December 2024

Stupid yet still madly brilliant

In his impressive debut novel "Soleil à coudre" (A Sun to be Sewn), Jean D'Amérique tells, in powerful language, of precarious circumstances, and of a childhood that finds validation not only through this language

A cruelly gentle dance of ghosts

"We Do Not Part", the new novel by the recently awarded Nobel Prize winner Han Kang, tells of transgenerational trauma, a tender female friendship and a reunion with a mother. And a kind of hope

A Hindu festival called Christmas

Encounters between a non-practising Hindu and Roman Catholicism

A touching nostalgia

Jörg Schieke's poems in "Silverman schickt mich" (Silverman sends me) captivate with their irresolvable character, but are also a systematic poetic exploration of the legacies of the GDR

Confession of a Killing

A short story from Bangladesh – translated from Bangla into English by Mohammad Shafiqul Islam

Still Today

Family trees are an endlessly interesting subject for many, but a look at the different language families is equally as informative

We were all sleeping

In his Booker Prize-winning "Prophet Song", Paul Lynch succeeds in transforming our fragile political present into a bleak vision more relevant than many political treatises

Forgotten endings

What do we remember if not islands? In literature, film and real life too. And it's not only the narrative that matters.

Horror, comfort and hope

More and more people fear that humanity is facing the collapse of civilization due to climate change and other crises. Some books can help us to better understand what may be in store for us

Every day, I leave behind a bird

A story about wounds of identity in Lebanon and in exile