Book of the month 2004

The book's title Inkheart symbolises the black heart of the culprit of the story, as well as the title of the book within the book, around which everything revolves, and which all the characters spend their time hunting.More ...

David is a waiter in a pub in Zurich. He does not have any particular interest in books until he meets the future literature student Marie, that is, who has no interest in David at all. In order to impress Marie, David shows her a manuscript, which he has found in an antique locker. This signals the start of several dramatic events in the novel. David passes the manuscript off as his own.More ...

As the son of a German mother and an Irish father, Hugo Hamilton grows up in a Dublin suburb in the 1950s. He wears "Lederhosen" and an Aran sweater, "Irish on top and German below". The Hamilton Family speaks German and Irish. English, however, is strictly forbidden. Even just a few words of the despised language is enough to receive a punishment beating from the father, who turns out to be a fanatical patriot of old Ireland.More ...

Upon his return from India, Lukas is greeted by his sister Martha. Through her perspective the close but oppressive relationship between the two siblings is narrated. Whilst the brother recaps his experiences in India in order to make his sister understand his encounters with the foreign culture and religion, Martha does not want to listen. Instead she focuses her life and on her studies and other issues affecting her.More ...

"We are in a camp, not in the West...Maybe you have left the East and I have left the prison there, but where did you end up? Have you not noticed that we live in a camp surrounded by a wall, a city surrounded by a wall, in the middle of a country surrounded by a wall. Do you really think that the Golden West, the promised freedom, is here within this wall?"More ...

Annette Pehnt's new novel describes the odyssey of its unconventional narrator to Island 34. The nameless narrator's attention is for the first time drawn to the island when she hears about it in a geography lesson. There, the island is mentioned as one of 34 offshore basalt islands. On the map it appears to be "a bird dropping on a scratched blue surface". Nevertheless, the narrator develops a passion for it that will influence her future life.More ...

Even though the historical backdrop of The Swimmer is the failed Hungarian uprising of 1956 the political issues remain of secondary meaning. The novel describes the life of the siblings Kata and Isti and their father Kálmán.
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Genazino describes in Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman the literary beginnings of his hero. Having been kicked out of school, the seventeen year old unnamed adolescent is confronted with some serious questions about his future life. Whilst being dragged by his extremely understanding mother from one interview to another and mostly giving a picture of misery, he is sure of only one thing: His love for literature.More ...

"Sometimes" my mother said "your father doesn't answer for hours. You have to see how he closes his eyes when I say baroque and it is not baroque. He knows everything. I know nothing." Her voice sounded almost triumphantly. I thought "That's what it's like to travel with my parents." Further in the text: "I thought about that uneasy feeling which I had so often when travelling with my parents.More ...

The narrator, former art history student Sebastian Zöllner, tries to earn some money by writing articles and critiques on the contemporary art scene. When he is given the job of writing a biography on the painter Manuel Kaminski his endless ambition to finally succeed is set free.More ...

Since her death on the 8th of May 1976 Ulrike Meinhof has been one of the most controversial personalities in Germany. For some she is a "terrorist and state enemy no. 1", for others she has become an icon in the fight "for justice".More ...

The nine short stories in Julia Schoch's Im Körper des Salamanders have one thing in common: The "East" as the general topic and setting of its narratives. The heroines and characters whose stories move closely between reality and dream and history and present, either live in Rumania, Bulgaria and the GDR.More ...