Books of the month: The SZ book tips in August – culture

Daniela Dröscher: Lies about my mother

In Germany, class membership was not an issue for a long time, but now literary writing about it is immigrating again from France with the books by Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis. Daniela Dröscher’s novel “Lies about my mother” takes place from 1983 to 1986 in the village of Obach in the Hunsrück with 500 inhabitants. In her petit-bourgeois world, the narrator’s mother always remains a disruptive factor: on the one hand, because she speaks High German, on the other hand, the strong first sentences of the novel reveal “My mother doesn’t fit in a coffin. She’s too fat, she says.” Dröscher chooses two perspectives – that of the daughter as a child and that of the narrator today, at the moment when the novel is being written. A level of reflection that enriches this story of a childhood in the provinces.

Find the full review here here.

Hernán Díaz: Loyalty

The financial system shapes our reality, or is it the other way around? Hernán Díaz’ novel “Trust” (German: “Loyalty”) deals with this question: in the USA the most discussed book of the summer. The story follows introverted billionaire Benjamin Rask, who becomes the richest man in the country on Wall Street in the 1920s. The rumor that he caused the collapse of the American economy of 1929 for the sake of profit is true. The trick of the novel lies in its form, it actually consists of four books: in addition to the story by Rask, there is a draft of an autobiography, a ghostwriter’s memoir and excerpts from a notebook. Who, the novel asks, has the writing systems that shape our reality?

Find the full review here here.

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Jarvis Cocker: Good Pop, Bad Pop

“Good Pop, Bad Pop” was the name of an exhibition by pop icon Jarvis Cocker: At some point the attic had to be cleaned out and the result was an autobiographical story based on found things. From this, the wonderful book of the same name accompanying the exhibition, with its many photos of amazing textiles and ambitious provincial dance floors, with its charming chats and recipes for everyone who has ever dreamed of conquering the world with a guitar while sitting at school . We see the 15-year-old Cocker, who already had his master plan back then: pave the way to success with “fairly conventional, yet slightly off-beat, pop songs” and then turn the music business upside down.

Find the full review here here.

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Vincent August: Technological Governing. The Rise of Network Thinking in the Crisis of Modernity. Foucault, Luhmann and cybernetics

Ecologically, time is of the essence, and politically, centuries-old republican systems are faltering. In his book “Technological Governing”, Vincent August turns his attention away from the “outdated rationality of modernity” with its ideas of sovereignty, hierarchy and control towards “network thinking”. As popular as the phrase about the “complexity of society” is, the circularity and self-regulation of the systems characterize contemporary society. At least that can be observed from the perspective of the systems theorist Niklas Luhmann and the power critic Michel Foucault. How well network thinking and an interest in the common good go together and why neoliberal ideas are so persistent in all of this can be considered in this book.

Find the full review here here.

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Musa Deli: growing together. The challenges of integration

Can’t we all start over? The question begs the understanding one gains from reading Musa Deli’s Growing Together. The book becomes an eye-opener for people with and without a migration background by making destinies tangible. The social psychologist is head of the Cologne health center for migrants. He builds his bridges without apportioning blame or presumptions of innocence and cannot be assigned to any political direction. Whatever prejudices one may have cultivated against German Turks, Deli’s book changes perspective. He does this by presenting the behavior of individuals in the context of social coexistence in an equally disarming manner for all sides.

Find the full review here here.

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Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses

It was slowly sinking into oblivion what a global event this book is connected to. But after writer Salman Rushdie was seriously wounded by a suspected assassin on August 12, 2022, it’s back on many desserts. Not to explain the violence that has threatened its author for decades. But to remember that shortly after it first appeared in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran, issued a fatwa against Rushdie and his “supporters”, including publishers, translators and booksellers worldwide. Then there were attacks, some fatal ones, Rushdie lived in secret for a decade. In the meantime he had felt relatively safe again when the fatwa afflicted him again after 33 years. Right now it is therefore advisable to continue reading Rushdie, especially the novel “The Satanic Verses”!

Read the background herefor the German translation of the novel hereon the political function of fatwa here.

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