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Well, now it's really starting again with me and the SPIEGEL.
It was kind of a gimmick the whole time.
We did have another show after the long summer break I needed, but afterwards I was offended because my book was on the SPIEGEL non-fiction list instead of the bestseller list.
Is all yesterday's news!
Then I had Corona, then I was at the book fair.
And at the book fair, many people said: Well, finally get it right again.
So now I'm doing the right thing and I'll tell you, bang, bang, where to go and what to read.
You should definitely read Werner Herzog »Everyone for himself and God against everyone«.
The wonderful Werner Herzog wrote a biography that starts somewhere and ends somewhere in the middle of a sentence after 350 pages.
He's a weird, stubborn, stubborn guy.
He can't stand the cinema and yet he makes films.
But he always says: I just make my own films.
He describes what he already was after his archaic youth in Bavaria: squid angler, park ranger at the Oktoberfest, rodeo rider, spot welder, stereo system smuggler in Mexico, cowherd, i.e. cowboy.
And then we know those films... He let the insane Kinski pull a ship over a mountain and build an opera in the jungle.
But he has also repeatedly made films about completely off-topic topics: about tsunamis, about volcanic eruptions, about child soldiers, about murderers.
Werner Herzog doesn't adapt to anything, he does his own thing.
And he's a great author too.
Think of the book about the Japanese man who is still in the jungle after 40 years and I know the war is over.
So this book is overwhelming, very personal, very direct.
And you should definitely read this and not miss it.
So this book is overwhelming, very personal, very direct.
And you should definitely read this and not miss it.
So this book is overwhelming, very personal, very direct.
And you should definitely read this and not miss it.
This also applies to the next one: Behzad Karim Khani »Hund Wolf Jackal«.
This is a family in Iran.
Intellectuals, both parents work at the university, are against the regime, back then after the Shah period, when the mullahs came.
The mother is tortured and dies.
The father loses a leg and manages to leave the country with his two small sons under a false name, false passports and the help of friends.
And he ends up in a prefab building in Berlin, which is where they all end up.
And it doesn't matter whether your father used to be a professor.
Here he has to make sure that he and his two boys get by as a taxi driver.
He can still protect the little ones and the big ones get into exactly what boys in prefabricated buildings get into him: toxic masculinity, groups in which whoever manages to commit murder is valued the most,
without getting caught.
They do drugs, they do burglaries, they do robberies.
And at some point, Saam, the older son, ends up in prison.
And he just catches himself and realizes that his life is going down the drain now and that he has to decide what does he want to be?
Dog, wolf or jackal?
Or a person who gets by in this life.
At the book fair I met Behzad Karim Khani, a small, very emphatic person, a lively, clever man who wrote a wonderful book here.
Wonderful because everything is right.
The story is interesting and exciting.
The style in which he tells the story is good.
He can really write.
And in the end it's the same as it was with Christian Baron, whose book »Schön ist die Nacht«, which I also introduced to you.
We talk so much about gender, about identity, who belongs to what race, what gender.
But it is also important what class you come from and whether you will ever manage to get out of these prefabricated buildings to which we are pushing these people.
It's a book about relationships that we helped create.
And now a big compliment to the publishing house.
The Aufbau Verlag discovered and gave us this wonderful Dane Tove Ditlevsen.
And now they've dug up something again: Tillie Olsen.
The book is called »I stand here and iron«.
Tillie Olsen is a woman of Russian Jewish descent, born in the United States in 1902.
She died in 2007, almost forgotten.
And now that book and another one of hers has been dug up again.
And she stands here ironing this mother of four in very precarious conditions with different jobs.
And she has to get these kids through somehow, but she also wants to be a writer.
How do you do that when you have so much on your cheek?
And while she's ironing, she talks laconically about her eldest daughter, who's quite lost to her,
because she didn't care enough.
Then there's a story about a friendship between a black and white girl that ultimately doesn't live up to because their lives are so different.
A story about a sailor who returns from the sea a little busier, a little drunker and finds refuge in a family, in this family.
But ultimately they can no longer offer him a home in the long run.
And we see in this book by Tillie Olsen that there are four small stories that always play in the same persona, so they grow together and actually become a small novel.
That must have been a great woman.
She was a feminist and a communist without letting herself be co-opted into either group.
She has a clear sense of injustice
for difficult conditions, an incredibly good and clean and simple style.
It reads wonderfully.
You should read Tillie Olsen as she irons and stands and fills us in on the life she leads.
So, let's get started with these three books.
There will be three new ones in 14 days and until then we'll see what the SPIEGEL bestseller list is doing.
This week, a character who has "cult character" climbs or rides on the ten: Sisi, at the time Empress of Austria-Hungary.
Writer Karen Duve took on the topic so that, as she says, she could spend a lot of time with her horses while doing research.
Anyone who thought everything had already been said about "Sisi" will be surprised by this book: Duve succeeds in giving a fresh look at this almost mythical figure over 400 pages.
Another German writer, Daniela Dröscher, made it high on the nine.
Her autobiographical novel tells the story of Ela and her family.
The parents' marriage is burdened by systematic bullying of the mother.
Her father thinks that she is far too fat and prescribes strict diets.
Body shaming terror in the 1980s and the devastating consequences – that reconstructs »Lying about my mother«, nominated for the German Book Prize.
Eighth from last week's five: the book with the Waringham coat of arms on the cover.
Welcome to the seventh part of the so-called Waringham saga.
In the book series, Rebecca Gablé tells the family history of the fictional English noble family of the same name from the Middle Ages to the early modern period.
With »Dragon Banner« we have landed in the year 1238, and this is also primarily about love.
The Canadian bestselling author Joy Fielding jumps up 15 places: her latest psychological thriller is called »The Housekeeper« and reveals who you shouldn't hire to look after your aging parents.
In German-speaking countries alone, Fielding's books have sold 13 million copies - with the new novel there will certainly be a few more copies.
Seventh this week.
»Nachmittage« by the master of the small form, Ferdinand von Schirach, landed three places down on the sixth.
This time the volume of stories summarizes observations, encounters and site visits in 26 sketches and notes.
The episodes are linked by a first-person narrator who is closely based on the real author.
"A Question of Chemistry" by the American Bonnie Garmus has been on the bestseller list for 30 weeks.
It is her acclaimed debut novel about the clever chemist Elizabeth Zott, a woman who succeeds in 1960s America in a male-dominated world.
That seems to continue to convince - in fifth place.
New on the Four: This year's winner of the German Book Prize.
With »Blood Book«, the jury awarded the story of a non-binary narrative character.
It's about queerness and the subjective certainty of not belonging to any gender.
The fictional character Kim de l'Horizon has thus written the, at least political, »novel of the year«.
Third place is less experimental, occupied by the bestselling grand dame Charlotte Link.
In the latest crime novel by the Frankfurt native, investigator Kate Linville has to solve the murder of a young woman who is found dead in her snow-covered car in the middle of nowhere in north-east England.
The publisher promises a "page turner" - and the probably most productive German author delivers confidently.
Last week's first came in second place: The third novel by Dörte Hansen from Husum is once again about her northern German homeland - and the sea.
The Sander family has been living on a small North Sea island for almost 300 years, but in the course of a year the family's life changes from the ground up, at first hardly noticeably, then with full force.
Anyone who wants to know exactly where our longing for an island actually comes from should not miss »Zur See«.
Finally we come to Eins, this week's newcomer with the bilingual title: »It starts with us – just once more and forever«.
The American bestselling author Colleen Hoover presents a sequel to the »Lily, Ryle and Atlas series«.
A love story, apparently told from three perspectives.
The third in the series will definitely follow - and we strongly assume that it will also end up on the bestseller list.
