The West is booming. Many believe it is a dilapidated house that should finally be torn down. But what does it represent and how did it become what it is today? Two books provide the answers.

"Into the Uncut Grass": Trevor Noah and Sabina Hahn tell why sometimes you just have to start running to get home. A fable about friendship, freedom and the gentle weight of decisions

In "Das Deutsche Demokratische Reich" (The German Democratic Reich), historian Volker Weiß shows how right-wing politics is made possible today by the rewriting and reinterpreting of history

In his transcontinental family history "Tabak und Schokolade", Martin R. Dean reconstructs Switzerland's colonial entanglements using a wide variety of memory media

‚Bound to Violence‘ by Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem was republished as a Penguin Modern Classic, a series of books self-defined as “shaping the reading habits of generations since 1961”

Hannes Wesendonk's poems reveal a recurring interplay between banality, seriousness and nonsense

In "Soul Lanterns", Shaw Kuzki shows how memories are passed down through generations and change over time. Her young adult novel combines historical truth, poetic concision and the quiet rituals of a restless city

With "Vishwa Shastra - India and the World", Dhruva Jaishankar has written an introduction to Indian history for the youth of his country. It focuses on India's relations with the world and the future of the subcontinent

Lavie Tidhar's "Adama" is a stark portrait of Israeli history, exploring violence, hope and self-destruction. An unusual thriller that demonstrates how no ideal remains unscathed when people have to live with it.

Halim Youssef's "Liebe im Schatten der dunklen Flaggen" is a poetic masterpiece about surviving in the darkness on the Iraqi-Syrian border