Physical tbr - german lit
Items in this hypelist
1920s
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Alfred Döblin · 2019
The great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a superb new translation by Michael Hofmann<br/><br/>Franz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison, he finds himself thwarted by an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again - until one day he is struck a monstrous blow which might just prove his final downfall.<br/><br/>A dazzling collage of newspaper reports, Biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang, Berlin Alexanderplatz is the great novel of Berlin life: inventing, styling and recreating the city as reality and dream; mimicking its movements and rhythms; immortalizing its pubs, abattoirs, apartments and chaotic streets. From the gutter to the stars, this is the whole picture of the city.<br/><br/>Berlin Alexanderplatz brought fame in 1929 to its author Alfred Döblin, until then an impecunious writer and doctor in a working-class neighbourhood in the east of Berlin. Success at home was short-lived, however; Doblin, a Jew, left Germany the day after the Reichstag Fire in 1933, and did not return until 1945. This landmark translation by Michael Hofmann is the first to do justice to Berlin Alexanderplatz in English, brilliantly capturing the energy, prodigality and inventiveness of Döblin's masterpiece.
1930s
Iron Gustav
Hans Fallada · 1969
Text: English, German (translation)
Wolf Among Wolves
Hans Fallada · 2010
Mephisto
Klaus Mann · 2019
1940s
Doctor Faustus
Thomas Mann · 1999
1950s
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass · 2010
The Drinker
Hans Fallada · 2009
One of the great German writers of the 20th century draws from his own life to present a “brave, fearless, and honest” tale of one man’s dark descent into depression and alcoholism (The Sunday Times, London)<br/><br/>This astonishing, autobiographical tour de force was written by Hans Fallada in an encrypted notebook while he was incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum. Discovered after his death, it tells the tale—often fierce, often poignant, often extremely funny—of a small businessman losing control as he fights valiantly to blot out an increasingly oppressive society.<br/><br/>In a brilliant translation by Charlotte and A.L. Lloyd, it is presented here with an afterword by John Willett that details the life and career of the once internationally acclaimed Hans Fallada, and his fate under the Nazis—which brings out the horror of the events behind the book.
2000s
The Hunger Angel
Herta Muller · 2013
