Where is your nonfiction section please.
Book review: The Ravine, by Wendy Lower & Those Who Forget, by Geraldine Schwarz In her new book The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed, Wendy Lower, a historian with extensive work around the Holocaust, is put onto an intriguing research journey: Lower encountered an extremely rare photograph depicting the murder of... Continue Reading →
It's finally time to close the book on a year none of us will forget, much as we'd like to! 2020 may have sucked unendingly for so very many reasons, but it did have some redeeming qualities in the new nonfiction department. Here are my favorites, in no particular order, from the 2020 new nonfiction... Continue Reading →
Review: A Demon-Haunted Land, by Monica Black (Bookshop.org) To understand something about how one type of society began the process of becoming a very different one, this book looks at two distinctive but related forms of postwar haunting. One plagued individuals, beleaguered souls who sought spiritual respite -- who wanted to be healed, transformed, or... Continue Reading →
Although it was overshadowed by the US Election Day beginning the next morning, on November 2 there was a terror attack in my former home of Vienna. I lived there for more than seven years and met my husband there, so it'll always be a place precious to me, even if I was very ready... Continue Reading →
Book review: Not a Novel, by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Kurt Beals If the language that you can speak isn't enough, that's a very good reason to start writing. As paradoxical as it may be: The impossibility of expressing what happens to us in words is what pushes us towards writing. Whenever I haven't been... Continue Reading →
How's your reading for Women in Translation Month? I haven't actually read anything new in translation yet this month, but I can recommend three fantastic memoirs by women in translation that I've read recently. Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman's Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany, by Marie Jalowicz Simon, translated... Continue Reading →
It's August, which means: Women in Translation month! This is far and away my favorite literary event of the year. Meytal Radzinski of Bibliobio began this initiative in 2014, which serves to increase awareness of and engagement with translated works written by women. Female-authored books comprise only around 30% of those translated into English each... Continue Reading →
I haven't been on the ball with checking upcoming new titles this year, for, well, lots of reasons. But I think there have also been many shifting publication dates, and it seems lots of releases have been pushed to next year. Nevertheless, there's still some exciting upcoming new nonfiction to look forward to in the... Continue Reading →
Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, by David Enrich (Amazon / Book Depository) This is the story of Deutsche Bank’s rise and fall. It is about the men who transformed a sleepy German lender into what was, for a time, the largest bank in the world, but who also... Continue Reading →
Book review: A Bookshop in Berlin, by Francoise Frenkel (Amazon / Book Depository) Francoise Frenkel, born Frymeta Frenkel, was a Polish Jew who opened Berlin's first French-language bookstore in 1921. She fled Berlin after the infamous Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, that targeted Jewish shops and institutions, abandoning the beloved shop she'd had to... Continue Reading →
The Zookeepers' War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War, by J.W. Mohnhaupt, translated from German by Shelley Frisch (Amazon / Book Depository) published November 12, 2019 The English translation of J.W. Mohnhaupt's German bestseller The Zookeepers' War opens with scenes from (West) Berlin's Zoological Garden as the Second World War reached Berlin's doorstep. It follows... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Dead Ladies Project, by Jessa Crispin (Amazon / Book Depository) It was my circumstances that were killing me, I was sure of it. Jessa Crispin, editor of the now-defunct online literary magazine Bookslut, published a memoir, The Dead Ladies Project in 2015, but I was in no hurry to read it. I couldn't... Continue Reading →
