Book Club
Welcome to our monthly Book Club! We meet to discuss contemporary German literature, from modern classics to more recent arrivals on the literary scene. Please contact our moderator Barbara Eskin if you'd like to attend.
RSVP: To receive a Zoom invitation, please send a message to barbeskin@aol.com.
All books and discussions are in German.
Schedule and Titles:
Barbara Eskin
barbeskin@aol.com
Dates 2020
Heinrich von Kleist: Michael Kohlhaas
Michael Kohlhaas is a novella by the German author Heinrich von Kleist, based on a 16th-century story of Hans Kohlhase.
Both the theme (a fanatical quest for justice) and the style (existentialist detachment posing as a chronicle) are surprisingly modern. They resonated with other authors more than a century after they were written.
English Translation:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas
Michael Kohlhaas is a novella by the German author Heinrich von Kleist, based on a 16th-century story of Hans Kohlhase.
Both the theme (a fanatical quest for justice) and the style (existentialist detachment posing as a chronicle) are surprisingly modern. They resonated with other authors more than a century after they were written.
English Translation:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas
Mirko Bonné: Wie wir verschwinden
"How we disappear", the 2009 novel by Mirko Bonné, tells a great story of memory: Raymond, widower with two lively and headstrong daughters, receives a letter after decades of silence from his terminally ill childhood friend Maurice, who reminds him of their past in Villeblevin, where Albert Camus died in a car accident in 1960. A French village and a historic event become a symbolic focal point for two youth friends to remember the past fifty years and to recognize their fate.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
"How we disappear", the 2009 novel by Mirko Bonné, tells a great story of memory: Raymond, widower with two lively and headstrong daughters, receives a letter after decades of silence from his terminally ill childhood friend Maurice, who reminds him of their past in Villeblevin, where Albert Camus died in a car accident in 1960. A French village and a historic event become a symbolic focal point for two youth friends to remember the past fifty years and to recognize their fate.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Please contact our moderator Barbara Eskin to receive a Zoom invitation for the online discussion.
Jan Peter Bremer: Der junge Doktorand
The Greilachs have been waiting for two years with anticipation bordering on despair for the arrival of a young doctoral student in their remote mill. He is supposed to help the aging painter Günter Greilach to new fame. For his wife Natascha, on the other hand, he becomes the ray of light in their everyday routine. Their hopes go almost to infinity, but when the young man suddenly stands at their door step after several cancellations, everything turns out differently than even in their wildest dreams.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Jan Peter Bremer: Der junge Doktorand
The Greilachs have been waiting for two years with anticipation bordering on despair for the arrival of a young doctoral student in their remote mill. He is supposed to help the aging painter Günter Greilach to new fame. For his wife Natascha, on the other hand, he becomes the ray of light in their everyday routine. Their hopes go almost to infinity, but when the young man suddenly stands at their door step after several cancellations, everything turns out differently than even in their wildest dreams.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Please contact our moderator Barbara Eskin to receive a Zoom invitation for the online discussion.
Theresia Enzensberger: Blaupause
Inside flap text: Luise Schilling is young, curious and got a promising future. In the early twenties, she comes to the Weimar Bauhaus. She studies with professors like Gropius or Kandinsky and throws herself into the dreams and ideas of her era. Between technology and art, communism and avant-garde, populism and the youth movement, Luise gets to know social utopias that still shape us today. Theresia Enzensberger tells of a young woman and the turmoil of her life: from the conflicts between the right and left to the jump of a young couple into a nightly river.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Theresia Enzensberger: Blaupause
Inside flap text: Luise Schilling is young, curious and got a promising future. In the early twenties, she comes to the Weimar Bauhaus. She studies with professors like Gropius or Kandinsky and throws herself into the dreams and ideas of her era. Between technology and art, communism and avant-garde, populism and the youth movement, Luise gets to know social utopias that still shape us today. Theresia Enzensberger tells of a young woman and the turmoil of her life: from the conflicts between the right and left to the jump of a young couple into a nightly river.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Please contact our moderator Barbara Eskin to receive a Zoom invitation for the online discussion.
Tom Hillenbrand: Drohnenland
“Stirring”, “visionary”, “intelligently imagined science fiction from the brave new surveillance world” are key words of the critics for this 2014 thriller by Tom Hillenbrand.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Tom Hillenbrand: Drohnenland
“Stirring”, “visionary”, “intelligently imagined science fiction from the brave new surveillance world” are key words of the critics for this 2014 thriller by Tom Hillenbrand.
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
RSVP: Please contact our moderator Barbara Eskin to receive a Zoom invitation for the online discussion.
Urs Widmer: Herr Adamson
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Urs Widmer: Herr Adamson
Reviews:
Perlentaucher.de
Information about book purchase:
Amazon
www.amazon.de
Ibis
www.ibiservice.com
Global Books
www.globalbooks.de
Schoenhof's Foreign Books
www.schoenhofs.com