Doris Dörrie, Sibylle Berg or Peter Handke: They will all be bringing out new books in the coming months. About the top publications in the spring of literature.
Several Nobel Prize winners for literature and many other award-winning authors bring out new books in the spring. Some novels deal with the relationship between humans and nature, such as Orhan Pamuk or Esther Kinsky. Books by Michel Houellebecq and Sibylle Berg strike a political note. An overview of important new publications in the first half of 2022.
Yasmina Reza writes about Auschwitz
Another novel from France should also cause discussion. At the end of January, “Serge”, the new book by Yasmina Reza, who according to Hanser Verlag is the most played contemporary playwright, will be published. “Yasmina Reza had the craziest idea of the year: to write a comedy about Auschwitz,” said her fellow writer Frédéric Beigbeder. «Serge» is about a Jewish family visiting Auschwitz. The publisher said: “Reza has a virtuoso balance between comedy and tragedy when temperaments collide during a tour of the city.”
Esther Kinsky listens to the landscape
At the center of Esther Kinsky’s new novel is a natural disaster. The multi-award-winning author has planned two earthquakes in which almost 1,000 people died in 1976 in Friuli, northern Italy. In «Rombo», seven residents of a remote mountain village report on their lives after the earthquake. An excerpt from the novel was awarded the W. G. Sebald Literature Prize even before it was published, according to the Suhrkamp Verlag. The jury saw in it a text “which in an impressive way unfolds a memory poetics of the rock and the landscape”.
Orhan Pamuk: Historical novel about the plague
The Turkish Nobel Prize laureate Orhan Pamuk also devotes himself to a disaster story in his new novel. Pamuk tells of the plague that broke out on a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire in 1901. Muslims and Christians accuse each other of introducing the pathogen. Conditions are chaotic on the island, which is finally blocked with warships by the Sultan in the Ottoman Empire as well as England and France. Pamuk’s new book “The Nights of the Plague” cleverly combines fantasy and reality, past and present, East and West, writes the Hanser Verlag.
Doris Dörrie becomes the heroine of her own story
From literary history, we know the hero’s journey primarily with male protagonists. Doris Dörrie, who lives in Munich, now focuses on the heroine in her new book. In “Die Heldin travels”, the 66-year-old tells of three trips – to San Francisco, Japan and Morocco – “and of traveling the world as a woman,” writes the Diogenes Verlag. Exposing yourself to uncertainty always means facing your own fears. “And to become the heroine of your own story.”
Peter Handke drafts a «dialogue»
The Austrian Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate Peter Handke has two speakers appear in his new book. Images and memories emerge in their dialogue. One of them, as Suhrkamp Verlag describes it, “still remembers that visit to the theater as a schoolchild: not the play, but the decor, the setting.” Since then, he has encountered it as a “prototype” on hikes. The other remembers his grandfather, who “lay in the trenches on the Isonzo and in Galicia and handled the animals in his own way, speared the snake on the rake and walled the hornets alive in the hollow tree.” The theater stage as the venue, the grandfather as the player – that should be the scenario that Handke describes in the narrow volume.
Karl Ove Knausgard does not write about himself
The Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgard is actually known for making himself the subject of his novels. “Der Morgenstern” now tells of characters who, at least at first glance, have nothing to do with the life of the 53-year-old. The novel follows nine people over several midsummer days. Summer in Norway – actually a contemplative time, as stated in the announcement by Luchterhand Verlag. But something has gotten out of hand in the world of the novel: «Crabs walk ashore, rats appear in surprising places, a cat dies under strange circumstances. In short: the animals behave contrary to their nature. ” In his new novel, Knausgard describes a world in which nature and people are no longer in balance.
Sibylle Berg is back in the future dystopia
The new novel by the German-Swiss author Sibylle Berg sounds like a thematic link to her bestseller “GRM”. «RCE» is set in a dystopian world that doesn’t seem that far away. Right-wing populism, digital surveillance and capitalism rule Western Europe. The people are “frozen in a calm ready to consume”, writes the publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch. But not all: “The lights are only on in a secure container. Here hackers sit in front of their computers and code. And what they unleash step by step is nothing less than the world revolution. “
Yasmina Reza: Serge, will be published on January 24 by Hanser, 208 pages, ISBN 978-3-446-27292-7
Esther Kinsky: Rombo, will be published on February 14 by Suhrkamp, 267 pages, ISBN 978-3-518-43057-6
Orhan Pamuk: The Nights of the Plague, will be published by Hanser on February 14th, 696 pages, ISBN 978-3-446-27084-8
Doris Dörrie: Die Heldin travels, will be published by Diogenes on February 23, 240 pages, ISBN 978-3-257-07184-9
Peter Handke: Dialogue, will be published by Suhrkamp on March 27, 64 pages, ISBN 978-3-518-22536-3
Karl Ove Knausgard: Der Morgenstern, will be published by Luchterhand on April 11th, approx. 800 pages, ISBN 978-3-630-87516-3
Sibylle Berg: RCE, will be published on May 5th by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 608 pages, ISBN 978-3-462-00164-8