Books Id like to read before going to Germany
Discover the best books to read before visiting Germany—from Kafka and Goethe to Günter Grass. Explore essential German fiction and drama to deepen your travel experience.
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In the Presence of Mine Enemies
by Harry Turtledove
In a novel of alternative history, Germany has won World War II, and in the twenty-first century rules most of Europe and North America, but beneath an Aryan facade, Jews survive within the Nazi regime, hoping not to be detected.
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Ring of Fire
by Eric Flint
Return to the alternate universe of "1632"and "1633" with the top writers of alternate history and military SF. Includes stories by David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, and S.L. Viehl.
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Faust I & II
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe's most complex and profound work, Faust was the effort of the great poet's entire lifetime. Written over 60 years, it can be read as a document of Goethe's moral and artistic development. Faust is made available to the English reader in a completely new translation that communicates both its poetic variety and its many levels of tone. The language is present-day English, and Goethe's formal and rhythmic variety is reproduced in all its richness.
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The Complete Stories
by Franz Kafka
The complete stories of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial. “An important book, valuable in itself and absolutely fascinating. The stories are dreamlike, allegorical, symbolic, parabolic, grotesque, ritualistic, nasty, lucent, extremely personal, ghoulishly detached, exquisitely comic, numinous, and prophetic.” —The New York Times The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume. “[Kafka] spoke for millions in their new unease; a century after his birth, he seems the last holy writer, and the supreme fabulist of modern man’s cosmic predicament.” —from the Foreword by John Updike
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The Tin Drum
by Günter Grass
A dwarf drummer found guilty of a crime he did not commit writes his memoirs from a mental hospital in postwar Germany
