November 2024

Love and unexpected moves in a time of grief

„Intermezzo“ - a musical interlude, an unexpected chess move, and now Sally Rooney’s latest novel, in which she tackles the universal themes of grief, loss and love

Eighteenth message: A cigarette between two deaths

Blind blood in the corridor - a war diary from Gaza

Novel with black bars

In "What you can get", Clemens Böckmann gives a harrowing insight into the life of a sex worker who spied for the Stasi and into the "real existing socialism" of the German Democratic Republic, which was dissolved in 1989

Yesterday's dream

News from nowhere

Niwala

A story from Pakistan and Switzerland

I am another in Palestine

What does it mean to be a Palestinian in the diaspora, an outsider who can only contemplate his homeland from his hereditary exile through the characters in his novels? A homeland of fading words, images and stories

What I don't seek, I find

With his three cycles in "Die Erde hebt uns auf", Tom Schulz has produced an outstanding volume of poetry that is as beautifully sad as it is formally rigorous, political in identity and combative

One hand in search of another

A poem from Lebanon

Must everything change for things to remain as they are?

In "Kritik der großen Geste" (Critique of the grand gesture), sociology professor Armin Nassehi calls for politicians to refrain from making huge demands in times of major crises and opt instead for a policy of small steps

Insanity is round

Joseph O'Neill's boldly composed and carefully researched football novel "Godwin" plays with the question of whether a biography with any degree of integrity can still unfold in this crazy world