In June 1939 Annemarie Schwarzenbach and fellow writer Ella Maillart set out from Geneva in a Ford, heading for Afghanistan. The first women to travel Afghanistan's Northern Road, they fled the storm brewing in Europe to seek a place untouched by wha...

Alexander Kluge's work has long grappled with the Third Reich and its aftermath, and the extermination of the Jews forms its gravitational center. Kluge is forever reminding us to keep our present catastrophes in perspective – "calibrated" – against...

In "The Atlas of an Anxious Man", Christoph Ransmayr offers a mesmerizing travel diary – a sprawling tale of earthly wonders seen by a wandering eye. This is an exquisite, lyrically told travel story. Translated by Simon Pare, this unique account fol...

"I think in pictures. Poems help me with this. They are like buoys in the sea. I swim to them, from one to the other. In between, without them, I am lost. They are the handholds where something masses together in the infinite expanse" – Anselm Kiefer...

"Gone, finito, The End, I say. A father who puts an end to it all before he wears down the whole family deserves more praise than damnation". Two sisters travel to Sofia – in a convoy of luxury limousines arranged by a fellow Bulgarian exile – to...

Christa Wolf was arguably the best-known and most influential writer in the former East Germany. Having grown up during the Nazi regime, she and her family were forced to flee their home like many others, nearly starving to death in the process. Her...

How, in 1930, did Alfred Wegener, the son of minister from Berlin, find himself in the most isolated spot on earth, attempting to survive an unthinkably cold winter in the middle of Greenland? In "All the Land", Jo Lendle sets out to chronicle Wegene...

Northern Spain is the only part of Western Europe where anarchism played a significant role in political life of the twentieth century. Enjoying wide-ranging support among both the urban and rural working class, its importance peaked during its "brie...

"At the Burning Abyss" is Franz Fuhmann's magnum opus – a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry. P...

On its publication in German, "Against the World" was hailed as an immediate classic. "One of the most spectacular debuts of recent decades", said Kulturspiegel, while Der Spiegel went even farther: "Against the World is the book of books". Now Engli...