You may already be aware that Caroline at Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy at Lizzy's Literary Life are hosting a German Literature month in November. If not click here for more details. As I'm nearing the end of my last two RIP reads I can safely begin contemplating what I might read next month as I've been wanting to read a few German authors still this year. Perfect timing. Of course choosing books is always a little difficult but also very fun as it means scanning my shelves for unread books (I certainly have plenty of those). So what better time than now to make a list of thirteen possibilities. I already know I am going to read the book on the top of the list and will choose a couple more (time allowing) to read as well.
Effi Briest by Theodor Fantane -- The story of a wife and mother who has an affair which will later come back to haunt her.
Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer -- This sounds like fun--a virtual romance that begins purely by mistake when a women sends an email in error. Very 21st century, don't you think?
Head Count by Ingrid Noll -- This is a crime novel about an intense friendship between two young women which eventually leads to murder.
The Have-Nots by Katherine Hacker -- "In one of three interweaving storylines, Jakob and Isabelle move to London, where Jakob will fill the post of a colleague killed in the World Trade Center attack. But their relationship, like the world they once knew and the happiness they once shared, becomes more fragile with each passing day." This won the German Book Award.
Elective Affinities by Johann von Goethe -- A "penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner."
Sinner by Petra Hammesfahr -- "Hammesfahr's darkly depressing yet engrossing crime novel, a bestseller in Germany, examines the price of survival for two young girls growing up in a small German community."
The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun -- This is a 1930s novel of Weimar Germany.
April in Paris by Michael Wallner -- This sounds like something of a thriller about a German soldier able to speak flawless French who must translate when prisoners are being questioned. Dressed in civilian clothes he meets and falls in love with a French woman.
The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel -- This is a novel, but it reminds me of In Cold Blood as it is about a family who is murdered. Initially the crime is unsolved but the narrator returns to tell the story (from what sounds like several different points of view).
Journey into the Past by Stefan Zweig -- I love Stefan Zweig--this is about a love affair revisited many years after WWI separated the two.
Faulein Else by Arthur Schnitzler -- "Fräulein Else is the story of a young woman who, while staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, receives a telegram from her mother begging her to save her father from debtor's jail by approaching an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him. Else is forced into the reality of a world entirely at odds with her romantic imagination, with horrific consequences."
Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke -- "...one the most inventive and exhilarating of the great Peter Handke’s novels. Full of seedy noir atmospherics and boasting an air of generalized delirium, the book starts by introducing us to a nameless young German who has just arrived in America, where he hopes to get over the collapse of his marriage."
The Spoke by Friedrich Glauser -- Glauser is called the Swiss Simenon. This is the last of his Det. Sgt. Jakob Studer's mysteries, which was published in 1937.
They all sound good, so the choice will be a difficult one. Any particular favorites? Has anyone read any of these already?