They Divided the Sky by Christa Wolf. The Bridge for the Golden Horn by Emine Sevgi Ozdamar
A audience of western Berliners collect during the Berlin Wall while an east soldier that is german on the other hand, August 1961. Photograph: Paul Schutzer/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Pictures
This 1963 first novel founded Wolf’s reputation in east literature that is german. Set during 1961, whenever construction for the Berlin Wall started, the story is dependent around two enthusiasts divided by it: Rita Seidel, a lady in her 20s that are early, just like the author, generally speaking supports the values associated with the “antifascist” GDR, and Manfred Herrfurth, a chemist whom settles when you look at the western. The book is saturated with the atmosphere of the newly partitioned city although the Wall is not specifically mentioned in the novel. Though Wolf would carry on to publish works that have been so much more critical of this regime, They Divided the Sky does shy away from n’t exposing the cracks and corruption within the communist system.
A road in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Photograph: Claire Carrion/Alamy
The next book of the trilogy by Turkish-German author, star and manager Sevgi Ozdamar, this work that is semi-autobiographical at life in Germany through the viewpoint of a teenage gastarbeiter (guest worker) when you look at the 1960s and 70s. The narrator, who has got left Turkey having lied about her age, learns German while involved in menial jobs to make cash for drama college. A sepia-toned snapshot of western Berlin, the book mostly centres around Kreuzberg, a hub for Turkish immigrants, and features local landmarks, like the bombed-out Anhalter Bahnhof plus the Hebbel Theatre, each of that are nevertheless standing. It is targeted on artistically minded socialists and pupils, the casual fascist exile from Greece, and real-life events just like the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg by a policeman at a protest march in 1967, an outrage that sparked the left-wing German student motion. The 2nd area of the guide consumes a synchronous life that is political Turkey.
Why We Took the motor car(‘Tschick’) by Wolfgang Herrndorf
An idiosyncratic road journey novel through the somewhat not likely landscapes of Brandenburg (hawaii which surrounds Berlin), this novel can be a tender and lighthearted coming-of-age tale of two outsider schoolboys. The males are chalk and cheese: Maik Klingenberg, offspring of the heavy-drinking mom and philandering father whom will take off together with mistress, and Andrej Tschichatschow, AKA Tschick, a surly Russian immigrant who involves college smelling of vodka and does not balk at a little bit of petty criminal activity. Once the summer time vacations arrive as well as the pair have actuallyn’t been invited to virtually any ongoing events, they remove in a Lada that Tschick has “borrowed”, with no location in your mind. The vast majority of the individuals they meet are decent and type, if sometimes only a little that is quirky message is the fact that you don’t need certainly to travel far to really have the adventure of an eternity. It had been changed to a movie that is fine Fatih Akin in 2016.
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
Certainly one of Germany’s most talked about contemporary talents, Erpenbeck’s Visitation (Heimsuchung) reconstructs a century of German history through events in a lakeside house in Brandenburg. By chronicling the intersecting everyday lives of three generations whom lived in the home,, Erpenbeck produces a romantic means of bringing the century your, featuring its excesses of insanity and tragedy, hopes and reconciliations. The everyday lives come and go with the ideologies, with all the only constant the gardener that is silent provides soothing breaks between all of the personal upheavals. This might be no accident: along side a dramatic prologue depicting the prehistoric creation associated with pond, the point about nature’s perseverance and indifference when confronted with peoples activities is obvious.
Bricks and Mortar by Clemens Meyer
Leipzig. Photograph: Iurii Buriak/Alamy
Meyer’s novel takes as the topic the entire world of prostitution and medications after the autumn for the communist regime. Set in Leipzig, Meyer playfully blends reportage with impressionistic, dreamlike and non-linear designs, presenting his dark and frequently hard-hitting story via a kaleidoscope of figures, from previous DJs and addicts to traffickers and intercourse workers. Making certain to zoom away far sufficient showing the impact of globalisation, and implicating policemen and politicians on the way, the tale informs the way the intercourse trade went from a entity that is forbidden East Germany up to a legal and sprawling procedure under capitalism. Though Meyer is careful to eschew sentimentality and 
moralising that is easy there was lots here to be heartbroken about.
This Home is Mine by Dorte Hansen
One thing of a surprise hit, this 2015 novel is scheduled in a rural fruit-picking area near Hamburg.
The story spans 70 years and starts with a grouped family members of aristocratic refugees from East Prussia coming to a run-down farmhouse in 1945 to start out their everyday lives anew. Also interactions with other people into the remote town, a brand brand new generation of the identical household arrive several years later on, this time around fleeing town life in Hamburg. The two main women – Vera and her niece, Anna – manage to find common ground and a kind of healing though different in terms of temperament and world view. Hansen’s narration, wonderful discussion and nonlinear storyline keep carefully the audience hooked, therefore the themes (from real deprivations and inter-family disputes, to community as well as the notion of house) can be applied to the present European refugee crisis, lending the novel maybe maybe not only a little contemporary relevance.