For each of these major, prize-honored writers — Siegfried Lenz and Walter Kempowski– birth = destiny = art.
Kai Maristed
Book Review: “Tyll” — The Thirty Years War, From a Prankster’s Point of View
Daniel Kehlmann’s narrative gift is so prodigious as to be almost aggravating.
Book Review: “Old Rendering Plant” — Existence on Trial
Hilbig’s prose demands sentence-by sentence commitment. It gravitates to the dark and dense, and occasionally surreal.
Book Review: “To the Back of Beyond” — Extreme Ambiguity
Evidently, plain-spoken language plus doubt and apprehension equate to novels that, once opened, are very hard to put down.
Book Review: “My Marriage” — An Extraordinary Rediscovery
Despite the pain of inhabiting Alexander Herzog’s disintegrating world, I absolutely could not put My Marriage aside.
Book Review: “The Last Weynfeldt” — The Virtues of a Wry, Cosmopolitan Vibe
In this enjoyable novel, Martin Suter has chosen to sidestep depth in favor of colorful characters fine-honing their hopes and dreams..
Fuse Book Review: Michel Houellebecq and the Wages of “Submission”
If you’ve recently been mourning the end of the Novel of Ideas—take heart. And dig in, for Submission offers a smorgasbord.
Book Review: “Imperium” — A Shock-Packed Pastiche of History
In this entertaining satire of empire, Christian Kracht makes use of a nihilistic magic realism, without the sweetness one normally associates with that mode.
Book Review: The Fiction of Norway’s Per Petterson — The Early Bonds That Bind
I Refuse is one of those novels that only truly comes clear on a second reading, when certain initially apparently innocuous, easily passed-over sentences reverberate with revealed meaning.
Fuse Book Review: “Blood Brothers” — Down-and-Out in Germany’s Zero Hour
Anyone interested in understanding Europe in the 20th century, or in the fascinating metropolis that is Berlin, or in a riveting depiction of down-and-out youth who refuse to surrender to the system–will want to pick up Blood Brothers.