Christa Wolf. German, East-German, to be exact, one of the leading names in German literature (was unfortunately, she died last year), but not very well known outside, for reason which I don't fully understand.
Her books are - hard to read, beautiful, haunting, true. I hardly ever get the feeling of someone writing their very soul out. I do so with Wolf. It's like somebody letting light into all the dark corners we are always afraid to look into. At the same time, there is great mastery to how she builds the books: the scaffolding of the story, which is sometimes not held together by a plot, but by something else: associations, feelings, characters and their relationships.
I don't think there is a book of fiction of hers which did not wholeheartedly get five stars from me, even if those are books which I would not have picked up if they were not by her. My favourites are perhaps Medea and Kassandra - both re-imaging of the reality behind the Greek myths, the last one accompanied by five essays on the writing process. Her other books are like this, not about what they superficially seem to be, but about everything. But on the surface they are about evenings, spent with friends in a tiny village - about the day that Chernobyl happened, even though spent in middle Europe - about ... Oh really, just about everything.
Some other books which come to my mind:
Christoph Hein: The Distant Lover Jorge Luis Borges: Short Fiction (Ficciones and/or Alpha) Sandor Marai: Embers
If you want to break into SF, John Tiptree Jr.'s (Alice Sheldon's ) "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever". Or Marge Piercy, both "He, She and It" and "Women on the Edge of Time" (her non sf work is great, too, but I haven't read much there - yet.).
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And about me as a reader:
Things I like, it random order: short (but I also love Umberto Eco, so I like long, if it's good enough), crisp, clear, extreme mastery of language, character-driven stories, contemporary, post modern, classics, literary, the personal and the political interconnected, strong women, books which ring true, stories which ring real, good science fiction preferably aware of the New Wave heritage, science fiction which is actually literary fiction just with the wrong label, painstakingly constructed stories (Borges, I look at you), meta-levels, Greek but not only Greek mythology, actually the antique Greek comedies and tragedies (Aristophanes is frighteningly modern - all the things sold as new, were already there), books which left a trace in literature (Paradise Lost).
I mostly read fiction and will very rarely venture into non-fiction. I don't like historical setting for their own sake, except when it's about the last 100 years or so, it has to be about the story that is told (as, say, in Eco's Name of the Rose) not about the time.
Authors: Naguib Mahfouz (brilliant writing and plot construction)
Antigonick - Anne Carson (an interesting re-telling/interpretation of Antigone) Blackout and All Clear - Connie Willis (science fiction+historical fiction, won three of the biggest SF awards) Small Island - Andrea Levy (lots of strong women, rings generally true, great characters) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell (gorgeous writing and understanding of personal relations) Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (one of my favorite classics, for the writing and characters) The Secret River - Kate Grenville
Oh, thank you! You mentioned Mahfouz in your other rec, too :D I'm definitely going to pick up his "Children of the Alley", which seems fascinating both in its subject and reception history.
Antigonick sounds amazing! A very experimental approach - I guess this will be one of those books one does not read at once, but enjoys over the course of several days or weeks. Nice, definitely on my list with it. (Antigone itself is such a great play!)
Connie Willis has been a bit of a meh experience for me. I read her "Doomsday Book" in 2011 and for me, it was rather a disappointment. I'll give her another try, just perhaps not very soon. I'm still too sad disliking Doomsday Book so much, because award-winning science fiction by women is usually the very thing I love and be very passionate of recommending others (see LeGuin, Piercy, McHugh, Russ).
I'll keep the rest in mind, though they may be a bit too onto the historical fiction side by me. I sometimes enjoy this kind of books, but I usually need to know the author before and to know that I like them to pick a book up.
I managed to totally space on the username of who I was replying to, so I didn't realize it was you!
Reading Children of the Alley was incredibly interesting for me. I found it incredibly hard to believe that anyone of ANY religion could find it offensive though.
For what it's worth, Most of Connie Willis' books didn't sound that interesting to me. What I think she gets most right in Blackout and All Clear is the true difficulty in understanding personal reactions to large historical events, plus I think her pacing and the balance of what she makes obvious vs what she keeps hidden (particularly in the second book) are just really perfect.
With the others (with the non-classics that is), my first reaction to them wasn't that they were historical fiction. They definitely fit that label, but the people and the relationships are definitely the main focus and the history is just the backdrop. That's why I picked out those particular ones, at least.
Oh, don't worry! It made me go and check his books a second time (and read the Wikipedia article on his work) and now they moved up my reading list :D
I usually really like it when fiction re-imagines religions and builds on it. There are so many symbols ingrained in our daily life which can be traced back to religion, so many traditions (even if one happens to be an atheist like me) - there is so much to say, so many things resonating which each other when it is done right. But it seems to mostly end with someone upset.
I plan to give Connie Willis a second try. All authors get at least two , if they got the first at all ^^"
I'll keep the books in mind, but they don't yet give me the "read now!"-feeling that Mahfouz and Anne Carson do :) I think it may be that from the book descriptions it sounds like there is a certain meta/intertextuality level - I'm not sure how exactly to put it in words, it's mainly a feeling - to both Children of the Alley and Antigonick and this is something that I enjoy a lot and heavily miss if it's not there. Now I may be absolutely wrong, but it's what makes me really excited about the first two books. And I'm aware that this is something that I did not mention in my description of myself as a reader - I just forgot, although it is an important point, that's why I end up liking "postmodern" as description for a lot of book I read and enjoy.
I sometimes think that religious books are of more interest to me because I'm an atheist. It's nice to know about for when you get a lot of flack over not being religious, and even nicer to know more about religious tradition/books than the book criticizing you!
Definitely understand on book tastes. I'm not that much of a fiction person myself. I have things I really like and I'll never stop reading fiction, but I'm a pretty straight reader.
That's a very strong recommendation for Christa Wolf--you make her sound fantastic, and like somebody I would very much like to read. Thank you!
Have you read Annie Proulx? She came to mind for me when you mentioned mastery of language and character driven stories. I like her short stories better than her novels, so I would recommend a collection like Close Range or Bad Dirt. Sometimes her stories can be a bit brutal, but at other times she lightens them with a dark sense of humor that I really like.
My best recommendation for science fiction that's really literary fiction is Ursula K. Le Guin, but I'd bet you've already read her. But if you haven't, The Left Hand of Darkness is wonderful. And she's another writer whose short stories I love--The Compass Rose and The Birthday of the World are great collections.
I haven't read Proulx yet, but after looking it up, Close Range definitely goes onto my to-read list. It's not really reflected in my reading from the last years, but I actually often prefer short stories or novellas over novels. Something changes when the writing has to be shorter, to the point. Not that I dislike novels, but there is a kind of clarity which I more often encounter in shorter works and which never fails to enhance me.
You would win this bet :) LeGuin is actually one of my favourite authors. Also one of the authors I got to know as a kid, though the books I read then were mostly not her children/ya-books, but never stopped loving, because there is so much to them. Levels and levels of meaning.
Yes! It was one of the books which I did not expect much from and then it was pure magic, the kind of book I can't lay away even though there is not much actually happening. Still need to pick up more by Marai!
Oh, thank you, it does indeed sound very interesting! Onto my reading list with it :)
I do intend to read it in English - but I found it rather fascinating that there is a German translation of the book. In a hard cover edition. For a first book of an author and a short story collection this is very impressive!
Her books are - hard to read, beautiful, haunting, true. I hardly ever get the feeling of someone writing their very soul out. I do so with Wolf. It's like somebody letting light into all the dark corners we are always afraid to look into. At the same time, there is great mastery to how she builds the books: the scaffolding of the story, which is sometimes not held together by a plot, but by something else: associations, feelings, characters and their relationships.
I don't think there is a book of fiction of hers which did not wholeheartedly get five stars from me, even if those are books which I would not have picked up if they were not by her. My favourites are perhaps Medea and Kassandra - both re-imaging of the reality behind the Greek myths, the last one accompanied by five essays on the writing process. Her other books are like this, not about what they superficially seem to be, but about everything. But on the surface they are about evenings, spent with friends in a tiny village - about the day that Chernobyl happened, even though spent in middle Europe - about ... Oh really, just about everything.
Some other books which come to my mind:
Christoph Hein: The Distant Lover
Jorge Luis Borges: Short Fiction (Ficciones and/or Alpha)
Sandor Marai: Embers
If you want to break into SF, John Tiptree Jr.'s (Alice Sheldon's ) "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever". Or Marge Piercy, both "He, She and It" and "Women on the Edge of Time" (her non sf work is great, too, but I haven't read much there - yet.).
*******************
And about me as a reader:
Things I like, it random order: short (but I also love Umberto Eco, so I like long, if it's good enough), crisp, clear, extreme mastery of language, character-driven stories, contemporary, post modern, classics, literary, the personal and the political interconnected, strong women, books which ring true, stories which ring real, good science fiction preferably aware of the New Wave heritage, science fiction which is actually literary fiction just with the wrong label, painstakingly constructed stories (Borges, I look at you), meta-levels, Greek but not only Greek mythology, actually the antique Greek comedies and tragedies (Aristophanes is frighteningly modern - all the things sold as new, were already there), books which left a trace in literature (Paradise Lost).
I mostly read fiction and will very rarely venture into non-fiction. I don't like historical setting for their own sake, except when it's about the last 100 years or so, it has to be about the story that is told (as, say, in Eco's Name of the Rose) not about the time.
So, recs for me?
P.S. Sorry for typos, I have to run to teach ...
Reply
Naguib Mahfouz (brilliant writing and plot construction)
Antigonick - Anne Carson (an interesting re-telling/interpretation of Antigone)
Blackout and All Clear - Connie Willis (science fiction+historical fiction, won three of the biggest SF awards)
Small Island - Andrea Levy (lots of strong women, rings generally true, great characters)
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell (gorgeous writing and understanding of personal relations)
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (one of my favorite classics, for the writing and characters)
The Secret River - Kate Grenville
Reply
Antigonick sounds amazing! A very experimental approach - I guess this will be one of those books one does not read at once, but enjoys over the course of several days or weeks. Nice, definitely on my list with it.
(Antigone itself is such a great play!)
Connie Willis has been a bit of a meh experience for me. I read her "Doomsday Book" in 2011 and for me, it was rather a disappointment. I'll give her another try, just perhaps not very soon. I'm still too sad disliking Doomsday Book so much, because award-winning science fiction by women is usually the very thing I love and be very passionate of recommending others (see LeGuin, Piercy, McHugh, Russ).
I'll keep the rest in mind, though they may be a bit too onto the historical fiction side by me. I sometimes enjoy this kind of books, but I usually need to know the author before and to know that I like them to pick a book up.
Reply
Reading Children of the Alley was incredibly interesting for me. I found it incredibly hard to believe that anyone of ANY religion could find it offensive though.
For what it's worth, Most of Connie Willis' books didn't sound that interesting to me. What I think she gets most right in Blackout and All Clear is the true difficulty in understanding personal reactions to large historical events, plus I think her pacing and the balance of what she makes obvious vs what she keeps hidden (particularly in the second book) are just really perfect.
With the others (with the non-classics that is), my first reaction to them wasn't that they were historical fiction. They definitely fit that label, but the people and the relationships are definitely the main focus and the history is just the backdrop. That's why I picked out those particular ones, at least.
Reply
I usually really like it when fiction re-imagines religions and builds on it. There are so many symbols ingrained in our daily life which can be traced back to religion, so many traditions (even if one happens to be an atheist like me) - there is so much to say, so many things resonating which each other when it is done right. But it seems to mostly end with someone upset.
I plan to give Connie Willis a second try. All authors get at least two , if they got the first at all ^^"
I'll keep the books in mind, but they don't yet give me the "read now!"-feeling that Mahfouz and Anne Carson do :) I think it may be that from the book descriptions it sounds like there is a certain meta/intertextuality level - I'm not sure how exactly to put it in words, it's mainly a feeling - to both Children of the Alley and Antigonick and this is something that I enjoy a lot and heavily miss if it's not there. Now I may be absolutely wrong, but it's what makes me really excited about the first two books. And I'm aware that this is something that I did not mention in my description of myself as a reader - I just forgot, although it is an important point, that's why I end up liking "postmodern" as description for a lot of book I read and enjoy.
Reply
Definitely understand on book tastes. I'm not that much of a fiction person myself. I have things I really like and I'll never stop reading fiction, but I'm a pretty straight reader.
Reply
Have you read Annie Proulx? She came to mind for me when you mentioned mastery of language and character driven stories. I like her short stories better than her novels, so I would recommend a collection like Close Range or Bad Dirt. Sometimes her stories can be a bit brutal, but at other times she lightens them with a dark sense of humor that I really like.
My best recommendation for science fiction that's really literary fiction is Ursula K. Le Guin, but I'd bet you've already read her. But if you haven't, The Left Hand of Darkness is wonderful. And she's another writer whose short stories I love--The Compass Rose and The Birthday of the World are great collections.
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I haven't read Proulx yet, but after looking it up, Close Range definitely goes onto my to-read list. It's not really reflected in my reading from the last years, but I actually often prefer short stories or novellas over novels. Something changes when the writing has to be shorter, to the point. Not that I dislike novels, but there is a kind of clarity which I more often encounter in shorter works and which never fails to enhance me.
You would win this bet :) LeGuin is actually one of my favourite authors. Also one of the authors I got to know as a kid, though the books I read then were mostly not her children/ya-books, but never stopped loving, because there is so much to them. Levels and levels of meaning.
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I do intend to read it in English - but I found it rather fascinating that there is a German translation of the book. In a hard cover edition. For a first book of an author and a short story collection this is very impressive!
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