Writing for nothing: Denis Scheck discusses the most successful novels

10.) Giuliano da Empoli: The magician in the Kremlin (German by Michaela Messmer, CH Beck, 265 p., 25 €.)

How Putin’s paranoia translates to terror on the battlefields in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and now Ukraine is seen in this book. It’s all better said in Shakespeare’s royal dramas, but this update in the form of a palatable and genuinely suspenseful roman à clef penned by Italian political adviser Giuliano da Empoli about Vladimir Putin’s spindoctor and Putin’s rise to power and murder is the book of the moment.

9.) Trude doughs: When grandmother danced in the rain (German by Günther Frauenlob, S. Fischer, 384 p., 22 €.)

Tekla loves Otto. But Tekla is Norwegian, Otto a German occupation soldier in World War II, and Tekla’s mother doesn’t want to hear about her daughter’s assurances that Otto is a decent man and really nice. “There are no nice Germans!” she says. But nice is known to be the little sister of shit, and so the most devastating verdict on this overly busy novel about a so-called German girl and three generations of women in Norway is: it’s just too nice.

8.) Marianne Leky: grief of all kinds (DuMont, 176 p., €22.)

How to learn to live with your quirks, how to get along better with yourself and what can be done against the worst cracks in the brain: you can find out from this amusing collection of columns from “Psychology Today”.

7.) Julia Schoch: The lovers of the century (dtv, 192 p., 22 €.)

Many of Julia Schoch’s novels deal with the disappearance of a state, the fall of the GDR. Her new project, the trilogy of novels “Biography of a Woman”, deals with the decline of habits that were believed to be safe. “Basically it’s very simple: I’m leaving you.” Julia Schoch begins her new novel about a woman who has been with her husband for thirty years with this hammer sentence. But it all started very differently: you felt like “the lovers of the century”. The children are out of the house, all the battles of a marriage have been fought, love has long since died out. Before the final consequence, the narrator looks back: What was at the beginning of the relationship? How did ecstasy turn into disillusionment? And: How do political ideas shape our conceptions of love? The best book on this list.

6.) Dorte Hansen: To the sea (Penguin, 256 p., €24)

The joy and suffering of life on a German North Sea island are the subject of this equally insightful and observational novel. Dörte Hansen describes the less idyllic island life, but also the dropout fantasies of the newcomers: “Bought a house by the sea. The castle in the air moored with brick, rose hedge and alarm system. And then soberingly realized that it wasn’t floating.”

5.) Jochen Gutsch and Maxim Leo: frankie (Penguin, 192 pp., €22.)

Animal does things, in this case giving new courage to live to someone tired of life with a rope around his neck. A good example of why German humor is feared internationally – and proof that you can write about and for nothing at the same time.

4.) Ewald Arenz: Love on bad days (DuMont, 384 p., 24 €.)

What a treat, this romantic love story, finally told in a clever way, about grown-ups with all the problems that grown-ups carry around with them: mothers with dementia, children from previous relationships, job loss and self-doubt. Ewald Arenz’s precise language, which gives this story of an amour fou the necessary drive, deserves extra praise.

3.) Bonnie Garmus: A matter of chemistry (German by Ulrike Wasel and Klaus Timmermann, Piper, 464 p., €22.)

Garmu’s debut novel, about a chemist who becomes a television star as a cookery show host in the 1960s, is a feminist light novel that alternately makes you furious about the blatant injustices of the past, then makes you heartily happy about what has been achieved so far, and finally gives you courage for the battles that still have to be fought in the matter of gender justice. What more do you want?

Really small fare

2.) Jojo Moyes: my life in yours (German by Karolina Fell, Wunderlich, 512 p., 25 €.)

Jojo Moyes re-tells Mark Twain’s “Prince and the Pauper” in a version starring two women named Sam and Nisha. A bag swapped at the gym means that one unexpectedly finds herself wearing Christian Louboutin shoes, while the other finds herself trudging through the ruins of her luxury marriage in worn-out pumps. In terms of literature, however, this novel reminded me more of the slippers that Charlie Chaplin tried to eat in “Gold Rush”: really small fare!

1.) Juli Zeh and Simon Urban: intermediate worlds (Luchterhand, 448 p., 25 €.)

“A kind of written confrontation therapy” is staged by Juli Zeh and Simon Urban in their novel “Between Worlds”: an organic farmer and a woker journalist discuss the pain points of our present by email, from climate change to cancel culture and the Ukraine war to agricultural policy. So much presence was rare in German literature – and since Honore de Balzac’s “Lost Illusions” one has not learned so much about the rules of the game of journalism from literature.

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