Read Around Europe Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Europe.
Best books from Europe (2670)
891.
Germany892.
Vertigo by Winfried Georg Sebald EN
Description:
Part fiction, part travelogue, the narrator of this compelling masterpiece pursues his solitary, eccentric course from England to Italy and beyond, succumbing to the vertiginous unreliability of memory itself. What could possibly connect Stendhal's unrequited love, the artistry of Pisanello, a series of murders by a clandestine organisation, a missing passport, Casanova, the suicide of a dinner companion, stale apple cake, the Great Fire of London, a story by Kafka about a doomed huntsman and a closed-down pizzeria in Verona?
893.
The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations by Max Weber EN
Description:
Max Weber is widely recognized as the greatest of the founders of classical sociology. Yet whilst his thought is often associated with the development of capitalism in Western Europe or the analysis of modernity, Weber also had a profound scholarly interest in ancient societies and the Near East. The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations—Weber's neglected masterpiece which first appeared in German in 1987 and was reissued in 1909—represents a fascinating and rigorous exercise to bring the newly-forged concepts of sociology to bear on civilizations as diverse as Mesopotamia and Egypt, Heb... continue
894.
You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann EN
Description:
A thrilling exploration of psychological disturbance and fear from the bestselling and prize-winning author of Measuring the World. On retreat in the wintry Alps with his family, a writer is optimistic about completing the sequel to his breakthrough film. Nothing to disturb him except the wind whispering around their glassy house. The perfect place to focus. Intruding on that peace of mind, the demands of his four-year-old daughter splinter open long-simmering arguments with his wife. I love her, he writes in the notebook intended for his script. Why do we fight all the time? Guilt and expecta... continue
895.
Hauptsache nichts mit Menschen by Paul Bokowski DE
Description:
Es liegt nicht unbedingt an Berlin, dass Paul Bokowski von einer absurd-komischen Begegnung in die nächste schlittert. Es liegt vielmehr in der Natur der Menschen, dass man viel Eigenartiges mit ihnen erleben kann. Mit seinen Eltern beispielsweise, einer wildfremden Dame, die ihm völlig ungefragt Vorträge über Backrezepte hält, oder aber auch gerne mit sich selbst: Sei es, dass der passionierte Hypochonder angesichts einer drohenden Mandel-OP Dutzende von Abschiedsbriefen verfasst oder beim Möbelkauf in eine unvergessliche Weihnachtsfeier von IKEA gerät. Paul... continue
896.
Description:
"Provocative and knotty . . . Identitti is a bracing story, one in which Sanyal refuses to give us the easy way out." —Olivia Craighead, The New York Times Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a well-known blogger and doctoral student is in awe of her supervisor—superstar postcolonial and race studies South-Asian professor Saraswati. But her life and sense of self are turned upside down when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Nivedita’s praise of her professor during a radio interview just hours before the news breaks—and before she learns the truth—calls into question her own reputation as ... continue
897.
Madgermanes by Birgit Weyhe EN
Description:
‘Madgermanes’ is what the Mozambican workers once contracted out to East Germany are called today. At the end of the 1970s, some 20,000 of them were sent from the People’s Republic of Mozambique to the GDR to labour for their socialist sister country. After the Berlin Wall fell, almost all of them lost their residency status. Decades later, they are still waiting for most of their wages to be paid.
Birgit Weyhe depicts their search for belonging and a place to call home, caught between two cultures and two states that no longer exist. Based on extensive interviews, she cre... continue
899.
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck EN
Description:
Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for the best translated novel of 2014, now a New Directions paperback
900.
Description:
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