Someone might be getting away with murder in Romy Hausmann’s novel, Sleepless, an ambitious cat-and-mouse thriller, about guilt, coercive control, social inequality, retribution and justice. It’s over, my angel. Today I’m going to die. Just like her. He’s won.It’s been years since Nadja Kulka was convicted of a cruel crime. After being released from prison, she’s wanted nothing more than…
Curated by book squirrels
German books
Romy Hausmann’s Dear Child begins where other thrillers often end and takes the breaking news event we might hear about—a young woman escaping from captivity with children in tow—as her starting point, before showing us what life was like for them and how they fare once free. A windowless shack in the woods. Lena’s life and that of her two…
I can’t quite believe I made it to the end of the book after such an unpromising start but I did. Marking it as read on Goodreads (for the English translation, at least) felt pretty satisfying. “Chapters” 8/9 Reinhold is possibly the biggest villain in the story. Would you agree? Do you find his punishment satisfying? At one point.I was…
Week three and the reading was easier, although I’m further behind in the German original than I am with the English translation. More of a time issue than anything else. “Chapters” 6/7 The German original calls the chapters “Books” not chapters. In my opinion this is a gross error and robs the English reader of seeing some intertextual links. How…
I made it to the end of week two but this was not without its challenges, either. Read on to find out why. Chapters 3 – 5 What do you make of Döblin’s structuring of the novel? The short summaries at the beginning of each chapter, each section? The montage technique? Initially, I wasn’t a fan of the short summaries…
As part of #GermanLitMonth, I’m taking part in the Berlin Alexanderplatz readalong. Week One was not a happy one at the Nut Press, which is why I’m posting this so very late in the month. I’ll let my answers to the discussion questions Lizzy set tell you why that was. Chapters 1-2. Welcome to the #germanlitmonth readalong of Alfred Döblin’s…
I always thought one of the benefits of becoming proficient in a foreign language would be that I’d be able to read another country’s literature in the original language, rather than in translation. (In fact, if I chose the language wisely, I’d be able to read that of more than one country.) I never thought for a moment that it would enable me to read a novel set in England, originally written in English by an English author but which has, so far, only been published in translation.