Please recomend me german authors

[CarpeNixta]

Hi all:
This saturday I'll go to the FIL (Feria Internacional del Libro or International Book Fair)... this year the guest is Germany.

I'm asking for any suggestion in authors because every year I go and buy the books I find interesting no matter the country, but this year I want to make all my purchases of German authors.

All your help is very appreciated.

[TheFifthElement]

I'd love to go to a book festival :D
I haven't read many German authors, but could recommend Herman Hesse and hear that both Thomas Mann and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are excellent writers. I have works by both, but not quite got around to those yet.

[kiki1982]

If you like early romantic melodrama, go for Goethe, Friedrich (von) Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, Jean Paul, Hölderlin, Ludwig Tieck.

High romantic Eduard Mörike,

Late romantic ETA Hoffmann (The Golden Bowl)

Realism: Wilhelm Raabe, Theodor Fontane

That's how far my anthology from uni goes ;), but I would second Hesse and Thomas Mann.

And of ocurse their great pride recently: Herta Müller.

I don't know whether they have all been translated, though, that may be somwhat of a disappointment... (unless you know German of course)

[PoeticPassions]

I also will say Goethe (I loved Elective Affinities), Mann and Hesse.

A good Austrian author (I know, I know, but close enough) is Rainer Maria Rilke. :)

[CarpeNixta]

Thank you all, I noted all the authors you gave me, they sound very interesting.


And of ocurse their great pride recently: Herta Müller.


She was here the past week with Mario Vargas Llosa, they gave a conference, I only had her in my list yesterday.


I don't know whether they have all been translated, though, that may be somwhat of a disappointment... (unless you know German of course)

I understand if read it, I couldn't learn how to pronounce well the "R" and I really hope they brought books in German (usually you can find some in the original language)

[mortalterror]

One early German author which I don't think has been offered previously is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Three romantic era writers that haven't been previously named but are excellent authors nonetheless are Georg Buchner, Heinrich Heine, and Novalis. Gottfried Benn, Bertolt Brecht, Erich Maria Remarque, and Gunter Grass were all pretty good in the twentieth century. Paul Celan and Franz Kafka were German-language authors but not of German nationality. Hope that helps fill out your list.

[kiki1982]

If you like poetry, I'd second Rilke and maybe you could try Heinrich Heine. He is teriibly funny at times (in a rather bitingly sarcastic way, though).

I think you mean that beta type thing?

The beta thing is an s, also called a 'ringel-s' or an 'esszet' (although the name it is called probably depends on the region) after the older way of writing it 'sz' (I think) like it is still done in Hungarian for the s (our sign 's' being pronounced as a 'sh'). It is just a very pure and very pronounced 's', the very closed and tense s you can produce.

Before the 90s, it used to be written after short and long vowels, but the new spelling changed around 1996, now it is only written after long vowels like in 'Straße'. So 'muß' has changed into 'muss' and 'Schloß' into 'Schloss'. The easy thing is that now you know how to pronounce stuff which you didn't before :).

However, if you don't know the shortcut on your keyboard (I think that should be alt-225), don't have a word document to readily copy it from if the shortcut doesn't work (like me now), you can always substitute it with 'ss'. Like you can substitute an Umlaut (the two dots above a vowel) with an e (the older way of spelling it).

Ok, I think that's enough ;).

Oh, I forgot some modern ones though:

Günter Grass (Die Blechtrommel and others) and Heinrich Böll.

Herta Müller writes in German but is not German, though that makes for a 'freer' treatment of the war).

[AjaxAscendant]

Buy Goethe and Rilke blindfolded. Faust and All Quiet on the Western Front are GIANTS in German literature. You could also try Grass, but I don't recommend him; my dad's a huge fan of his, I'm not.

[Kyriakos]

Not a great fan of german literature (i do not place Kafka in it either) but i agree on E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Thomas Mann :)

[thelastmelon]

I really like Vladimir Kaminer. He is a Russian-born German writer. I've read his Russian Disco and Militärmusik, and really enjoyed them both.

[CarpeNixta]

thank you all for your suggestions, I had a blast!!!

I strayed a little buying some books from Ruben Dario, Savater and Katayama Kyoichi... but I came out with books from:

Goethe: Faust, Werter and Hermand & Dorotea.
Hesse: Steppenwolf & Sidartha
Kleist: Narrations (book of short stories)
Rilke: Works (also an anthology of his works)
Schiller: Poemas Filosoficos & Poesia Ingenua y Poesia sentimental (don't know the english names)
Mann: The Magic Mountain
Mûller: El Hombre es un gran faisan en el mundo & En tierras bajas (don't know the english names)

And also a Freebie!!! a book in German about the imprint, as far I understand until now it's about Gutenberg and the print of the first book

Ayax, Kiriakos & TheLastMelon, I added your suggestions too, I'll besearching for them soon

[CarpeNixta]

Kiki1932 thanks I found it "ß" Danke （＾ｖ＾）

[Jack of Hearts]

Wow. You all know quite a bit about German authors.

This reader found the second half of 'Steppenwolf' enormously difficult to understand on any analytic level. Plus he had a gazillion questions about the Immortals, but nevermind- he read it a long time ago.

Uh, not sure if this is your shtick, but if you read in German, Nietzsche was supposed to be an amazing prose stylist (certainly some of this carries over to English translations). If metaethics or existentialism isn't your thing you might do better with his Ecce Homo.

This reader has recently developed an interest in Mann's The Magic Mountain. That seems to be a seminal work in 20th century canon, so it could be worth taking a peek at.

As for 'Goat,' all his stuff is free so that's awesome. He even wrote an autobiography.







J

EDIT: Day late, dollar short?

[Can]

I recommedn you to read Sigmound Freud

[kiki1982]

Kafka is one of my favourites but you need to like him.

I still have Mann's Zauberberg (Magic Mountain) on my 'to-read' pile, but I don't seem to be able to pluck up the courage (German goes somewhat more slowly than Englis or French).

[Der Wegwerfer]

Kafka is one of my favourites but you need to like him.

I still have Mann's Zauberberg (Magic Mountain) on my 'to-read' pile, but I don't seem to be able to pluck up the courage (German goes somewhat more slowly than Englis or French).

Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks is also recommended.

[Emil Miller]

Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks is also recommended.

Buddenbrooks is more than recommended, it's one of the greatest novels written in any language.

[CarpeNixta]

Kafka is one of my favourites but you need to like him..

What of his works would you recommend to start reading him? I have seen people who loves him and some who hates him, so I don't really know what to think about him.

I'll try reading him first, but I really would like some suggestions to start with a clean mind


Buddenbrooks is more than recommended, it's one of the greatest novels written in any language.

I'll try to find that one thank you

[mortalterror]

A good Kakfa starter is usually his novella Metamorphosis or his short stories like A Hunger Artist, and The Great Wall of China, .

[kiki1982]

I would agree with Mortalterror. Just to get used to his style which is singular.

After that you can move on to his larger ones.

[mal4mac]

Buddenbrooks is more than recommended, it's one of the greatest novels written in any language.

I agree - start with this and then try "The Magic Mountain"

If you want to read something "topical" then try "The Weekend: A Novel" by Bernhard Schlink, translated by Shaun Whiteside.

It's a very quick and fascinating read - about a Bader-Meinhoff type terrorist released from prison after several decades. Schlink, of course, is Germany's hottest novelist at the moment, after "The Reader" (which I haven't read, but is now top of my "modern German must read" list...)

[King Mob]

As regards Kafka I would recommend plunging headfirst into The Process. That is the one novel everyone who read Kafka seems to like, there's something in there for everyone, and it's not very long. For many Metamorphosis is just "mehh" and The Castle is a frustrating goddamn mess that leads nowhere (i haven't read The Castle yet, though).

But The Process is magnificent. Read it if you want not only a great piece of literature, but also one of the most insightfull observations of the soul of the 20th (and even the 21st) century.

And there's a beautiful film adaptation by Orson Welles, with Anthony Perkins as Josef K., which s highly recommended.

[kiki1982]

I have translated that 'god damn mess' (no hard feelings ;)) and I can't agree. The thing is weirdly entertaining and hilarious by moments. I cried reading some of it, though the construction is very clever. It all looks very strange and bland, dark and cold and irresolute (mainly the end that is not there and it just being half a sentence) but it has such a tremendous subtle basis that it is marvellous.

When the 'boss' of the land surveyor is in bed with gout and just plainly admits that they have no need for a land surveyor nor is there any work for one and how his wife and the assistants (useless creatures anyway, but very willing, bless them) try to look up the document where the post of land surveyor is created...

Where one of the civil servants Momus has to record the complaint of the hostess against the land surveyor and crumbles a pretzel all over the document, staining it with greasy marks (are those documents of any important at all?).

When Momus too explains how a little hard grain has got into the mill which is now grinding to a halt, thus exposing its weaknesses, (this is a very worrying thing for them all, because in the whole mill moving lies their existance...), but the land surveyor doesn't notice it because he is asleep.

The scene in the school is also hilarious by moments.

You see, the construction I believe is somewhat based on I think a satirical play (?) by Suetonius (?) with Momus (the God of mockery and satire) as the secretary and the gods moaning about the fact whether half gods should be allowed on Olympus (essentially a pun on contemporary immigration law in Athens). The second thing is I believe Dante's Divina Commedia and the whole idea of a single person one worships and on whom everything depends (Klamm). When one asks for the person and is sceptical (the land surveyor) it turns out that no-one actually knows how he is, where he is and what he even wants. They only think he likes everything written down, but does he read it? Not a soul knows. The ultimate question is, is he actually there? They all claim he is, but no-one has ever seen him. You can extrapolate that to the eagle which is referred to somewhere as the heraldic symbol of the Habsburg dynasty which no-one had evidently seen for real, but who 'ruled' the place, although did they? Was it not rather overzealous assistants who did everything and the Kaiser (symbolised in Klamm) who was blamed for everything, but actually just had to go along with the system, or even worse did not even care?

Kafka would turn in his grave, me talking like this, but I thought I had to defend the quality of it. ;)

I grant you that there are boring bits in it, but they are made up for by the incredibly good bits.

[mortalterror]

You see, the construction I believe is somewhat based on I think a satirical play (?) by Suetonius (?) with Momus (the God of mockery and satire) as the secretary and the gods moaning about the fact whether half gods should be allowed on Olympus (essentially a pun on contemporary immigration law in Athens).

Sounds like The Apocolocyntosis (or The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) by Seneca the Younger to me. Emperor Claudius being basically the George W. Bush of his era, and the Romans having a habit of deifying dead emperors, the Olympian gods hold a council to decide if he should be admitted into their ranks. After some deliberation, they came to the conclusion that he'd make a better pumpkin than a god, hence the title. It's actually very well written and funny. I especially liked this part:


The last words he was heard to speak in this world were these. When he had made a great noise with that end of him which talked easiest, he cried out, "Oh dear, oh dear! I think I have made a mess of myself." Whether he did or no, I cannot say, but certain it is he always did make a mess of everything.

[kiki1982]

Haha, it was too long ago to really remember and, lazy me was too lazy (duh) to go and look it up in my translation.

It was Lucian's Assembly of the Gods. it is quite hilarious. And if you then consider Momus's appearance as the name of this somewhat jolly civil servant... I just couldn't stop laughing...

[kasie]

Can anyone suggest some contemporary German writers, please? Any that are translated into English would be appreciated as I don't think my very rusty schoolgirl German is up to reading a whole book!

No one seems to have mentioned Mann's Death in Venice which I enjoyed when I read it some years ago.

[King Mob]

Kafka would turn in his grave, me talking like this, but I thought I had to defend the quality of it. ;)



You misunderstood me. I haven't read The Castle, what I said is just what some people say of it. I'm even completely sure that it's incredible and that I will love it, it sounds like just my sort of literature: beautiful, seemingly chaotic, absurd, metaphysical, philosophical. :smile5: