Deutsche Literatur (hauptsachlich in Ubersetzung)

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Panopticon: Twenty Ten-Minute Essays (The German List), translated from the German by Tess Lewis (London & New York: Seagull Books, 2018).

Peter Handke, Storm Still (The German List), translated from the German by Martin Chalmers (London & New York: Seagull Books, 2014).

Peter Handke, The Great Fall (The German List), translated from the German by Krishina Winston (London & New York: Seagull Books, 2018).

Herta Muller, Father's on the Phone With the Flies: A Selection (The German List), translated from the German by Thomas Cooper (London & New York: Seagull Books, 2018).

Christa Wolf, Eulogy for the Living (The German List), translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire (London & New York: Seagull Books, 2018).

INSPECTOR MAIGRET #52

Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Lazy Burglar (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Howard Curtis (New York: Penguin, 2018).

SUGGESTED FICTION

Tommy Orange, There, There: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2018):

If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don't know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

Id. at 139.

R. O. Kwon, The Incendiaries: A Novel (New York: Riverhead Books, 2018).

Kevin Powers, A Shout in the Ruins: A Novel (New York: Little, Brown, 2018).

Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (New York: Penguin Press, 2018).

Keith Gessen, A Terrible Country: A Novel (New York:Viking, 2018):

'These people think Karl Marx is a nice old man with a beard,' my advisor once said to me when a group of grad students demanding a union took over one of the campus cafeterias. [] They think he's Santa Claus! he said, of the grad students. 'I'd like to pluck these friends of the working-class down in Petrograd in 1917. See how long they'd last.'

Id. at 167.

Emma Donoghue, The Lotterys, More or Less, illustrated by Caroline Hadilaksono (New York: Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, 2018).

Laird Hunt, In the House in the Dark of the Woods (New York: Little, Brown, 2018).

Helen Weinzweig, Basic Black With Pearls, afterword by Sarah Weinman (New York:NewYork Review Books/Classica, 2018).

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Call Me Zebra: A Novel (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).

Joyce Carol Oates, Hazards of Time Travel: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2018). "You can live a life even if it is not the life you would have chosen. You can live breath by breath. You can live." Id. at 245.

     Wolfman asked me who was president of NAS-23 but when I pronounced the name, Wolfman didn't recognize it.
     Presidents of the Reconstituted North American States were heads of the Patriot Party. The general population knew little about them though they were believed to be multi-billionaires or the associates of multi-billionaires. Their names were often invented names, fictitious names, attached to individuals or animated human figures replicated endlessly online and on TV; you were conditioned to 'like' them by their friendly, smiling facial expressions and by ingeniously addictive musical jingles that accompanied them, as you were urged to 'dislike' other figures. To attempt to learn facts about them was in violation of Homeland Security Information and could be considered treasonous.

Id. at 170-171.

Tana French, The Witch Elm: A Novel (New York: Viking, 2018).

Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver (New York: Del Rey, 2018).

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend: A Novel (New York: Riverhead Books, 2018). "I once heard a stranger in agitated conversation with her pug: And I suppose it's all my fault again, isn't it? At which, I swear, the dog rolled its eyes." Id. at 152.

Lydia Kiesling, The Golden State: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018).

Lauren Groff, Florida (New York: Riverhead Books, 2018). From Flower Hunters:

She says to her dog, who is beside her at the window watching the candle man, One day you'll wake up and realize your favorite person has turned into a person-shaped cloud.
The dog ignores her, because the dogs wise.

Id. at 155, 155-156.

Dara Horn, Eternal: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2018).

Joan Chase, During the Reign of the Queen of Persia, introduction by Meghan O'Rourke (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2014):

That night Uncle Dan shut himself in the parlor and played the trombone sonata he had practiced on and off over the years since his one year at college. Usually he told us that each time he played he got worse, instead of better, which he thought about summed up life anyway.

Id. at 215.

Peng Shepherd, The Book of M: A Novel (New York: Morrow, 2018).

Madeline Miller, Circe:A Novel (New York: Little, Brown, 2018). "'If you find yourself in want of company,' I said. 'tell the gods you will take their bad daughters. I think you will have the right touch for them.'" Id. at 380.

Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird: A Novel (New York: Ballatine Books, 2018).

Robert Galbraith (aka J.K.Rowling), Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel) (New York: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown, 2018).

Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry: A Novel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018):

It's nothing new, disunity. Disparity. Terminological conflict. There have always been dissenters, always those for whom the world is due a revolution and spilling of a little blood is the only way. The problem with the idea that history itself is that when it isn't making us wiser it's making us complacent. We should have learned something from Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and Somalia, yes. On the other hand: humans kill. They take what isn't theirs and they defend what is, however little that may be. They use violence when words don't work, but sometimes the reason words don't work is because the ones holding all the cards don't appear to be listening.

Id. at 237-238.

Rachel Cusk, Outline: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015).

Rachel Cusk, Transit: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016):

'Parents sometimes have a problem with that,' he said. 'They have this child that's a sort of silent witness to their lives, then the child grows up and starts blabbing their secrets all over the place and they don't like it. I'd say to them: get a dog instead. You had a child but actually what you needed was a dog, something that would love you and obey you but would never say a word, because the thing about a dog,' he said, 'is that no matter what you do to it, it will never, ever be able to talk back. . . '

Id. at 93-94.

Rachel Cusk, Kudos: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018).

Rebecca Makkai,The Great Believers: A Novel (New York: Viking, 2018).

Jana Casale, The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky (New York: Knopf, 2018).

Ling Ma, Severance: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018).

Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve: A Novel (NewYork: Bloomsbury, 2017):

     The moderator handed him a book. Promptly, Azur found the page he was looking for. 'Here it is!'
     Clearing his throat--rather theatrically, Peri thought--he began to read. 'The prevailing question whether God exists elicits one of the most tedious, unproductive and ill-advised disputations in which otherwise intelligent people have been engaged. We have seen, all too often, that neither theists nor atheists are ready to abandon their Hegemony of Certainty. Their seeming disagreement is a circle of refrains. It is not even accurate to call this battle of words a "debate", since the participants, irrespective of their points of view, are known to be intransigent in their positions. Where there is no possibility of change, there is no ground for real dialogue.'

Id. at 179.

Xhenet Aliu, Brass: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2018).

Christina Dalcher, Vox: A Novel  (New York: Berkley, 2018. "Think about what you need to do to stay free." Id. at 16.

Rachel Kushner, The Strange Case of Rachel K (New York: New Directions Books, 2015).

Eileen Chang, Little Reunions, translated from the Chinese by Jane Weizhen Pan & Martin Merz (New York: New York Review Books, 2018).

Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross, translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo, with an afterword by Thomas von Steinaecker (New York: New York Review Book, 2018). From the backcover:

The Seventh Cross is one of the most powerful, popular and influential novels of the twentieth century, a hair-raising thriller that helped to alert the world to the grim realities of Nazi Germany and that is no less exciting today that when it was first published in 1942. Seven political prisoners escape from a Nazi prison camp; in response, the camp commandant has seven trees harshly pruned to resemble seven crosses: they will serve as posts to torture each recaptured prisoner, and capture, of course, is certain. Meanwhile, the escapees split up and flee arose Germany, looking for such help and shelter as they can find along the way, determined to reach the border. Anne Seghers's novel is not only a supremely suspenseful story of flight and pursuit but also a detailed portrait of a nation in the grip and thrall of totalitarianism.

Marina Perezagua, The Story of H: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by Valerie Miles (New York:Ecco, 2018):

Uranium.The central ingredient of the bombs that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Uranium. . . . It's a relatively abundant material in the earth's crust, but can only be mined cost-effectively in regions where there is a high concentration of it, and where nobody cares about the ensuing environmental contamination from the extraction process, neither the country's government nor the international companies that hold mining rights. Which is to say, this type of mining takes place only in the trash dumps of the world, the landscapes that are of no interest to anyone, the air that can be poisoned because the lungs they fill belong to people who have no value whatsoever, the neglected class. Nuclear energy is much cleaner--I've heard it said so often--but believe me, I know something about uranium, and I know that, aside from the risks of accidents in nuclear power plants located in developed countries, the most polluting phase is the first one, the site of extraction, not only for the environment and nearby cities, but also for the hands of the people who mine it without knowing they're being murdered. Even if the workers knew their lives were at risk, they'd continue extracting the uranium because death by starvation seems more imminent than death by radiation poisoning. You can feel hunger--it pricks every day--but radiation poisoning is a silent killer. Besides, you know that in Africa there are always more workers than jobs. A thousand ants for each tiny crumb of bread. If they don't explain the risks of exposure, it's not for fear of being left without laborers, only that there's no time to waste; the white queen orders them to extract material, no break. Time isn't gold in Africa. It's more valuable than that. Time is uranium. Africans aren't informed about the hows and the whys of the death that is coming because the need to fill their bellies, o their sons' or daughters' or parents' bellies, is far more urgent. Starvation, that physiological law, doesn't hide; on the contrary, it is made manifest. Radiation, on the other hand, is the way death satiates its own hunger: silence.

Id. at 229-230.

Al Franken In Conversation with David Frum

INSPECTOR MAIGRET #51

Georges Simenon, Maigret Travels (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Howard Curtis (New York: Penguin, 2018).

Shields and Gerson on Mattis' resignation, congressional stalemate

If You Go Away - Helen Merrill & Stan Getz (Tribute to Virna Lisi)

END OF THE YEAR SUGGESTED FICTION

Margery Allingham, Hide My Eyes, illustrated by Alexandru Savescu (London:The Folio Society 2018).

Kate Atkinson, Transcription (New York: Little, Brown, 2018).

Larissa Boehning, Swallow Summer, translated from the German by Lyn Marven (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2016).

Carla Guelfenbein, In the Distance with You: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by John Cullen (New York: Other Press, 2018).

Golnaz Hasemzadeh Bonde, What We Owe, translated from the Swedish by Elizabeth Clark Wessel (London: Fleet, 2018).

Sebastian Faulks, Paris Echo: A Novel (New York: Henry Holt, 2018).

Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2018).

Olivia Laing, Crudo: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2018).

Patrick Modiano, Sleep of Memory, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale University Press, 2018).

Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2018).

Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore: A Novel, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel & Ted Gossen (New York: Knopf, 2018).

Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Shape of the Ruins: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean (New York: Riverbed Books, 2018).

Kate Walbert, History Favorite: A Novel (New York & London: Scribner, 2018).

INSPECTOR MAIGRET #50

Georges Simenon, Maigret Enjoys Himself (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by David Watson (New York: Penguin, 2017).

MISCELLANEOUS READS

Kaushik Basu, The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to Law and Economics (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018).

J. M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (New York: Viking, 2017).

Dave Eggers, The Monk of Mokha (New York: Knopf, 2018).

M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth: A Critical Edition, Translated from the original in Gujarati by Mahadev Desai, Introduced and Annotated by Tridip Suhrud (New Haven & London: Yale University Press 2018).

Michael Massing, Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind (New York: Harper, 2018).

Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan in the American Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2018).

David Stuttered, Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018).

Der Leiermann

Watch my heart crack: Fischer-Dieskau sings Schubert

WHAT TO DO WITH DEAD BODIES?

Thomas W. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015).

Autumn Leaves

INSPECTOR MAIGRET #49

Georges Simenon, Maigret's Failure (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by William Hobson (New York: Penguin, 2017).

CNN's Fareed Zakaria EXPOSING The Trump Administration As a Criminal & L...

MARTIN NIEMOLLER

Matthew D. Hockenos, Then They Came For Me: Martin Niemoller, The Pastor Who Defied the Nazis (New York: Basic Books, 2018). From the book jacket:

Whereas previous biographers have portrayed Niemoller as a principled man who was led astray by the Nazis, Hockenos contends that he knew exactly what Hitler stood for, and only gradually and reluctantly shed his right-wing sympathies. In fact, Niemoller's postwar confession represents the start of his long moral journey, not its end. Revealing the challenges and limits human of transformation, Then They Came for Me ultimately forces each of us to ask ourselves, What would I have done?

Full Interview: Michelle Obama Talks To Stephen Colbert

The most feared song in jazz, explained

IT AINT EASY BEING HEAVY!

Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2018).

Obama Responds To Heckler: You Won, So Why Are You "So Mad All The Time?"

Uncle Tom's Cabin Rag Classic Banjo

Jason Stanley, "How Fascism Works"

Chris Hedges - The American Empire Will Collapse Within a Decade, Two at...

INSPECTOR MAIGRET #48

Georges Simenon, Maigret Sets a Trap (Inspector Maigret), translated from the French by Sian Reynolds (New York: Penguin, 2017).

RACE IN AMERICA

Sarah Kelly Oehler & Esther Adler, eds., Charles White: A Retrospective (New Haven & London: The Art Institute of Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; & Yale University Press, 2018).

Adena Spingarn, Uncle Tom: From Martyr to Traitor, foreword by Henry Louis Gate, Jr. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2018).

Anders Walker, The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2018).