A Telegraph Book of the Year'R evelatory and propulsively arranged.' The New York TimesWest Germany, 1968. Like everywhere else in the Western world, the young generation is pushing for radical change, still suffering the after-effects of the Second World War. Many stream out of the lecture halls and onto the streets. Some into the underground. And some into the practice basements, in search of the soundtr...

October 2011. While West Berlin enjoys all the trappings of capitalism, on the crowded, polluted, Eastern side of the Wall, the GDR is facing bankruptcy. The ailing government's only hope lies in economic talks with the West, but then an ally of the GDR’s chairman is found murdered – and all the clues suggest that his killer came from within the Stasi.Detective Martin Wegener is assigned to the case, but, with the future of East Germany hanging over him, Wegener must work with the ...

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'How I loved this book . . . Seethaler is in his very own league' Elizabeth Strout‘[A] moving, charming novel about to what extent we must change as the world around us hurtles into the unknown’ObserverIt is 1966, and Robert Simon has just fulfilled his dream by taking over a café on the corner of a bustling Vienna market. He recruits a barmaid, Mila, and soon the customers floc...

Francis Nenik's thrilling slice of narrative non-fiction "Journey through a Tragicomic Century" is about the life of the forgotten writer Hasso Grabner, told with great joy in language and love of absurdity. The journey takes us from the Young Communists in 1920s Leipzig to wartime Corfu, with Grabner falling from steelworks director to a vilified author banned from publishing his work in the GDR. Francis Neniks "Reise durch ein tragikomisches Jahrhundert" handelt vom Leben des vergessenen...

Longlisted for the 2019 Portico PrizeThe extraordinary life of history's first modern lesbian who inspired the popular television series Gentleman Jack.Anne Lister's journals were so shocking that the first person to crack their secret code hid them behind a fake panel in his ancestral home. Anne Lister was a Regency landowner, an intrepid world traveller ... and an unabashed lover of other women.

A narrator and her dog are criss-crossing the Swiss Alps. She travels with friends who share her interest in food, languages and their topographical contexts. They collect colours, even look for colourlessness, and develop the idea of a walk-in diary, a vain attempt to archive their observations.Gradually, other mountains appear in their observations and memories, as do the mountains of literature and art. Mountains may be sites of fear and awe, of narrow-mindedness, racism and eve...

Whether in Kraftwerk or as an acclaimed solo artist, Karl Bartos has had an extraordinary impact on electronic music. In The Sound of the Machine, Bartos’ recollections include his childhood in postwar Germany, the early musical encounters that led him to Kraftwerk, and fascinating insights from his time with the group, such as the genesis of monumental songs like “The Robots,” “The Model,” and “Tour de France,” and candid accounts of his relationships with the other bandmembers.

A wise and subtle work that explores the refractive power of memory, and what it means to exist in the lives of others–from one of the most highly regarded writers working in Germany today.When Judith Hermann runs into her psychoanalyst in the middle of the night on Berlin's Kastanienallee, the meeting sparks an exploration of the moments and memories that have made a life: an intense friendship with another young mother; an unconventional childhood with long summe...

In a series of three interconnected stories, Judith Hermann weaves together themes of psychology and friendship, unconventional childhoods, summers on the North German seashore and the act of writing itself. This is a literary narrative reflecting on when life becomes fiction, how dependable memory can be, and how close one's dreams can come to reality.

Bricks and Mortar is the story of the sex trade in a big city in the former GDR, from just before 1989 to the present day, charting the development of the industry from absolute prohibition to full legality in the twenty years following the reunification of Germany. The focus is on the rise and fall of one man from football hooligan to large-scale landlord and service-provider for prostitutes to, ultimately, a man persecuted by those he once trusted. But we also hear other voices:...

"You'll live out your lives in a foreign country," Gül is warned. But the whole world is foreign when you're far from your loved ones. The train ride to Germany ushers in the days of long-awaited letters, night-time telephone calls and blissful summers back home. The years of hard work will flow like water before her house in Turkey is built and she can return. Until then, there will be fireworks, young love, and the cassette tapes of the summer played on repeat. In these years, Gül will l...

Part one of the Anatolian Blues trilogy Told with great affection for his characters, Selim Özdoğan's trilogy traces out the life of Gül, a Turkish girl who grows up in 1950s Anatolia and then moves to Germany as a migrant worker. Book one details her initially idyllic childhood, ruptured by her mother's early death. Ever close to her loving father, Gül grows into a warm-hearted, hard-working young woman. The Blacksmith's Daughter is a novel full of carefree summers and hard winters, old w...