The latest novel by Manfred Maurenbrecher, a German singer-songwriter and writer, takes us straight into the heart of provincial Brandenburg, where local yokels and recent transplants from the big city get tangled up in intrigues great and small.

Alexander Pechmann’s book is a journey to 1920s London: a world of clairvoyants, opium-smoking princesses and Chinese drug lords.

Yannic Han Biao Federer's debut novel about coming of age dares to tackle the grand themes of growing up and yet manages to do so without grandiose words. Almost laconically, it tells of loneliness, death and the desire for belonging and closeness.

The “Deutschland spricht” (Germany Talks) project brings people with opposing political convictions to the table. Can discussion unite a society? For Zeit Online editor-in-chief and project co-initiator Jochen Wegner, the campaign was an experiment that garnered a great response.

German television shows tend to have a bad reputation for poor writing and cheap productions not suited for an international market and audience. Now series like “Deutschland ‘83” and “Babylon Berlin” are putting a new shine on that tarnished image. 

Many artists live in precarious conditions, and few can make a living off their art. Initiatives like fair music providers and fair-trade certificates for music labels show how a more equitable value chain could be created. 

Over the past 120 years, Marxist ideas have undergone frequent revivals on the silver screen.

Falling down, lowering yourself on a rope from a great height or staging a moped accident – for Melanie Benna, this is all part of her everyday working life. The native Berliner works as a stunt woman. How does she assert herself in this male domain?

How do we interact with strangers and engage with foreign countries? The film “Western” tells the story of German construction workers sent to build a hydroelectric power station in Bulgaria, where their encounters with local villagers do not, to put it mildly, always go smoothly.

Some bank on software, others on local woods. The current range of instrument making in Germany is great, but so too is the international competition.

As news of Che Guevara’s death spread around the world in 1967, an independent label declared a cultural revolution in Bavaria. 2017 marks the 50th birthday of the Trikont record company, still a subversive thorn in the establishment’s side today.

Traditional German male choirs look pretty old in the twenty-first century. Sing-along formats, however, such as “pack singing” are booming. In any case, Germans’ desire to sing remains unbroken.