Cherrypicker
Read and Listen

What happens when your own wife falls ill and can’t get up? Simply everything changes. Pensioner Mr. Schmidt used to give household chores a wide berth, at most taking German shepherd Helmut for a walk.

Clemens Meyer’s latest collection of short stories is about slag heaps, mines, devastated landscapes and people. The stories take readers down into the mining tunnels of recent history.

St. Pauli is a myth. This novel by Rocko Schamoni is about Heino Jaeger, an artist whose life story plays out in this demimonde district of Hamburg.

The climate crisis threatens the “eternal” ice at the poles and on glaciers. Anyone who occasionally follows the news knows this. But knowledge about the subject is often as thin as the ice should never be. A wonderfully designed book offers insights.

Had enough of your fellow human beings? Why not take a look instead at nature, especially the animal world, and take hedgehogs or sloths as your role models?

Julia lives for her clique and for music. She wants to be a rapper, thinking there’s nothing else she can do. The approaching final exams at school leave her cold. Julia lives the normal life of a teenager in the Austrian provinces. But what is normal anyway?

Sales of a novel published in 2008 are slow, then the remainder warehouse burns down. That was it, you might think. But the Kanon Verlag is republishing Bov Bjerg‘s debut novel.

We’re often told that freedom to travel and globalisation are mutually dependent. According to sociologist Steffen Mau, however, borders have not become more open in recent decades – quite the opposite.

Ulf Erdmann Ziegler‘s latest book is a political novel set in the period between 2011 and 2014. The National Socialist Underground (NSU) has been uncovered and politicians are experiencing a political and private debacle.

Endless videoconferences and screentime while working from home right now mean people’s eyes are overstrained. So these audiobook tips may come along just in time for Christmas and beyond.

Barnie‘s life in an alternative family runs into difficulty when she takes part in the “Baby? Think It Over!” project with the boy next door.

Mother-daughter pairs are the backbone of Sasha Mariana Salzmann’s new novel. They are bound and strangers to each other. They lose what is dear to them and are unable to speak about it. Not even about the giraffe outside the window.

A recently-published children’s book shows family conversations about sex to be difficult, but also funny at times. Other recent publications feature robots at school, environmental protection, Death Junior and German grammar.

A woman kills her husband with an axe. Out of sympathy or because she cannot put up with him anymore? He lives on as a ghost, observing life in his village.

Recent youth novels: riveting and relevant, while also taking up historical events.

Sven Regener‘s new novel is a bit like the prequels and sequels to the Star Wars saga – and a bit like James Joyce’s Ulysses. While it lacks a cogent plot, it doesn’t really need one.
 

Animals appear in unexpected places in recent picture books. They also convey the realisation that humans are strange creatures.

David Wagner is a city walker, a flâneur. He writes about what he sees, experiences, perceives on his walks; about major projects like Berlin’s new retro airport, but also about a private detective who’s fallen asleep in his office.
 

Gert Loschütz’s new novel is about the worst train accident Germany ever experienced. It occurred in Genthin in 1939. Based on the tragedy, Loschütz explores various dimensions of human misfortune.
 

Inked drawings, concise texts - in the meta bene cartoons, for once, animals ask the question of meaning. As in real life, humor is the only salvation.

Identity policy can be difficult, polarising and confusing. Incorporating lots of topical allusions to academic life and popular culture, cultural scientist and writer Mithu Sanyal successfully presents the struggle for identity and the authority to define it in her tongue-in-cheek debut novel.

On 26 September, Germany will elect a new Bundestag and thus also a new Federal Chancellor. On this occasion, we present a small selection of current non-fiction books on the topic.

In recent years, origin has been a frequently explored theme in German-language literature. Now, in her new book, Lena Gorelik explores her past in literary form.

After his dark hit novel “Der goldene Handschuh” (The Golden Glove) about a real-life Jack-the-Ripper, Heinz Strunk has now published a romance novel. After reading it, though, you may feel glad you’re single.

The real world is much more diverse than is reflected in our literature.  A discrepancy that is also revealed in books written in German for children and teenagers. Victoria Engels briefly touches upon the complexity of the “diversity question” and casts a spotlight on few authors who are closing the gap with their contributions.

Origin, family, language, identity: These are the subjects of journalist and author Dilek Güngör. In her new book, she writes about the speechlessness between a father and daughter. But silence needn’t necessarily mean a lack of closeness.

Beach, mountains, balcony: No matter where your holiday takes you, crime thrillers are your best companions. These are about a dead dog, a tattooed floater and missing bitcoins. But they are all stories with plenty of relevance for the present.

National borders are something we take for granted, although they are historical constructs. Borders are often unfair, cruel and sometimes just plain stupid.

Laura, Verena, Petra, Barbara, Emma, Jolie, Lisa, Tina and Brigitte: Jovana Reisinger names her protagonists after German women’s magazines in a reckoning with the journals’ self-optimisation maxims, the dictatorship of neo-liberal capitalism and the sexism of our society.

In Friedrich Ani’s latest novel, Fariza Nasri, the Munich inspector with Bavarian and Arab roots, is convincing as an observer and listener. She sees deep into the dark sides of those she deals with as well as her own.

In the winter of 2019/20, a new kind of virus emerged – with lasting consequences. Ralf König looks at the months of Covid in his new comic book.
 

“Okay!?” is an appropriate response to many of life’s surprises, and also to Jochen Schmidt’s new book.

In her new novel, Judith Hermann tells the story of a women seeking to start a new life in an isolated seaside village. Having arrived, she is not only caught up by her past, but is also confronted by very different fates.

At first glance, cleaners, freelancers, care workers and sales staff have little in common, but for all of them it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a living from their work. Julia Friedrichs portrays people who are struggling to survive. She asks about the causes of the social upheavals – and calls for a new class consciousness.

Positions, activism, whistle-blowers, refugees – the latest books for young people take up political and socially critical topics from the past and present.

Two books attractively present information on various forests, forests per se and particular tree species. Fascinating fact: planting your own forest is not hard at all.

In new children’s books, a raccoon helps an outsider along, a pony farm turns into an educational establishment. And travel galore!

She’s seen it all, is above it all, and a bit embittered. That’s how Sophie Passmann portrays her young protagonist. It’s a reckoning with the millennials, but also an admission: hardly anyone is truly individual, and that’s OK.

Benedict Wells’ latest novel is many things: a literary screenplay, a classic coming-of-age story, an homage to 1980s US pop culture and a narrative game that sends readers on a constant search for meaning.

Recently-published picture books of detective stories and chicken adventures. And about a world that goes backwards, bedtime rituals, and feelings.

​12 May 2021 would have been the 100th birthday of the action artist Joseph Beuys, who died in 1986. This year several books about the charismatic man will be published to mark the occasion.

If you want to bring about change, you need allies. Jana Hensel and Naika Foroutan call on east Germans and migrants to build an alliance. Their aim is to stake out their interests more effectively vis-à-vis non-migrant west German dominant society.

An interview with Sharon Dodua Otoo: she tells us about her new book, “Adas Raum” (Ada’s Room) and shares her reflections on representation and visibility in literature. 

These are not good times, not for the art scene, not for clubs. The Boros Foundation and Berghain joined forces last year and turned the orphaned techno club into an exhibition space. The exhibition closed again a long time ago. But you can browse the exhibition catalogue.

As a child she preferred the indoors to outdoors. Felicitas Hoppe tells the story of being sent on a traumatic journey at the age of five – and how she overcame her fears of inner and outer journeys.

At the moment, many people enjoy going for long and frequent walks. It’s a good opportunity to learn about new audiobooks. For some of our recommendations, a short stroll around the block is sufficient, others can also provide entertainment for long hikes

Katharina Greve wrote a comic about unambitious beings who like to live for the moment. When their planet is threatened with extinction, first they panic, then they’re without a plan. Any similarities with human behaviour are purely coincidental.

Martin Suter and Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre like each other and sometimes have funny, interesting and rousing conversations, which they’ve now put down on paper and published.

Was the Green Party so successful in Germany recently because it served a religious need? This is one of the main hypotheses in Norbert Bolz’s new book.

For today's International Women's Day, we recommend feminist comics by four female artists.

In her autobiographical coming-of-age novel, Stefanie Sargnagel looks back on her youth under the influence – years full of freedom from fear, of curiosity and wondrous encounters. The book title says it all.

Munich is a known as a city of affluence and comfort. But Markus Ostermair has devoted his impressive debut novel to the city’s underbelly: the homeless.

Heiko Werning is an expert in at least two things: reptiles and the residents of the Berlin district of Wedding. In his latest book of stories, he illuminates this Berlin subspecies in a very entertaining and warm-hearted way.

Would Georg and Gerlinde have been happy together if their parents had been truthful? Christoph Nussbaumeder’s debut novel is about far more than a failed love; it’s the story of the rise of a family and the societal panorama of a country over a century.

Germans are world champions in remembering and coming to grips with their own history, racism is a thing of the past, so why don’t we focus on positive developments instead?Max Czollek punches holes in these pious certainties and shows that racism and radical right-wing views have become far too socially acceptable in present-day Germany again.

In his debut novel, Lorenz Just describes growing up in 1990s Berlin-Mitte that comes across as a sort of derelict urban adventure playground. The local youths explore, hang out and waste time there – the way kids used to do before the Internet age.

With her debut novel, Verena Keßler takes up a sad topic in German history – the mass suicide in a small town in West Pomerania shortly before the end of the Second World War.

As a woman, immigrant and Kurd, Sibel Schick reports on her experiences of discrimination in Germany – and reveals how difficult it is for marginalised groups to make their voices heard here. Existing power structures stand in the way of their participation in Society.

How many words are really necessary for writing about language? Not as many as you’d think. A book about language was recently published with plenty of pictures and, in places, almost no words.