Measuring the World
It is stunning biography. Really! I'm not a big fan of biographies or autobiographies and I read them not often. But this book amazed me and pleased me, despite the fact that...
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The Box
The novel The Box is a continuation of a kind of autobiographical cycle by Günther Grass, started by the book Peeling the Onion, but it is not necessary to read the first part of the novel to understand the text. The novel The Box is not narrated on behalf of the writer, but on behalf of his children. Grass writes as there are his children, and he had eight of them, decided to write down memories of the family and their childhood on a tape recorder. But in full, this novel is not an autobiography, many facts in the book have been changed, invented and embellished. To say what is true, and what was a figment of the author’s imagination is not so simple. Only about a few moments, we can say for sure that they did not happen. The names of the children have been changed, and the names of their mothers throughout the entire novel are not even mentioned. The only name known for sure is the name of the central character of the novel – Maria Rama. Around Maria all sorts of miracles occur in the novel, connected primarily with her boxing camera, which took absolutely unusual things and carried out her dreams. This camera can also be...
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Professor Unrat
This novel can be called satirical, grotesque, because it ridicules the bigotry and spiritual inferiority of the school teacher...
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Joseph and His Brothers
Joseph and His Brothers is a four-part novel by Thomas Mann, written in 1926-1943 and retelling in detail well-known biblical story of Joseph. So, there are my five facts about Joseph and His Brothers.
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The Oppermanns
This book was written in the very beginning of the nightmare of the 20th century. Fascism has only just come to power, and has already done so much that has allowed to find material for the whole work! Honestly, when I read it, it seemed that all this was already written after all the horrors, when all the fascist acts were recognized worldwide, became known and analyzed in terms of crimes against humanity. So everything is fully and thoroughly described, that one can not even believe that it was created in such a short time. The novel begins in 1932 and consists of three thematic parts: yesterday, today, tomorrow. The novel tells us about the family of German Jews Opperman. They are honest, smart, they pay taxes, devoted to their country and work for the good of Germany. Their ancestors fought in the First World War for Germany, helped financially its government. They are righteous citizens who love and honor German history and literature, language. Therefore, until the last they do not notice that their beloved country turns into a monster. Jews are thrown out of the transport, they are forbidden to visit public places. And in schools fascism comes In the form of a...
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The German Boy
It is a rainy day of 1947, at the railway station in the English wilderness red-haired Elisabeth Mander meets her nephew, a German boy, whose mother died. Elisabeth is confused. What to expect from this teenager, who certainly hates the enemies of his country. But the reality is much more complicated. That evening a German boy gives Elizabeth a picture of a girl with long copper hair going through the sun, under the trees there is a cafe, and at the table a man sits and watches the girl. Elizabeth recognizes herself. But who is this man in the picture? And what does her German nephe, whose mental state is disrupted by Nazism and war, have to do with the painting of a Jewish artist? So, this way begins the story of two families in the background of historical events that were in Europe in the twentieth century. It is a slow, but powerful story about family secrets, betrayal and love with lyrically and precisely written out details of that era. It is a story not about the boy. Or rather about the boy too, but more about his mother Karen and her sister Elizabeth, their friend Rachel and her brother Michael… About how young people loved, suffered, betrayed, loved again and...
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Spark of Life
It is always very difficult to say something about such books. It is very hard to read it, but it is impossible stop reading at the same time. You’re overcome with emotions and feelings. One want to whisper to the heroes “don’t give up! Help is coming.” It’s terrible to believe that all this things were here, in this world in which you habitually get up in the morning to work and complain about the morning traffic jams. It is impossible to imagine what these people had to go through and how they could not lose the “spark of life” in themselves. Everyone without exception should read such books. To know that war is only not battles and heroic feats on the battlefield, to know that hope and team spirit can save hundreds of lives, even If you think you’re in hell. Perhaps in a hundred years, when the word “war” will be used only in lessons of history, a child asks: “Why are there no more wars on Earth?” And the teacher will tell him that it’s all about awareness. It’s about the fact that people have learned what is the destruction, that no one can decide that his life is more valuable or more important...
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Effi Briest
Effi Briest is a realist novel by Theodor Fontane. Seventeen-year-old Effie Briest, the only daughter of a provincial nobleman, marries a longtime admirer of her mother, Geert von Innstetten. He is a serious man who wants to make a great career, and the life of Effie will be comfortable with him. But when she finds herself in the oppressive atmosphere of a small resort town, in a home that is frightening her, next to her husband, who is constantly focised on business, she began to feel herself lonely and lost… Effi Briest is a novel about how social conventions and the desire to look decent in the eyes of others can ruin not only marriage, but the whole life. What did Geert achieve with the duel? Only a couple of deaths and childhood without a mother. But what these irrelevant things, in his opinion, mean in comparison with his desire to be a successful minister? Of course, at the end of the novel he starts to think about it, but is not it too late? All his life, Effi’s life and the childhood of their daughter are destroyed. I can not blame Effi for what happened, but I can blame her parents. Although society and its rules are to blame too. It doesn’t matter who...
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Master Flea: A Fairy-Tale in Seven Adventures of Two Friends
Master Flea: A Fairy-Tale in Seven Adventures of Two Friends is a fairy tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was written in 1821-1822 and became the last major work of the author. The actions take place in Frankfurt am Main. The main character is an oddball Peregrinus Tyss, who was living isolated and was afraid of women. He was involved in a mysterious game of mystical forces in the background of the life of a typical bourgeois city. Each character of the novel has his occult doppelganger. In everyday life, they are servicemen and handicraftsmen, salesmen or scientists, and in the mystical sense they are magicians and geniuses, personifications of the mysterious forces of nature, plants, minerals and so on. Every Christmas eve Tyss throw a feast. Buying a lot of sweets and toys beforehand, he imagines himself a little boy, enjoys gifts, and then gives them to the poor children. On one of these nights Peregrinus meets a mysterious stranger who confesses her love to him and demands to return to her a mysterious prisoner who allegedly stays with Tyss. It turns out that, without knowing it, Tyss sheltered Master Flea who had previously been a captive of the mystical doppelganger of the Dutch naturalist Leuwenhoek . The stranger in the occultl sense is the princess, who...
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Gantenbein
Gantenbein is one of the most significant works of modernist literature of the XX century. The theme of dualism is a key theme of Frisch’s creativity – it gets a completely different sound in the novel Gantenbein, since the reader does not even deal with real or imaginary characters, but with two equivalent characters who act in parallel branches of one reality. At the same time, it is very difficult to understand who of them is more real… A large part of the novel is based on fantasy “what would have happened if a healthy sighted person suddenly had decided to play the role of a blind man”. It would be interesting, because such an injury immediately put a person into another social conditions: a blind man does not give way to another person, a blind man does not owe anything to anyone, he is helpless, but he can be full of dignity at the same time. His aim is to make people more free, free them from fear that their lies can be visible. In the presence of a blind person, people can relax and take off their masks, show what they would never decided to do. A blind man will not judge people by their appearance. And how difficult it is to be blind...
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Arch of Triumph
Arch of Triumph is one of the most beautiful European novels of the XX century. A novel about love, war and death. And I know that in this book there are despair, sadness, pain, I know it… and still open the first page… Four people. A man, a miserable romantic, devoid of illusions and temporarily named in this short life as Ravic. A woman, amazon with aqua eyes, Joan. A professional surgeon, the best of the best, who has to hide from the police in someone another country, without betraying himself, working in secret, giving all his merits to another. An actress, realizing that her talent is not perfect, bright and emotional, different from many and dreaming of being loved and admired. What unites them? Of course, love. Tragic, somewhat crazy, but still love. They are amazing, it is impossible not to fall in love with them. And how Joan changes throughout the book! For the first time we meet an indifferent to everything, “an empty woman”, and by the end she gets more beautiful. And at the same time she changes Ravic, turning his life upside down, shaking up the old memories. This is not an ordinary book. It’s the whole life, that gives you...
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House without Guardians
In 1955 the novel House without Guardians was called by French publishers as the best foreign book. It is the story of the first post-war generation, the story of two boys – Martin and Henry, whose fathers died at the front. House without Guardians is a novel about those who stayed in this very house; about those who managed to return to this very house; and, certainly, about those who never will return to this house. The main characters of the novel are boys who were born during the war, who are not destined to see their fathers; also there are their mothers whose young, full of life husbands were sent the war, and they received only some words about duty and death… Yes, of course, there are still all the rest, young and old, well-bred and not virtuous, they are all trying to return to Life. It’s amazing how all of them, in fact, are lost, abandoned, abandoned, forgotten how to live and feel full. Even those who have not yet had time to learn this, boys whose fathers, who are slightly older than their present, participate in their upbringing from an old photo on the wall. Good book. It does not have that power that in many books about...
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