'All his powers were in decline; the only thing growing stronger in him was the conviction that all this could not last much longer, that his demise was imminent.' The Buddenbrooks (1900) was Thomas Mann's first major success. It draws on his own family history and on his vivid memories of growing up in the commercial town of Lübeck in North Germany. The narrative traces the decline of a wealthy, established merchant family, from their height during the last decad...

'I loathe what I did, but what I loathe even more is your virtue.' Seventeen-year-old Effi Briest is steered by her parents into marriage with an ambitious bureaucrat, twenty years her senior. He takes her from her home to a remote provincial town on the Baltic coast of Prussia where she is isolated, bored, and prey to superstitious fears. She drifts into a half-hearted affair with a manipulative, womanizing officer, which ends when her husband is transferred to Berlin. Ye...

'Someone must have been telling tales about Josef K. for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.' A successful professional man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. The mysterious court which conducts his trial is outwardly co-operative, but capable of horrific violence. Faced with this ambiguous authority, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure. He consults various advisers...

STARRED REVIEW "Swiss author Schneider’s excellent first mystery and series launch...gripping, plausible debut bodes well for future entries." Publishers Weekly---------- It is the end of October, the city of Basel is grey and wet. It could be December. It is just after midnight when Police Inspector Peter Hunkeler, on his way home and slightly worse for wear, spots old man Hardy sitting on a bench under a street light. He wants to smoke a cigarette with him, but the usually very loquaciou...

classic novel of Kaballah & legend, tr M Mitchell

Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–73) is recognized as one of the most important novelists, poets, and playwrights of postwar German literature. As befitting such a versatile writer, her War Diary is not a day-by-day journal but a series of sketches, depicting the last months of World War II and the first year of the subsequent British occupation of Austria. These articulate and powerful entries—all the more remarkable taking into account Bachmann’s young age at the time—rev...

'between the life we live and the life we feel...there is the invisible border, like a narrow gate' Set in a boarding school in a remote area of the Habsburg Empire at the turn of the last century, The Confusions of Young Törless is an intense study of an adolescent's psychological development as he struggles to come to terms with his conflicting emotions. Through his relationship with two other boys Törless is led into sadistic and sexual encounters with a third ...

“...One shares Susanne's belief that she must try to carry the deception off. Whether she will succeed keeps the reader, peering over Susanne's shoulder at all the traps, turning the pages of this remarkable book.”—The Independent (UK)Praise for Petra Hammesfahr's The Sinner:“The Sinner is best psychological suspense novel I have read all year.”—Daily Telegraph“Dubbed Germany’s answer to Patricia Highsmith, Hammes...

Two books by Maurice Rajsfus, a French activist and former investigative journalist for Le Monde, who shares his research and personal recollections in order to shed new light on France's role in the Holocaust.In the first volume, "Operation Yellow Star," Rajsfus meticulously analyzes archival documents, demonstrating the extent of police collaboration with the Vichy regime and how it facilitated the persecution, deportation, and ultimately the death of hu...

A remarkable work of horror, half-way between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Comic, fantastic and grotesque, Walpurgisnacht uses Prague as the setting for a clash between German officialdom immured in the ancient castle above the Moldau, and a Czech revolution seething in the city below. Written in 1917, Walpurgisnacht continues the message of The Green Face, of a decadent society on the brink of collapse and of a Europe past salvation. In it we see Meyrink's exceptional narrative powers at their height.

The Other Side tells of a dream kingdom which becomes a nightmare, of a journey to Pearl, a mysterious city created deep in Asia, which is also a journey to the depths of the subconcious, or as Kubin himself called it, 'a sort of Baedeker for those lands which are half known to us'. Written in 1908, and more or less half way between Meyrink and Kafka, it was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the artists and writers of the Expressionist generation. Franz Marc called it a magnificent reckoning...