Rosinenpicker

The literature blog “Rosinenpicker” presents selected novels and non-fiction, graphic novels and stories, audio books and literature for children and teenagers. And it gathers concise voices from the world of literature. Every week a new recommendation, every week the chance to discover remarkable texts, images and opinions.

Of all the worlds that man has created, that of books is the most powerful.

Heinrich Heine

In the middle of the yellow-orange colour gradient is a stack of books with a microphone placed on top. © Canva

Cherrypicker | Literature
From Pop to Prose

More and more musicians are writing novels – sometimes dark and poetic, sometimes brash and direct. Jan Göthlich takes us on a journey through musical literature and asks why lyrics often play only a subordinate role.

Jan Göthlich

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Post-war things

In an anthology, the participating artists are inspired by objects and tell of the time after the Second World War in short comic stories.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 ogottogott

On his 100th birthday, we are honouring Ernst Jandl, who became known above all for his experimental poetry. His poems were many things: political, funny, drastic, melancholy. And nobody could recite them as well as Jandl himself.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 The Perfect White

In his new, as always stylistically convincing novel, Christian Kracht takes his literary game of illusions to the extreme. The result is both frustrating and exhilarating.

Benedikt Maria Arnold

Hendrik Nolde

Cherrypicker | Literature
From Sideline to Primetime

“Lena Cassel presents the highlights of the Champions League.” Before this sentence could become a reality, the sports journalist and soccer expert had to overcome many obstacles—both external and internal.

Marit Borcherding

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Women's soccer against all odds

The history of women’s soccer in Germany is full of pioneering women whose stories have long gone unnoticed. Torsten Körner met many of them for his new book, giving them a voice at last.

Hendrik Nolde

Mitglieder und Kandidaten des Politbüros des Zentralkomitees der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-G0726-0206-001 / Junge, Peter Heinz / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE , via Wikimedia Commons

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Chronicle of a Failure

Christoph Hein presents a comprehensive history of the GDR. In it, his characters guide the socialist German state, which he calls the "Narrenschiff" (ship of fools), toward its final cliff.

Michael Krell

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Man and his machines

Jonas Lüscher's new book tells the story of man's relationship with technology. The Swiss author travels to very different places and times, and even ends up in the future of a megalomaniacal desert city.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Searching for Home in a Cold Country

The life of a young refugee can be harrowing and brutal. Behzad Karim Khani's latest novel is set in a German prefabricated housing estate in the 1990s. He illuminates this world with haunting precision and poetic language.

Florina Evers

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Between Love, Passion and Suffering

Domestic violence often leaves victims helpless. People, mostly men, cross boundaries that should never have been crossed. Ruth-Maria Thomas has turned this tough subject matter into a tender and light-footed novel.

Florina Evers

Cherrypicker | Literature
 1945 – a chronicle

The year 1945 was a historical turning point. A non-fiction book by film-maker and author Volker Heise opens our eyes to the multitude of perspectives on this extremely eventful and momentous year.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Jigsaw puzzle with a mafioso

Jigsaw puzzles, funeral speeches, and a Mafia crown witness - Wolf Haas shows us how to fit all this and much more into a novel that is as tricky as it is amusing.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Against Forgetting

In “Von Norden rollt ein Donner”, Markus Thielemann explores family conflict, rural idyll, and a repressed Nazi past—set in motion by the return of the wolf to the Lüneburg Heath, which throws the life of a shepherd’s family off balance.

Florina Evers

Cherrypicker | Literature
 The fortune and misfortune of fools

What do fools and tassels have in common? In a quirky hybrid between a joke book and a comic book, Robert Seethaler and comic artist Marcus Weimer explore this and other pointless questions. Above all, they prove that questions are more important than answers.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Discovering the Past

Julia Schoch completes her trilogy about memory, writing and personal experience. In the third volume, she explores the question of how personal experience becomes literature - and where the limits of autofiction lie.

Benedikt Maria Arnold

Vacant building in Schwerin-Lankow, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Niteshift, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Thomas Mann on a downhill slide

Heinz Strunk brings Thomas Mann's “Magic Mountain” to the lowlands. The son of a merchant's family becomes a man in his mid-thirties who has sold his start-up company. It's not the lungs that whistle, but the psyche that suffers.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Breaking the Standstill

No more ferries and no more tourists – only the remaining inhabitants still live on the former holiday island. Who save themselves in routines. And wait. Then a girl asks questions and suddenly something changes. A novel about crises of meaning and the joy of new beginnings.

Marit Borcherding

Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2025, the three winners: Irina Rastorgueva, Thomas Weiler, Kristine Bilkau (from left to right) Photo (detail): picture alliance / dts-Agentur

Kristine Bilkau wins Leipzig Book Fair Prize
 A Mother’s Restlessness, Putin’s Language, German Atrocities

Kristine Bilkau receives the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Halbinsel, the non-fiction prize goes to Irina Rastorgueva and Thomas Weiler wins the translation prize.

Film scene from "Katz und Maus" (1967): Mahlke (Lars Brandt) with the Iron Cross © picture-alliance / dpa | DB

Cherrypicker | 10th anniversary of Günter Grass's death
 The fatal cartilage

Günter Grass died 10 years ago. The shortest part of his Danzig trilogy offers an accessible yet challenging introduction to the work of the Nobel Prize winner.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 Field research in sex shops

The two scientists Uta Bretschneider and Jens Schöne dedicate a picture-text book to erotic shops in East Germany. The result is participant observation in the truest sense of the word.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
Living the world to its end

Crime writer Tommie Goerz has written his second novel outside of this genre. Set in the Franconian province, it tells of loss and transience in simple but precise language.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
 1945 – a chronicle

The year 1945 was a historical turning point. A non-fiction book by film-maker and author Volker Heise opens our eyes to the multitude of perspectives on this extremely eventful and momentous year.

Holger Moos

Cherrypicker | Literature
Failing in love

First he is a bullet, then a snowflake. A little later he is a CEO and shortly afterwards a Chihuahua. The ego in Michel Decar's love poem is multifaceted. The title of his book already hints at this.

Benedikt Maria Arnold