Erpenbeck, Jenny "Kairos"

Erpenbeck, Jenny "Kairos" (German: Kairos.) - 2021

This was the starter book for this month's Six Degrees of Separation. I haven't read the starter book very often but this was a new acclaimed book by an author I'd read and liked before, so I gave it a go.

I quite liked "The End of Days" (Aller Tage Abend) and hope this one would be just as good.

Jenny Erpenbeck was the first German author to receive the 2024 International Booker Prize.

This was an okay read but I was a little disappointed. The writing was not as fluent as expected. I think the love story should reflect the relationship between the two countries. And that was not a bad attempt. But, I didn't care for either of the protagonists, I couldn't feel sorry for them.

For those who don't know much about the former GDR or how the fall of the fall came about it probably isn't a bad book, though there are better ones that will tell you about this (The Tower/Der Turm, for instance)

All in all, I found the book, boring, tedious and tiresome. Yet another Booker prize award that I didn't like.

The title comes from an ancient Greek term for the right time.

From the back cover:

"Jenny Erpenbeck’s much anticipated new novel Kairos is a complicated love story set amidst swirling, cataclysmic events as the GDR collapses and an old world evaporates Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation ) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos - an unforgettably compelling masterpiece - tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes place against the background of the declining GDR, through the upheavals wrought by its dissolution in 1989 and then what comes after. In her unmistakable style and with enormous sweep, Erpenbeck describes the path of two lovers, as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears."

Krall, Hanna "Chasing the King of Hearts"

Krall, Hanna "Chasing the King of Hearts" (Polish: Król kier znów na wylocie) - 2006

This was our international online book club book for May 2024.

The life story of a Jewish woman who loses all her family in the Holocaust. Except for her husband. She is sure he is still alive and she looks for him everywhere.

In the description it says this is a beautiful love story. And it is. In a way. Just not what you would usually expect from a love story. And the style is completely different. It reads like diary. But it's more than that. Quite interesting.

It's amazing what a human being can do in order to save their loved ones.

A good book about a strong woman.

Comments from members:

For me the topic of the WWII in books is very unwelcome as I have a great imagination and empathy, but in this book I really liked how the author scaled back on the emotions in the writing, not wallowing in the horrors, yet still showing very skillfully the realities of the war.

The story was interesting historically and serendipitously.

Smart choices and having a clear purpose helped make hard things easier for the lead character, while others turned the difficulties and how to survive mentally into blaming others.

From the back cover:

"An extraordinary love story, spanning 60 years, from 1939 to 2000, from the Warsaw Ghetto to Israel.

'This is the last leg of my journey. It would be silly to lose my mind now.' After the deportation of her husband to Auschwitz, Izolda Regenberg, alias Maria Pawlicka, has only one aim: to free her husband. Her race to beat fate might appear absurd to others, but not to her. In times of war and destruction she learns to trust herself.

Why Peirene chose to publish this book:

'This is a beautiful love story. A story which makes one weep for mankind. While Hanna Krall's terse prose is designed to convey the utter desperation of war, her deft touch evokes hope and a sense of homecoming.' Meike Ziervogel"

Canetti, Elias "Auto-da-Fé"

Canetti, Elias "Auto-da-Fé" (German: Die Blendung) - 1935

For the The Classics Spin #34, we were given #13, and this was my novel.

What a book! Did I like it? Hm, hard to tell. It is described as grotesk, obscure, weird, … And weird it is.

The book tells the story of Peter Kien, a sinologist and philologist who lives very reclusively in his apartment with his books. He marries his housekeeper but he slides more and more into madness.

Peter's brother Georg is a famous psychologist in Paris. Alerted by one of Peter's acquaintances, he comes to Vienna in order to help but, alas, is not successful.

This is a very complex book that cannot possibly be explained in a few words. Its a book of obsession and criticism, of society at the time but also a warning about what was to come. After all, this was two years after the nazis gained power in Germany and many people, like the author, feared for the future. And they were right, as it turned out.

The meaning of the English title is explained in Wikipedia:
An auto-da-fé (/ˌɔːtoʊdəˈfeɪ, ˌaʊt-/ AW-toh-də-FAY, OW-; from Portuguese auto da fé [ˈawtu ðɐ ˈfɛ], meaning 'act of faith'; Spanish: auto de fe [ˈawto ðe ˈfe]) was the ritual of public penance carried out between the 15th and 19th centuries of condemned heretics and apostates imposed by the Spanish, Portuguese, or Mexican Inquisition as punishment and enforced by civil authorities. Its most extreme form was death by burning.

The book was first published in English with the title "The Tower of Babel".
The translation of the original titel "Die Blendung" would be translated into "Blinding as a punishment", "Glare", "Deception", or even in the sense of "Verblendung" as "Infatuation". All these words could be used as the title of the book. In the German book description, it is said that "like Joyce's 'Ulysses', 'The Blinding' is a powerful metaphor for the lonely reflective mind's confrontation with reality." Sounds correct to me.

Book Description:

"'Auto-da-Fé' is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Vienna between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction.

Manipulated by his illiterate and grasping housekeeper, Therese, who has tricked him into marriage, and Benedikt Pfaff, a brutish concierge, Kien is forced out of his apartment - which houses his great library and one true passion - and into the underworld of the city. In this purgatory he is guided by a chess-playing dwarf of evil propensities, until he is eventually restored to his home. But on his return he is visited by his brother, an eminent psychiatrist who, by an error of diagnosis, precipitates the final crisis...

'Auto-da-Fé' was first published in Germany in 1935 as 'Die Blendung' ('The Blinding' or 'Bedazzlement') and later in Britain in 1947, where the publisher noted Canetti as a 'writer of strongly individual genius, which may prove influential', an observation borne out when the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. 'Auto-da-Fé' still towers as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and Canetti's incisive vision of an insular man battling agianst the outside world is as fresh and rewarding today as when first it appeared in print."

Elias Canetti received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981 "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Since this book takes partly place in Paris, it can also go with the project #parisinjuly2023.

Brooks, Geraldine "People of the Book"

Brooks, Geraldine "People of the Book" - 2008

This is going to be one of my favourite books this year. Such a wonderful story about a book and its history. I have once read a similar story, well, not a similar story, just a book that tries to follow a piece of art, a painting from today into past until it was created. That was by Susan Vreeland and it was called "Girl in Hyacinth Blue". I loved that one and this was just as interesting.

The main "character" is the Sarajevo Haggada, a Jewish religious book that really exists (see here on Wikipedia or here on The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina website) The word "haggada" is Hebrew for telling, story or account, the book "Haggadah" is a text that describes the order of the Passover Seder.

There are books, even ancient ones, where you know exactly where they come from and who made them. This is not one. The author has put down some ideas and made a wonderful story about it that travels around the whole world. From the Australian conservationist who tries to find some clues that sound just like a crime story we travel back from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Italy, Austria, Spain and to the shores of Ifriqiya (modern day Tunisia, parts of Algeria and Libya). In between, we visit the Untied States and the United Kingdom where the protagonist does not only find out more about the book but also about her family.

I absolutely loved the whole story, how we get to know the different kinds of people who contributed first to the creation of the book and then to the saving of it. Some of the ideas might even be true. Well, we can always dream.

Remarks from the book club:
I partly felt the book was really interesting and wanted to know more about the old stories from history.
The parts about WWII always feel a little too close for comfort anyway.
The author's experience as a journalist shone through the story. But the present day frame-story felt slightly "puff-piece" kind of full with story gaps.
Overall still give it 4/5 or maybe even 4,5/5.

We read this in our international online book club in October 2023.

From the back cover:

"During World War II a Bosnian Muslim risks his life to save the book from the Nazis; it gets caught up in the intrigues of hedonistic 19th-century Vienna; a Catholic priest saves it from burning in the fires of Inquisition. These stories and more make up the secret history of the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah - a medieval Jewish prayer book recovered from the smouldering ruins of the war-torn city.
Now it is in the skilled hands of rare-book restorer Hanna Heath. And while the content of the book interests her, it is the hidden history which captures her imagination. Because to her the tiny clues - salt crystals, a hair, wine stains - that she discovers in the pages and bindings are keys to unlock its mysteries."

Handke, Peter "Storm Still"

Handke, Peter "Storm Still" (German: Immer noch Sturm) - 2010

A book about the Slovenian minority in Carinthia. We all know that there are areas everywhere with immigrants from all kinds of other countries, but my knowledge of Austria and its foreigners is quite limited. This novel is described as a play, which I can not quite understand. Admittedly, the story is told by different family members, but there is hardly any exchange.

Either way, this is not an easy book to just follow and then get the hang of. You have to strain your gray brain cells to be able to follow the author at all. Handke is a very controversial author, and not everyone welcomed his award of the Nobel Prize for Literature. But he has a certain something. You just want to keep reading. And in the decade that has passed since the book was published, not much has changed, in Austria or elsewhere, it rather got rather worse.

From the back cover:

"Peter Handke, a giant of Austrian literature, has produced decades of fiction, poetry, and drama informed by some of the most tumultuous events in modern history. But even as these events shaped his work, the presence of his mother - a woman whose life spanned the Weimar Republic, both world wars, and the postwar consumer economy - loomed even larger.

In Storm Still, Handke’s most recent work, he returns to the land of his birth, the Austrian province of Carinthia. There on the Jaunfeld, the plain at the center of Austria’s Slovenian settlement, the dead and the living of a family meet and talk. Composed as a series of monologues, Storm Still chronicles both the battle of the Slovene minority against Nazism and their love of the land. Presenting a panorama that extends back to the author’s bitter roots in the region, Storm Still blends penetrating prose and poetic drama to explore Handke’s personal history, taking up themes from his earlier books and revisiting some of their characters. In this book, the times of conflict and peace, war and prewar, and even the seasons themselves shift and overlap. And the fate of an orchard comes to stand for the fate of a people."

Peter Handke received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019 "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Suttner, Bertha von "Lay Down Your Arms"

Suttner, Bertha von "Lay Down Your Arms" or "Down with Weapons!" (German: Die Waffen nieder!) - 1889

This is my eleventh Classic Spin and we were given #6.

A present from a dear friend who knows what I appreciate. On the German cover, the description says: "Der Roman für den Frieden" - "The Novel for Peace."

And that's what it is. Bertha von Suttner inspired Alfred Nobel to add the Nobel Peace Prize to the different categories in 1901. Four years later, she was the first woman to receive it. And well deserved.

The name of the protagonist is different from the author, yet the book is always described as an auto-biography. Bertha von Suttner grew up in a similar environment as her Martha Althaus. And at the same time. She lived during a time where war was something people not just accepted but rejoiced about, a lot of the men in her surroundings, nobility like herself, were soldiers, many of the women wives of soldiers. And it was clear in the society, that children should be raised to become soldiers and fight for their country, as well.

Bertha von Suttner lived from 1843 to 1914, so she died just a month before the outbreak of WWI. It was probably good that she didn't live to see this anymore though I am sure she knew what was coming. I have only just read a book about 1913 (illies) and most people didn't have a clue though I am sure she did.

In her book, she writes about the horrors of war, not just what the soldiers have to go through but mainly what their loved ones have to suffer. Her book was a huge success, she didn't seem to be the only one who thought this world would be better off without wars. I totally agree with her but we still haven't learned.

Bertha von Suttner was probably one of the first pacifists. Leo Tolstoy compared of her novel to that of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the same result to war than to slavery. I wish he had been right.

She also founded the German Peace Society.

From the back cover:

"Lay Down Your Arms! (novel), English title of the 1889 novel "Die Waffen Nieder!" by the Austrian pacifist activist Bertha von Suttner, who received the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize for it. 'We English-speaking people, whether in England, in the Colonies, or in the United States, being ourselves in no immediate danger of seeing our homes invaded, and our cities laid under contribution by hostile armies, are apt to forget how terribly the remembrance of such calamities, and the constant threat of their recurrence, haunt the lives of our Continental brethren.' - T. Holmes

Austrian novelist Bertha von Suttner was one of the first notable woman pacifists. She is credited with influencing Alfred Nobel in the establishment of the Nobel Prize for Peace, of which she was the recipient in 1905. Her major novel, Die Waffen nieder! (1889; Lay Down Your Arms!), has been compared in popularity and influence with Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The daughter of an impoverished Austrian field marshal, she was a governess to the wealthy Suttner family from 1873. She became engaged to Baron Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner (1850-1902), an engineer and novelist, seven years her junior. The opposition of his family to this match caused her, in 1876, to answer Nobel's advertisement for a secretary-housekeeper at his Paris residence. After only a week she returned to Vienna and secretly married Suttner."

Bertha von Suttner received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 "for her audacity to oppose the horrors of war."

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Here are all the books on my original Classics Club list.
And here is a list of all the books I read with the Classics Spin.

Illies, Florian "1913: The Year before the Storm"

Illies, Florian "1913: The Year before the Storm" (German: 1913: Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts) - 2012

How did the First World War come about? This question is asked frequently and attempts are made to answer it just as frequently. But that is not the purpose of this book. The author brings a contemporary testimony here. How was life the year before? When people still lived peacefully and thought of no evil. We hear about writers like Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Marcel Proust and others, painters like Ernst Macke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marcel Duchamp, musicians like Igor Stravinsky, psychologists Sigmund Freud and C.G. Young, that Stalin and Hitler were in Vienna at the same time (if only they had met and smashed each other's heads!), how the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I and his heir to the throne Franz-Ferdinand were doing.

Many, many people are portrayed here, month after month we follow their lives and society in general and know that everyone's lives will be completely different in the next, never quite the same.

A good history book.

From the back cover:

"The year 1913 heralds a new age of unlimited possibility. Louis Armstrong learns to play the trumpet. Kafka is in love and writes endlessly long, endlessly beautiful letters to Felice Bauer. Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract.

Yet everywhere there is the premonition of ruin - the number thirteen is omnipresent, and in London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Trieste, artists begin to act as if there were no tomorrow. In a hotel lobby, Rilke and Freud discuss beauty and transience; Proust sets out in search of lost time; and while Stravinsky celebrates The Rite of Spring with industrial cacophony, in Munich an Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf Hitler sells his conventional cityscapes.

Shaw, Karl "Royal Babylon"

Shaw, Karl "Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty" - 1999

I love to read about history. I love non-fiction, I love historical novels, anything to do with what happened before us. In order to know what happened, in order to help that it doesn't get repeated, in order to quench my thirst for knowledge.

This book is a little different. It's non-fiction and gives you lots of information, including some great family trees of all the different royal houses in Europe. Mind you, it is more or less just the one house that spreads out everywhere.

But there is more. We don't just hear who lived when, who married whom and why, no, we get to know what went on behind the scenes, who had an affair with whom (and how many), who was insane (almost all of them because of the terrible in-breading - not that that was any news), why did they change names, what did they do to keep their status.

I have heard several comments about this book, whilst some were pretty negative, some I didn't agree with, others I did (no footnotes), others were pretty funny and accurate: The Onion version of European royalty (Mary Overton), it has entirely changed the concept of "someday my prince will come"(Liana from California), trashy historical non-fiction (Jennifer from Colorado)

A witty book about madness, snobbery, infidelity, a gossip column about royalty. And if we look at what their ancestors did, nobody should complain about the royal house of Windsor today because here are a few divorces, as they are in most common families nowadays.

From the back cover:

"An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy.

Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside?

Royally dishing on hundreds of years of dubious behavior, Royal Babylon chronicles the manifold appalling antics of Europe's famous families, behavior that rivals the characters in an Aaron Spelling television series. Here, then, are the insane kings of Spain, one of whom liked to wear sixteen pairs of gloves at one time; the psychopathic Prussian soverigns who included Frederick William and his 102-inch waist; sex-fixated French rulers such as Philip Duke D'Oreleans cavorting with more than a hundred mistresses; and, of course, the delightfully drunken and debauched Russian czars - Czar Paul, for example, who to make his soldiers goose-step without bending their legs had steel plates strapped to their knees. But whether Romanov or Windsor, Habsburg or Hanover, these extravagant lifestyles, financed as they were by the royals' badgered subjects, bred the most wonderfully offbeat and disturbingly unbelievable tales - and Karl Shaw has collected them all in this hysterically funny and compulsively readable book.

Royal Babylon is history, but not as they teach it in school, and it underlines in side-splitting fashion Queen Victoria's famous warning that it is unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses of Europe."

Eichendorff, Joseph von "Life of a Good-For-Nothing"

Eichendorff, Joseph von "Life of a Good-For-Nothing" aka "Memoirs of a Good-For-Nathing" (German: Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts und andere Novellen) - 1826

German is a good language for romanticism. We can wallow in words, we can praise nature and anything we like to praise with overwhelming expressions. And that is just what Joseph von Eichendorff does.

As in any book by this genre, don't expect too much deep thinking or philosophy, even though it is in there, just on a low level. Nowadays, I would certainly classify this as chick lit, a novel about someone who doesn't fit in and finds a happy end.

From the back cover:

"Following a row with his father, a young man leaves home, and - following a series of picturesque wanderings - eventually finds love with the girl of his dreams. Deeply imbued with the style of German Romanticism, this classic story is at once an exhilarating romp and an exemplary distillation of 19th-century thought."

Menasse, Robert "The Capital"

Menasse, Robert "The Capital" (German: Die Hauptstadt) - 2017

I have lived in Brussels forty years ago and met my husband there. We have been back there at least once every year, most often more times. However, when my son found a job there, I realized that I have read very little about Belgium and nothing about Brussels itself. So, I went and searched some literature. This one received the German Book Prize in 2017 and was praised internationally. It is mentioned that it is the first book where Brussels is called the European capital. We have always called it that.

The book tells us about several officials from the Department of Culture and their jobs. The characters are as international as any of the offices of the European Union, they are from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and the UK.

There is also a crime story for those who love that in a book. To be honest, I have no idea why that is needed for the story especially since it doesn't really have anything to do with the main story. The protagonists are mainly officials who work for the EU and try to accomplish something, mostly their promotion. We meet bureaucrats, experts, lobbyists … It shows how the different interests within the EU have to be considered for many events, laws, regulations. Not an easy task as we all know. Yet, we all benefit from our countries being a member of this large union - even if some don't want to see that.

One of the stories within this chunky book is the plan to celebrate the 50 year anniversary with a big jubilee project and how to arrange this so that everyone is happy about the outcome. We see the difficulty of reaching a European consensus and still have every state participate in the result.

Oh, and there is a pig. One of the introductions to the book is: "The threads come together in Brussels - and a pig runs through the streets." Again, not really necessary for the story.

But what makes this story worth reading is the message it brings us about the European Union. It is one of the most important organizations we have ever been part of. It has united many countries that were enemies before, brought us not only prosperity but peace for the longest time anyone can ever remember. Just for that, I think this book is significant.

From the back cover:

"Brussels. A panorama of tragic heroes, manipulative losers, involuntary accomplices. In his new novel, Robert Menasse spans a narrative arc between the times, the nations, the inevitable and the irony of fate, between petty bureaucracy and big emotions.

Fenia Xenapoulou is facing a career setback. She has been 'promoted' to the Department of Culture by the Directorate General - no budget, no power, no reputation. So the 'Big Jubilee Project' comes just at the right time for her: she is to revamp the boring image of the European Commission. Her Austrian personal assistant Martin Susmann suggests proclaiming Auschwitz as the birthplace of the European Commission. Fenia is thrilled, but she didn't take the other European nations into account. Austria: a Polish camp could not be misused to question the Austrian nation. Poland: Auschwitz is a German problem. Germany: Islam, by now a part of Germany, had nothing to do with Auschwitz. What's more, Fenia can't count on David de Vriend, one of the last living witnesses, any longer: he runs to the metro station Maalbeek at the wrong time.

Inspector Brunfaut is in a difficult situation as well. He is supposed to leave a murder case covered up at the highest level at rest. But luckily he is friends with the chief computer scientists of the Brussels Police Department, who can gain access to the secret files of the public prosecutor's office. Matek, the Polish hitman, knows nothing of this when he makes his escape. But he does know that he shot the wrong guy. That’s not nothing to Matek. He would rather have become ordained a priest; the fact that he had to follow his father's and grandfather's footsteps in becoming a 'soldier of Christ', doesn’t really make him happy. And yes, there are others who are unhappy as well: the pig farmers who take to the streets with pitchforks in protest of the existing trade restrictions blocking the profitable export of pigs' ears to China."

McLain, Paula "The Paris Wife"

McLain, Paula "The Paris Wife" - 2012

A couple of years ago, everybody seemed to be reading "The Paris Wife". But I had read "The Time Traveler’s Wife" which I hated and I neither was too happy with "The Railwayman's Wife". So, I thought maybe I should keep away from "wife" books, as well. But at some point, I bought a copy. It still stayed on my TBR pile for a couple of years.

Then, one of my blogger friends introduced me to "Paris in July" and I thought it was time to read it. First of all, it has the word "Paris" in its title and it takes place in Paris. Also, I have read a few books by Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls) and have a few more on my wishlist. So, why not give it a go?

I was positively surprised about the book. Written from the perspective of the first of his four wives, we learn a lot about Hadley as well as Ernest and his second wife, Pauline.

The author remarks: "Although Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway and other people who actually lived appear in this book as fictional characters, it was important for me to render the particulars of their lives as accurately as possible, and to follow the very well documented historical record."

I was aware throughout the whole book that this is a novel written in the form of a memoir, not a biography. That didn't change the fact that it was highly interesting to read about the lives of some extraordinary people. Hemingway was in an interesting circle of authors and artists and they all appear in the book.

I have lived in four different countries and I came from a small village into a big foreign town in my early twenties but life was different in our time. We didn't have the internet but there were books, there was the television and people had moved around, not many and often not far but nothing compared to the difference between Hadley's sheltered, very remote life before she met Ernest Hemingway and life in Paris. It must have been really, really hard for her.

There are also some small parts where Ernest tells us his side of the story. Of course, he has already been through and survived one war which always changes a man. But you also can tell there that they were two completely different personalities not just with different ideas but also with different goals. It's probably a miracle the marriage survived as long as it did.

The book is not just interesting concerning the life of the Hemingways but also the other characters are interesting as is the life in Paris in the twenties. We hear so much about it. This book helps us understanding it a little better. Definitely brilliantly written.

I'd love to read more of Paula McLain's books but definitely her memoir: "Like Family. Growing Up In Other People's Houses".

One quote by Ernest Hemingway: "I want to write one true sentence", he said. "If I can write one sentence, simple and true every day, I'll be satisfied". I think his writing shows that this was his goal and he achieved it.

At the end of the book, Paula McLain adds a list of her sources, all of them would be interesting to read if you like the subjects:

About the Hemingways:
Alice Hunt Sokoloff, Alice " Hadley: The First Mrs. Hemingway"
Diliberto, Gioia "Hadley"
Kert, Bernice "The Hemingway Women"
Baker, Carlos "Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story and Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917-1961"
Reynolds, Michael "Hemingway: The Paris Years and Hemingway: The American Homecoming"
Brian, Denis "The True Gen"

About Paris in the twenties
Wiser, Willam "The Crazy Years"
Flanner, Janet "Paris Was Yesterday"
Tomkins, Calvin "Living Well Is the Best Revenge"
Milford, Nancy "Zelda"
Fussell, Paul "The Great War and Modern Memory"

Other books by Ernest Hemingway:
"A Moveable Feast"
"In Our Time"
"The Sun Also Rises"
"The Garden of Eden"
"Death in the Afternoon"
"The Complete Short Stories"

From the back cover:

"Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition to write. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip, is no place for family life and fidelity. Ernest and Hadley's marriage begins to founder and the birth of a beloved son serves only to drive them further apart. Then, at last, Ernest's ferocious literary endeavours begin to bring him recognition - not least from a woman intent on making him her own."

Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in 'The Old Man and the Sea' and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style" and the Pulitzer Prize for "The Old Man and the Sea" in 1953.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Kästner, Erich "Lisa and Lottie"

Kästner, Erich "Lisa and Lottie" (aka The Parent Trap) (German: Das doppelte Lottchen) - 1949

Most English-speaking girls of my generation grew up with the "Little House Books", "Little Women", "A Little Princess", "Anne of Green Gables" and other stories about little girls growing up.

But I grew up as a German-speaking girl and one of the books I read as a child was "Lottie and Lisa", the German title being translated into "Double Lottie", in the English-speaking world better known through the US American films that were made from it, "The Parent Trap", one in 1961 with Hayley Mills, the other one in 1998 with Lindsey Lohan.

Lisa is a spoiled brat and lives with her single father in Vienna. When she is nine years old, she is sent to a summer camp in Northern Germany. There, she discovers that she seems to have a lookalike. Whilst at first she is so angry that the girls fight all the time, even though Lottie is a quiet girl, they soon discover that there is something wrong. Their birthday is the same day, Lottie only has a mother, so many things that are weird. They assume they are twins separated because the parents divorced. So, they decide to switch places, Lisa goes to Munich to stay with the mother as Lottie whereas Lottie takes on the role of Lisa in Vienna.

Sounds familiar? I guess almost everyone has watched a movie called "The Parent Trap" at one point or another. Either the one from 1961 with Hayley Mills who played both roles or from 1998 with Lindsey Lohan, also representing both twins. There are many more adaptations but these are probably the best known internationally. The German film from 1951 was the first to receive the German Film Award. The screenplay was written by Erich Kästner himself and if you know even a little German, try to watch the film (look here at IMDb), it's a lot better than both the American versions. And the twins are played by real twins.

This book (Double Lottie if you translate it literally) was already written in 1942 but since the pacifistic author was banned by the Nazis, it took a while until it was published.

Even then, it led to a lot of discussions. Divorce was not considered a good subject for a children's book and a single, successful working mother wasn't exactly the picture people wanted to see.

Erich Kästner was a very successful German author. This book is a little different from his other books as its main characters are girls and the mother is a strong woman.

I read this book when I was quite young and really loved it. I re-read it when my kids were young. It doesn't matter how old you are and whether you have children or not. It is a great book to read.

From the back cover:

"Imagine what a surprise it would be to discover you are a twin, and you never knew it! This is just what happened to Lisa of Vienna and Lottie of Munich when they met at summer camp.

The shock of meeting was followed by many pleasant hours while the girls got to know each other and exchanged stories about Father and Mother. And then the nine-year-olds decided on a daring plan - they would switch places and hope to find a way to bring their parents back together!"

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Italian Journey"

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Italian Journey" (aka Letters from Italy) (German: Italienische Reise) - 1817

Goethe is considered one of the greatest thinkers in the world. He was not just a writer of novels, poetry and play, he was also a scientist and an artist. One of his most famous non-fictional publications is the "Theory on Colours", published in 1810, including his colour wheel and a very early study on the physiological effects of colour.

In his late thirties, he embarked on a trip to Italy, not a two week holiday like we are used to nowadays, no, he stayed for more than a year, travelled through the country and observed their culture and art.

In this book, he tells us all about his visits to the various parts of Italy, the museums and operas, his meeting the local population. Since not many people could travel at the time, it was something like a travel documentary you might watch on television today of a place you know you will never get to visit.

But he didn't just do a sightseeing tour, he also made botanical, mineralogical, geological and geographical researches and made quite a few discoveries, e.g. on the propagation of plants.

So, if any of this interests you, I can heartily recommend the book. After all, he was a perfect author and could tell stories in a way not many can. However, if you think the topic is too dry, I recommend other works by Goethe, e.g. "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (German: Die Leiden des jungen Werther).

But it is certainly worth reading Goethe. I hope he is as great in the translations as he is in German. In the "Country of Poets and Thinkers", he truly is one of the greatest. His thoughts are still as up to date as they were 200 years ago.

From the back cover:

"In 1786, when he was already the acknowledged leader of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, Goethe set out on a journey to Italy to fulfil a personal and artistic quest and to find relief from his responsibilities and the agonies of unrequited love. As he travelled to Venice, Rome, Naples and Sicily he wrote many letters, which he later used as the basis for the Italian Journey. A journal full of fascinating observations on art and history, and the plants, landscape and the character of the local people he encountered, this is also a moving account of the psychological crisis from which Goethe emerged newly inspired to write the great works of his mature years."

 

The picture on the cover of the English book (Goethe in the Roman Campagna) was painted by his friend Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein whom Goethe visited in Rome during his travels. The picture is both the most famous one by Tischbein as well as the most famous one of Goethe.

H., A. "My Struggle"

H., A. "My Struggle" (Notes by some megalomanic who thought he could rule the world) (German: M.K.) - 1925/26

I am not going to mention the name of the author or the original (German) title of this book, you will certainly guess who I am talking about and can see it from the cover of the book and from the goodreads page where you get when you click on the book. I don't want to make it too easy to find this post for the new fans of him and his ways. And I will delete any comments of those so inclined.

As mentioned on the book cover, he was described as a madman, a tyrant, the devil incarnate, any evil word you can imagine. And none of them is bad enough.

This was certainly one of the worst books I ever read, both in the way it was written and in the content. Even though it is supposedly an autobiography, it is more a propaganda and combat pamphlet and full of conspiracy theories. It was meant as a counter-proposal to Marxism.

I read these rantings because my grandfather had read the book before the war and then warned everyone not to vote for the guy. His words had been "He only wants war". From then on, my grandfather was known as "the communist" and had to go into hiding during some time of the war. That, and because he helped some Jews.

I always wanted to read the book but it was not for sale in Germany for a long, long time. I had foreign friends who read it but they read translations, of course. I always prefer to read the original, especially in such an important case. So, when a friend said she "inherited" it from her in-laws, I took it as a sign that I should read it now. Also, with so many people resurrecting his idea nowadays, I thought it was a good idea to get further into the subject. I knew I would never change my mind about him and anyone who has similar ideas. I am more inclined to the other side.

Winston Churchill had said that Allied politicians and the military should have studied this book very carefully. He was right, of course. If my grandfather with his 8 years of general school understood what was behind it, the learned men certainly would have. In 1945, it was shown in the news that an American soldier puts the lead set of this book into the fire in a symbolic act. Probably should have left it there.

This book is just racist. I was expecting that. But if someone honestly believes that there are people who are worth more because they are born with a certain colour of their skin or a certain religion or whatever and even thinks that is a scientific fact, you can only call him stupid.

Unfortunately, he wasn't that stupid. He knew exactly what he was planning and what he was doing. Apparently, he was a good speaker though all I can ever see or hear from him are rantings, ramblings, shoutings, blustering, fulminations (almost as a certain president of our time). And him being "always right".

I always thought it was funny how he was such a fan of the "Arian race" tall and with their blond hair and blue eyes. He was everything but. Also, he was so keen on the German people. He wasn't even German, he was Austrian.

I was always curious to find out why people would have fascist ideas, why they would have racist thoughts. Maybe the biggest racist of them all could at least shine some light on it and we'd find a way to convince the new generation who has got some big racists amongst them that they are wrong. Of course, I didn't expect to find a solution in this book and there was none.

My father used to tell me that whoever was one of the lowest workers in his village all of a sudden was a member of the party in some of the highest positions. I think that explains a lot.

I see young people nowadays who claim that foreigners take up their jobs. This is exactly what people were saying in Germany in the twenties and thirties. The extremists take advantage of any situation and always blame someone else, foreigners, other religions (Jews then, Muslims now), whatever. It's never them, it's always the others.

Oh, and one last remark. If you do intend to read this book, don't expect high literature. It is really, really badly written. I had to look a long time for a neutral book cover without the picture of the author or the emblem of his party because, as I said above, I don't want to "promote" this book or anything that stands with it. As said on the cover, this is "... a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust." True. Let's not ever allow anything like this happen again.

From the back cover:

"Madman, tyrant, animal - history has given A.H. many names. 

In M.K. (My Struggle), often called the N. bible, H. describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams. Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young A. grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a laborer. 

During the First World War, H. served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery. After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker's party.

In 1924, H. led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich "Beer-hall putsch" was unsuccessful, and H. was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated H. dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess. 

He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become M.K., the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for H.'s political and military campaign. In M.K., H. describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. 

It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust."