For distinguished philosopher Hans Blumenberg, lions were a life-long obsession. "Lions", translated by Kari Driscoll, collects thirty-two of Blumenberg's philosophical vignettes to reveal that the figure of the lion unites two of his other great pre...

It's the early 1970s and Dion Katthusen, thirteen, is growing up fatherless in a small village in northern Germany. An only child plagued with a devastating stutter, Dion is ostracized by his peers and finds solace in the company of nature, collectin...

Any new book by poet, essayist, writer, and translator Hans Magnus Enzensberger, one of the most influential and internationally renowned German intellectuals, is cause for notice, and "Mr. Zed's Reflections" is no exception. Every afternoon for almo...

Jurek Becker (1937-1997) is best known for his novel "Jacob the Liar", which follows the life of a man, who, like Becker, lived in the Lodz ghetto during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. Throughout his career, Becker also wrote nonfic...

Should you find yourself strolling along the coastal heights of Douarnenez, a Brittany town near the westernmost point of continental France, you would do well to look out for a signpost marked, "Georges Perros (1923-1978) 'Dazzled by the sea'". Perr...

The narrator in Jean-Luc Benoziglio's "Privy Portrait" has fallen on hard times. His wife and young daughter have abandoned him, he has no work or prospects, he's blind in one eye, and he must move into a horribly tiny apartment with his only possess...

Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) is recognized as one of post-war German literature's most important novelists, poets, and playwrights. Influenced by Hans Weigel and the legendary literary circle Gruppe 47, Bachmann gained international renown for her p...

People have argued since time immemorial. Disagreement is a part of life, of human experience. But we now live in times when any form of protest in India is marked as anti-Indian and met with arguments that the very concept of dissent was imported in...

Close to death, an old man collapses and struggles to his bed. The sounds of the endless night unsettle him, triggering images, questions, and memories. In What Darkness Was, Inka Parei, author of The Shadow-Boxing Woman, allows the reader to inhabit...

This screenplay by Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch was developed from an episode in his 1964 novel "Gantenbein", or "A Wilderness of Mirrors". At the center of both works is Theo Ehrismann, a man who cannot seem to change his life no matter...