ledig. Already his first novel The Stalin Front or Die Stalinorgel depicted explicitly the atrocity of the Eastern Front. In his later work Payback aka Vergeltung he wrote in great details about the destruction. Unlike Böll’s novel, Ledig’s were published but he wasn’t republished and was finally forgotten, even excluded from the collective memory, as Sebald writes.

But what did Germany want to hush up and why?

When you bomb a city like they bombed the big German cities what follows is a huge surface fire followed by a firestorm that will make everything burst, sear and singe everything and was literally an extremely strong wind that blew even bodies away. What this heat does to a body is described by Sebald, mostly quoting Nossack, in gruesome details. What is also described is what happens later in a city full of rotting corpses. Rats will swarm the place. The stink will be insufferable and the flies unbearable.

This massive destruction and its aftermath filled the Germans with shame, according to Sebald. That’s why they didn’t want it mentioned, started to repress it. They even went as far as saying the bombing had a good side. Many of the old buildings would have needed renovating anyway, many of the factories were dated. Rebuilding was cheaper than tearing down and rebuilding afterwards. This is amazing thinking. The Wirtschaftswunder made the rest. The incredible efforts put into rebuilding and the economic growth helped the Germans forget and repress.

On the other hand, as Sebald states, it would have been rich of Germany to complain after having tried to exterminate a whole people and bringing war and destruction on everyone. As proof of this reasoning he mentions that the British never tried to repress the Blitz. It was a topic in books and documentaries and mentioned in various other forms of writing.

This urge to repress could even be seen immediately after the bombings. Sebald quotes Nossack twice on this. He describes a woman who was seen cleaning her windows. The house in which she lived was the only house in the whole neighbourhood that hadn’t been destroyed. He also saw people sitting on a balcony, drinking coffee although the house and those next to theirs were the only ones left intact.

As is usual in Sebald’s books there are a lot of photos which add another dimension to this excellent book. I think this is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in German literature, post-war Germany, the mass destruction of the German cities and the psychological mechanics of repression.

This review is part of German Literature Month – Week I – German Literature.

Don’t forget to visit Lizzy’s blog. Tomorrow she will review Alina Bronsky’s The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine.

Wednesdays are wunderbar – Heinrich Böll Giveaway

Posted in Books, German Literature, Novella by

I’m so glad that I can give away six books by Heinrich Böll, my favourite German author. The giveaway has been kindly provided by Melville House Press.

We give away 6 novels to 3 winners, 2 novels each. Please tell us which novels you would like.

Here we go (the blurbs are all from the Melville House Böll Page):

The Train was on Time

Heinrich Böll’s taut and haunting first novel tells the story of twenty-four-year-old Private Andreas as he journeys on a troop train across the German countryside to the Eastern front. Trapped, he knows that Hitler has already lost the war … yet he is suddenly galvanized by the thought that he is on the way to his death.

As the train hurtles on, he riffs through prayers and memories, talks with other soldiers about what they’ve been through, and gazes desperately out the window at his country racing away. With mounting suspense, Andreas is gripped by one thought over all: Is there a way to defy his fate?

The Safety Net

Fritz Tolm has risen to the most powerful position in Germany.

With fame comes fear and vulnerability. Threats to his life are met with the all-pervasive “safety-net” of police protection and surveillance.

Trapped in a house they dare not leave, where every visitor is suspect and every object a potential bomb, Tolm and his family wait to discover when and how terrorism will overtake them.

Group Portrait with Lady

Cited by the Nobel Prize committee as the “crown” of Heinrich Böll’s work, the gripping story of Group Portrait With Lady unspools like a suspenseful documentary. Via a series of tense interviews, an unnamed narrator uncovers the story—past and present—of one of Böll’s most intriguing characters, the enigmatic Leni Pfeiffer, a struggling war widow.

At the center of her struggle is her effort to prevent the demolition of her Cologne apartment building, a fight in which she is joined by a motley group of neighbors. Along with her illegitimate son, Lev, she becomes the nexus of a countercultural group rebelling against Germany’s dehumanizing past under the Nazis … and what looks to be an equally dehumanizing future under capitalism.

Billards at Half-Past Nine

Heinrich Böll’s well-known opposition to fascism and war informs this moving story of a single day in the life of traumatized soldier Robert Faehmel, scion of a family of successful Cologne architects, as he struggles to return to ordinary life after the Second World War. An encounter with a war-time nemesis, now a power in the reconstruction of Germay, forces him to confront private memories and the wounds of Germany’s defeat in the two World Wars.

The Clown

Acclaimed entertainer Hans Schnier collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won’t marry her within the Catholic Church.

The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life — the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father, and the hypocrisies of hs mother, who first fought to “save” Germany from the Jews, then worked for “reconciliation” afterwards.

Heinrich Böll’s gripping consideration of how to overcome guilted and live up to idealism — how to find something to believe in — gives stirring evidence of why he was such an unwelcome presence in post-War German consciousness … and why he was such a necessary one.

Irish Journal

When Heinrich Böll traveled with his wife to Ireland in the early 1950′s, he was immediately enchanted by the landscape and the people. Reveling in respite from a Europe still recovering from war, he was captivated by what he saw as a friendly and classless society that took life at a more leisurely pace. He was delighted, for example, by the Irish saying that explained why the trains were always late: “When God made time he made plenty of it.” Böll would return again and again.

In this unique entry in his oeuvre, Böll documents his eccentric travels around the Emerald Isle, detailing its charm in a way that gives his own habit of studying character and paradox, not mention national identity, a beguiling twist. The result, here presented with an epilogue written years later with Böll’s observation of changes since his first visit, is a reflection on the essence of a place and its people that is, indeed, evergreen.

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If you are interested in two or more of these books, tell me which ones you would like. The only condition is that you tell us about a favourite German book or author or – if you only get started – tell us what books you plan on discovering, which authors or books tempt you.

The giveaway is part of German Literature Month.

Also visit What to drink while reading Heinrich Böll on the Melville House Blog.

The giveaway is open internationally, the books will be shipped by the editor. The winners will be announced on Sunday 6 November 18.00 – European – (Zürich) time.