GOETHE POP UP SEATTLE - 2021 Book Club Titles JANUARY

GOETHE POP UP SEATTLE
2021 Book Club Titles
Read. Talk. Share. / Lesen. Sprechen. Teilen.

JANUARY
I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flašar, trans. Sheila Dickie
(German: Ich nannte ihn Krawatte)
133 pages. Published September 2014. New Vessel Press.
ISBN 9781939931146

Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a
hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—
in his parents' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world,
he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually he
makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job
but can't bring himself to tell his wife, and shows up every day in a suit and tie
to pass the time on a nearby bench. As Hiro and Tetsu cautiously open up to
each other, they discover in their sadness a common bond. Regrets and
disappointments, as well as hopes and dreams, come to the surface until both
find the strength to somehow give a new start to their lives

FEBRUARY
Paula by Sandra Hoffmann, trans. Katy Derbyshire
(German: Paula)
118 pages. Published January 2020. V&Q Books.
ISBN 9783863912581

Sandra Hoffmann's "Paula" is a moving piece of autofiction, a work somewhere
between literary fiction and a memoir, about the writer's relationship to her
grandmother, a devout Swabian Catholic who refused to reveal who fathered her
child in 1946. Growing up in a family where silence reigns, Hoffmann asks: What
kind of person, what kind of writer, does this environment produce?

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MARCH
A Slap in the Face by Abbas Khider, trans. Simon Pare
(German: Ohrfeige)
192 pages. Published May 2019. Seagull Books.
ISBN 9780857425355

In our era of mass migration, much of it driven by war and its aftermath, A Slap
in the Face could not be more timely. It tells the story of Karim, an Iraqi refugee
living in Germany whose right to asylum has been revoked in the wake of
Saddam Hussein’s defeat. But Hussein wasn’t the only reason Karim left, and as
Abbas Khider unfolds his story, we learn both the secret struggles he faced in
his homeland and the battles with prejudice, distrust, poverty, and bureaucracy
he has to endure in his attempts to make a new life in Germany. As he erupts in
frustration at his caseworker, and finally forces her to listen to his story, we get
an account of a contemporary life upended by politics and violence, told with a
warmth and humor that, while surprising us, does nothing to lessen the outrages
Karim describes.

APRIL
The Thud by Mikael Ross
(German: Der Umfall)
128 pages. Publish date March 9, 2021. Fantagraphics.
ISBN 9781683964063

When Noel’s mother has a stroke, his world is turned upside down. Especially
when a man comes, who tells Noel that he can’t stay in the only home he’s ever
known. He has to move from his apartment and his city to some kind of care
facility, in a town he’s never heard of. For the first time, Noel is on his own. Who
can he trust? Who can he love? There is a village in Germany called Neuerkerode
that is largely populated and run by people with developmental disabilities ―
the local restaurant, the local bar, the local supermarket. It’s a beautiful, even
incredible place ― and it’s where The Thud takes place. In 2016, cartoonist Mikael
Ross began visiting Neuerkerode. Over the course of two years, Ross learned
about the people who live there and listened to their stories. Told from Noel’s
perspective with humor and empathy, The Thud offers a rare window into the
life of a boy living with developmental disabilities. In doing so, Ross has crafted
an enchanting story that helps us understand the often misunderstood.

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MAY
The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann, trans. Jen Calleja.
(German: Die Kieferinseln)
192 pages. Published 2019. Serpent’s Tail.
ISBN 9781788160919

When Gilbert Silvester wakes one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on
him, he flees - immediately, irrationally, inexplicably - for Japan.
In Tokyo he discovers the travel writings of the great Japanese poet Basho.
Suddenly, from Gilbert's directionless crisis there emerges a purpose: a
pilgrimage in the footsteps of the poet to see the moon rise over the pine
islands of Matsushima.
Along the way he falls into step with another pilgrim: Yosa, a young Japanese
student clutching a copy of The Complete Manual of Suicide. Together, Gilbert and
Yosa travel across Basho's disappearing Japan, one in search of his perfect
ending and the other a new beginning.
Serene, playful and profound, The Pine Islands is a story of the transformations
we seek and the ones we find along the way.

JUNE
Hooligan by Philipp Winkler, trans. Bradley Schmidt.
(German: Hool)
304 pages. Published April 2018. Arcade.
ISBN 9781628728675

Heiko hasn't finished high school. His father is an alcoholic. His mother left. His
housemate organizes illegal dogfights. He works in his uncle's gym, one
frequented by bikers and skinheads. He definitely isn't one of society's winners,
but he has his chosen family, the pack of soccer hooligans he's grown up with.
His uncle is the leader, and gradually Heiko has risen in the ranks, until he's
recognized in the stands of his home team and beyond the stadium walls, where,
after the game, he and his gang represent their city in brutal organized brawls
with hooligans from other localities. Philipp Winkler's stunning, widely acclaimed
novel won the prize for best debut and was a finalist for the most prestigious
German book award. It offers an intimate, devastating portrait of working-class,
post-industrial urban life on the fringes and a universal story about masculinity
in the twenty-first century, with a protagonist whose fear of being left behind
has driven him to extremes. Narrated with lyrical authenticity by Heiko himself,
it captures the desperation and violence that permeate his world, along with the
yearning for brotherhood.

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JULY
The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer
Only available in English.
144 pages. Published September 1, 2020. Simon & Schuster.
ISBN 9781982150174

In a well-appointed examination in London, a young woman unburdens herself
to a certain Dr. Seligman. Though she can barely see above his head, she holds
forth about her life and desires, her struggles with her sexuality and identity.
Born and raised in Germany, she has been living in London for several years,
determined to break free from her family origins and her haunted homeland. But
the recent death of her grandfather, and an unexpected inheritance, make it
clear that you cannot easily outrun your own shame, whether it be physical,
familial, historical, national, or all of the above. Or can you? In a monologue that
is both deliciously dark and subversively funny, she takes us on a wide-ranging
journey from Hitler-centered sexual fantasies and overbearing mothers to the
medicinal properties of squirrel tails and the notion that anatomical changes can
serve as historical reparation. The Appointment is an audacious debut novel by
an explosive new international literary voice, challenging all of our notions of
what is fluid and what is fixed, and the myriad ways we seek to make peace
with others and ourselves in the 21st century.

AUGUST
3 Streets by Yoko Tawada, trans. Margaret Mitsutani
Only available in English.
64 pages. Publish date June 1, 2021. New Directions.
ISBN 9780811229302

The always astonishing Yoko Tawada here takes a walk on the supernatural side
of the street with this collection of stories. In “Kollwitzstrasse,” as the narrator
muses on former East Berlin’s new bourgeois health food stores, so popular with
the wealthy young people, a ghost boy begs her to buy him the old-fashioned
sweets he craves. She worries that sugar’s still sugar—but why lecture him, since
he’s already dead? Then white feathers fall from her head and she seems to be
turning into a crane … Pure white kittens and a great Russian poet haunt
“Majakowskiring”: the narrator who reveres Mayakovsky’s work is delighted to
meet his ghost. And finally, in “Pushkin Allee,” a huge Soviet-era memorial of
soldiers comes to life—and, “for a scene of carnage everything was awfully well-
ordered.” Each of these stories glows, and opens up into new dimensions the
work of this magisterial writer.

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SEPTEMBER
Sechs Koffer by Maxim Biller
Only available in German.
208 pages. Published August 2018. Klepenheuer & Witsch.
ISBN 9783596700165

When the patriarch in a Russian-Jewish émigré family is executed in the midst
of the Cold War, family loyalties are put to the test and dark secrets are
unravelled in an accomplished and compelling story dealing with enduring
themes of trust, betrayal and personal freedom. After he is denounced and
executed in the Soviet Union in 1960, the patriarch’s entire family falls under
suspicion. The novel switches between Prague, Zurich, Moscow and Hamburg,
incorporating the perspectives of seven different relatives as they navigate the
web of secrets and lies that binds them together, struggling to reconcile
themselves to the turbulent events within their family circle. This literary tour
de force interweaves tales of the Soviet secret service, the history of Czech post-
war cinema, and accounts of Communist anti-Semitism.

OCTOBER
Berlin by Jason Lutes
(German: Berlin)
580 pages. Published 2018. Drawn & Quarterly.
ISBN 9781770464063

During the past two decades, Jason Lutes has quietly created one of the
masterworks of the graphic novel golden age. Berlin is one of the high-water
marks of the medium: rich in its well-researched historical detail, compassionate
in its character studies, and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly
awakening to the stranglehold of fascism. Berlin is an intricate look at the fall of
the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens―Marthe Müller, a young
woman escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War I, Kurt Severing,
an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism
take hold; the Brauns, a family torn apart by poverty and politics. Lutes weaves
these characters’ lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart.The
city itself is the central protagonist in this historical fiction. Lavish salons,
crumbling sidewalks, dusty attics, and train stations: all these places come alive
in Lutes’ masterful hand. Weimar Berlin was the world’s metropolis, where
intellectualism, creativity, and sensuous liberal values thrived, and Lutes maps
its tragic, inevitable decline. Devastatingly relevant and beautifully told, Berlin is
one of the great epics of the comics medium.

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NOVEMBER
Madgermanes by Birgit Weyhe, trans. Katy Derbyshire
(German: Madgermanes)
240 pages. Publish date September 2021. V&Q Books.
ISBN TBA

From 1979 to 1991, approximately 20,000 contract workers from Mozambique
were employed in the GDR. Their stay, which was limited to four years, was
supposed to enable them to receive training and gain professional experience in
order to contribute to the construction of an independent socialist Mozambique
after their return. The reality was different. The "Madgermanes," as they are
called in Mozambique, a neologism made up of "Mad Germans" and "Made in
Germany," returned to a country completely destroyed by civil war. There was
no use for their vocational training and the wages withheld in trust by the
government were never paid. Birgit Weyhe researches this little-known footnote
of German-Mozambican history by letting those affected speak for themselves.
She turns around the usual perspective of a German view of the world and at
the same time portrays a state before its demise. By subtly inserting objects of
memory and enriching them with allegorical motifs, the result is a comic that, in
its visual and narrative language, crosses even the boundaries between African
and European culture.

DECEMBER - TBD