Complete Catalog 251 Result(s)

Written with empathy and precision, Susanne Röckel’s latest novel is an astonishing work of literary memory.

Darmstadt, 1968: the ‘Callsen Trial’ is underway. Eight SS men have been accused of carrying out the 1941 massacre at Babyn Yar. Dina Proničeva, a woman of unimaginable courage, survived the slaughter, and she has arrived in Germany to testify at the trial. On the day it took place, Susanne Röckel, then fourteen years old, watched the car bringing the witness to court. This encounter prompts a literary meditation on resistance, justice and denial. Memories from her youth are interwoven with the records of the trial and haunting images of the days the witness from Kyiv spent in post-war Germany. Part novel, part memoir, Vera is a moving and careful attempt to face the incomprehensible.

Skis are humanity’s oldest form of transport, and as snow becomes increasingly scarce, we are losing far more than a winter sport: a whole world of language and an existential experience are disappearing along with it.

From the depths of history, ski tracks lead all the way to the extreme challenge of the 90 km Vasaloppet — a legendary cross-country skiing race held in Sweden. Even experienced skiers like Antje Rávik Strubel take hours to complete it — plenty of time to reflect on her ‘skiing suffering’ and the different facets of skiing — on loneliness and peer pressure, expertise, and fashion, on the fact that the first woman in trousers was a skier, and Austrian cyclists invented alpine ski racing. On the disappearance of snow — and the existential connection between skiing, writing, and death.

Mieze Medusa’s new novel has everything women need to survive: pace, heart, humour, rage and plenty of solidarity.

Melanie may not always have made the best decisions. Otherwise she wouldn’t be where she is now: the second ex-wife of a wealthy globe-trotting man who has just settled down with wife number three and whisked off their daughter Adele to New Zealand. Melanie’s life in Vienna is hardly plain sailing: she gets no alimony money from her ex, so she’s plagued by money troubles, and she desperately misses her daughter. But at least she’s not alone: she works at a feminist hotel project, she’s got close friendships, and Adele is bound to return to Europe at some point. Warm-hearted and encouraging, Mieze Medusa’s novel shows that solidarity and a sense of humour are worth their weight in gold—and that life would be pretty boring if you never made any bad decisions ...

In this densely atmospheric novel, Tanja Paar brings to life the Austrian town of Semmering and its ordinary inhabitants, living under the looming threat of fascism.

For railway worker Bertl and his wife Klara, Semmering represents a step up: his promotion to stationmaster includes a little house with a garden, no small thing at a time when Austria is in an economic crisis and unemployment is rife. Writing with verve and a passion for detail, Tanja Paar takes us behind the scenes of this elegant summer resort, exploring the lives of maids and woodcutters, smallholders and wealthy farmers, of Postmistress Negrelli and of Rahel, who cooks kosher meals for the Jewish guests. Political tensions slowly ratchet up—even here, in this peaceful spa town far from the capital of Vienna—and when the Nazis seize power in 1938, the idyll is finally shattered for good. Will Klara be able to save her friend Rahel from deportation?

Brave, tender and unsentimental, this new novel by Kaśka Bryla is about struggling for survival under immensely difficult circumstances.

The summer of 2020 is hot and beautiful, yet fear and uncertainty are everywhere—including the caravan park community where the author lives, struggling with a serious illness. She draws strength from conversations in her head, talking to her father, who was interned in a gulag as a member of the Polish underground. His act of resistance has affected her profoundly. Her own battle to live life on her own terms as a queer woman is similar, yet in many ways very different. She also draws strength from Karl, a baby crow abandoned by its mother, which she cares for while it’s still unable to fly. Loving, laconic and surreal, the novel interweaves snatches of conversation with the author’s father with fever dreams and loneliness. This book reminds us of what it means to keep your promises.

Running Wild is at once touching and absurd, utterly bonkers and deeply familiar: Martin Lechner has pulled off a breathtakingly crazy combination.

Marlies is out of luck: she’s got to spend the summer before her final year at school living with her confused grandmother, trying to coax her to leave her the house in her will. For ages now she’s also had this weird swelling in her left hand, which is refusing to go away. What begins as a coming-of-age story veers off into a tragi-comic novel about fear, shame, and learning to stand your ground. Because when Marlies realises that her finger is starting to grow a talon—which soon develops a monstrous life of its own—she begins searching frantically for a way to save herself, and things begin to spiral out of control. Martin Lechner unfolds this complex mystery so compellingly that we begin to worry for Marlies, a dangerous girl who may or may not be turning into a predator ...

The extraordinary legacy of a great author and humanist

Pollack’s book The Age of Shame gathers essays and articles by a passionate campaigner for democracy and an open society. This volume offers a careful selection of texts from recent years, including gripping reports from Eastern European countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and the Republic of Moldova, but also calls for resistance and moving essays against forgetting the Holocaust. In these works, Pollack returns again and again to confront his own family’s difficult history. During his final years, already marked by illness, he wrote very personal works of observation from his beloved garden in the Austrian region of Burgenland: tales of apple trees, seasons and wildlife of all kinds, published here for the first time.

Experience a unique literary journey through the world of wine, and discover new perspectives on pleasure and time!

Ilija Trojanow is not just a literary collector of worlds but also a trained sommelier. His close friendship with a leading maker of Riesling serves as inspiration for this love letter to wine. What does wine-drinking mean for our culture? Wine-drinking is a dialogue, says Trojanow. With many interlocutors. With time. With the soil. With a wine-grower. With the self and the unplumbed mysteries of individual taste. The enjoyment of wine is a highly individual experience. For Ilija Trojanow, wine is compensation for being driven out of paradise. Trojanow reflects on time, terroir, nature and culture, on capital, taste, dégustation and drunkenness. A poetic musing on the secret of wine.

From Karl Kraus and Michael Kohlhaas to stubbornness and The Taming of the Shrew: Daniela Strigl explores the crucial importance of defiance.

A defiant person is one who clings to something unreasonable, sometimes against their better judgement. Defiance is associated with stubbornness, obstinacy, and yet it’s also a prerequisite for resistance: to defy someone is to resist them, which may include those with more power. In this essay, Daniela Strigl grapples with the historical and literary phenomenon of rebellion against authority. Troublemakers may have a bad name and ‘lateral thinking’ is perhaps increasingly discredited these days, but mavericks still command our respect. Free-thinking women, in particular, have long been considered especially provocative. But does all this make defiance a virtue? And doesn’t art in a hostile environment depend on defiance?

A love letter by philosopher and passionate record-collector Konrad Paul Liessmann to the instrument that unites all instruments as one.

In the age of digitalisation, record players and good old vinyl discs are enjoying a remarkable renaissance. For Konrad Paul Liessmann, however, this came as no surprise. He has always stayed true to the record player. The revolving record, the slender needle and the delicate grooves exert a powerful fascination for him. Turning his attention to his beloved record player, the philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann intertwines his personal musical experiences with a brief cultural history of listening. He tells the story of how sound has been stored and reproduced, from the first gramophone to modern streaming services, and asks to what extent our relationship with music has been changed as a result of its technological reproducibility.