Book news, reviews and recommendations
Back from the not so chilly north (more of that on Friday) with a novel I snapped up as soon as I spotted it on NetGalley. I’ve been a fan of Daniela Krien’s understated writing since I read Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything back in 2015. Not such a lengthy gap between Love in […]
The Fire by Daniela Krien (Transl. Jamie Bulloch): Discovering who you are Read More »
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Olivia Wenzel’s 1,000 Coils of Fear. Wenzel is a mixed-race German who grew up in the old East, a dramatist, musician and performer who’s turned her hand to fiction. Her debut draws heavily on her own life following an unnamed narrator whose mother was an East German punk
1,000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel (transl. Priscilla Layne): ‘Where do you belong?’ Read More »
I was delighted to spot Daniela Krien’s gorgeously jacketed Love in Five Acts in my Twitter timeline towards the end of last year. I’d read the haunting Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything back in 2015 which feels like an age ago now – pre-Brexit, pre-Trump and pre-pandemic. Born in the GDR, Krien was a
Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien (transl. Jamie Bulloch): Take five women Read More »
Timur Vermes is clearly not a man to shy away from controversy. His sharp, very funny satire, Look Who’s Back, nailed the internet’s potential for political manipulation with admirable, if unsettling, prescience when Hitler wakes up with a bad headache in 2011 and quickly becomes a YouTube star. The Hungry and the Fat takes on
Impossible not to comment on that title which makes the old bookseller in me wonder just how much it will be mangled in customer enquiries. I’m sure the publishers breathed a sigh of relief that Twitter have extended their 140-character limit, too. That said, it was the title which attracted me to this novella along