Today we have a double giveaway. One on Lizzy‘s blog (that will be posted around 18.00 UK time) and the other one here. The giveaways are part of our German Literature Month in November.
Lizzy is giving away Pereine titles (Next World Novella, Portrait of The Mother as A Young Woman and Maybe This Time) and two copies of Berlin City-Lit (see below). Her giveaway is UK only.
I’m very happy to be able to offer you three great book choices.
The first is Clemens Meyer’s short story collection All the Lights, courtesy of And Other Stories. Meyer started as a very young author and since he has entered the literary scene he has received a lot of praise.
Fifteen stories, laconic yet full of longing, from the young star of German fiction.’ GQ ‘The best crafted, toughest and most heart-rending stories in Germany.’ Spiegel ‘Respect to him. He’s the real deal.”
A man bets all he has on a horserace to pay for an expensive operation for his dog. A young refugee wants to box her way straight off the boat to the top of the sport. Old friends talk all night after meeting up by chance. She imagines their future together…Stories about people who have lost out in life and in love, and about their hopes for one really big win, the chance to make something of their lives. In silent apartments, desolate warehouses, prisons and down by the river, Meyer strikes the tone of our harsh times, and finds the grace notes, the bright lights shining in the dark.
The second book is Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation which we give away courtesy of Portobello Books. I’m sure you have seen the one or the other review of this book. It was a huge success in Germany and is now equally appreciated everywhere else.
`This haunting novel beautifully dramatises how ordinary lives are affected by history’
By the side of a lake in Brandenburg, a young architect builds the house of his dreams – a summerhouse with wrought-iron balconies, stained-glass windows the color of jewels, and a bedroom with a hidden closet, all set within a beautiful garden. But the land on which he builds has a dark history of violence that began with the drowning of a young woman in the grip of madness and that grows darker still over the course of the century: the Jewish neighbors disappear one by one; the Red Army requisitions the house, burning the furniture and trampling the garden; a young East German attempts to swim his way to freedom in the West; a couple return from brutal exile in Siberia and leave the house to their granddaughter, who is forced to relinquish her claim upon it and sell to new owners intent upon demolition. Reaching far into the past, and recovering what was lost and what was buried, Jenny Erpenbeck tells an exquisitely crafted, stealthily chilling story of a house and its inhabitants, and a country and its ghosts.
The third book is a contribution from Oxygen Books. You can win a copy of City-Lit Berlin. An anthology of stories set in Berlin. There are a lot of interesting authors included. Many German ones but also others.
If you would like to win one of those books, or enter for more than one, please let me know which ones you would like. Ideally you would read and review the book that you win.
Don’t forget to visit Lizzy’s Literary Life if you are located in the UK. She will post this evening (18.00 UK time).
The giveaway is open internationally, the books will be shipped by the editors. The winners will be announced on Sunday 23 October 20.00 – European – (Zürich) time.
Beauty is a Sleeping Cat 