Book tips fall 2023
Social novels
© yganko / Adobe Stock
Anyone who loves books never goes to bed alone! So that there is no rude awakening, we have found the best new books of the season for you. Have fun with our favorite social novels for fall 2023!
Özge Inan – Of course you can’t live here
No, you can’t live there, in Turkey in the 80s. At least not if, like Nilay’s parents, you resist the regime’s repression after the military coup that will change the country forever. In your Debut novel the Berlin author leaves us Özge Inan, 26, look deeply into the torn souls of a Turkish couple who fled to Germany, who chose security for their children and gave up the revolution for it. Grippingly told and very enlightening. (240 p., 24 euros, Piper)
Charlotte Gneuss–Gittersee
Paul is gone. Fleeed to the West. In the summer of 1976, in a suburb of Dresden, 16-year-old Karin feels abandoned by everyone. Her mother runs away, her father drinks, her grandmother rules with cold severity, only her little sister needs her. And then a Stasi man puts pressure on her. Will the young woman become a traitor herself? Charlotte Gneuss designs with impressive sharpness in hers debut a world that fluctuates between lack of freedom and utopia, which she herself, born in 1992, only knows from stories. With her angry staccato speech, she captures exactly the attitude to life of a teenager. Exciting GDR retro without any nostalgia. (240 p., 22 euros, p. Fischer)
Anuradha Roy – Sound for the Gods
The Indian student Sara finds a piece of home again in England in the university’s pottery workshop. As she shapes the clay, her memories of Elango, the master potter who initiated her into the process of transforming lumps of earth into artistic ceramics and almost broke her because of his forbidden love for a Muslim woman, catch up with her. Creation, destruction and moving on is what this beautiful one is about novel, after reading which you will immediately want to make pottery yourself. (T: Werner Löhne-Lawrence, 288 p., 22 euros, Luchterhand)
Louise Kennedy – Transgression
Belfast in the mid-70s: there is war in the city. Armored soldiers’ cars are on every corner, and there are bomb attacks almost every day. Anyone who wants to run a pub in a Protestant part of town like the Laverys must remain neutral. But Cushla follows her heart and helps a Catholic boy. And starts an affair with a Protestant. Their love is like a continuous conquest in uncertain territory – and this novel is a force. (T: Claudia Glenewinkel, 320 pages, 25 euros, Steidl)
Germana Fabiano – Mattanza
In a unique epic tone that seems like the echo of ancient tales, the Sicilian Germana Fabiano lets the Story come to life on an island that is fighting against disappearance. Mattanza, the great slaughter, is the name of the cruel yet sustainable method of tuna fishing that has ensured the survival of the islanders for ages. But then the fish stop and needy people end up stranded on the island. (T: Barbara Neeb/Katharina Schmidt, 192 pages, 23 euros, mare)