The seven best novels of 2022: Recommendations of the year worth reading
Created: 12/28/2022, 6:00 p.m
By: Sven Trautwein
Between Christmas and New Year's is a good time to review the year of books.
We will remember these titles for a long time.
Note to our readers:
If you make a purchase via the links included, we receive a commission from partners.
This changes nothing for you.
The book year had big titles ready.
"Blood Book" by Kim de l'Horizon was awarded the German Book Prize and the French Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Isabel Allende's “Violeta” applies here to all those who want to deal with the role of strong women.
I would like to recommend the following other novels to you for the coming days: Large and small, loud and quiet books that you should have read.
Shelby Van Pelt "Fortune Has Eight Arms"
Shelby van Pelt "Happiness has eight arms" © Krüger / S. Fischer
Tova Sullivan has been cleaning at the Sowell Bay Aquarium since she was widowed.
She notices how Marcellus, a curious, cheeky giant octopus, is looking at her from his aquarium.
Marcellus is enormously smart, but for humans he wouldn't lift a tentacle - until he befriends Tova.
She tells him about her son, who disappeared decades ago.
Smart as he is, Marcellus discovers a secret that Tova doesn't know.
Now he has eight arms full to uncover the truth for Tova - before it's too late.
blurb / Krueger
The great New York Times bestseller about the unlikely friendship with an octopus.
Changing perspectives and interesting characters make “Luck has eight arms” a novel worth reading that spreads a good mood from the first to the last page.
A book that distracts from the current problems and focuses on what is really important.
Shelby Van Pelt "Fortune Has Eight Arms"
From the American by Andrea Fischer
2022 Krüger / S. Fischer, ISBN-13 978-3-8105-3082-0
Price: hardcover €22, e-book €16.99, 464 pages (deviating from the format)
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John Boyne "When the World Shattered"
John Boyne "When the World Shattered" © Piper
1946. Three years after the catastrophic event that tore her family apart, a mother and her daughter flee Poland for Paris.
Blinded by worry and guilt, they have no idea how difficult it is to escape from the past.
Almost eighty years later, Gretel Fernsby leads a quiet life in her uptown London, worlds away from her traumatic childhood.
When a young family moves into the apartment below her, she hopes that the well-established community will not be thrown off balance.
But nine-year-old Henry brings back memories she doesn't want to face.
Blurb / Piper
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Fancy a journey of discovery?
My space
Atmospherically dense and full of facts, John Boyne tells the story of Gretel: how an admitted guilt can develop a destructive power.
Does responsibility win with Gretel?
It is the long-awaited sequel to the best-selling The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (promotional link).
A powerfully eloquent book that can be read even without knowledge of the previous one.
John Boyne "When the World Shattered"
Translated from the English by Michael Schickenberg and Nicolai von Schweder-Schreiner
2022 Piper, ISBN-13 978-3-492-07197-0
Price: hardcover €24, e-book €19.99, 416 pages (deviating from the format)
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Lucy Fricke "The Diplomat"
Lucy Fricke "The Diplomat" © Ullstein
Fred is an experienced and ambitious German consul.
A woman who isn't really bothered by anything, at home everywhere and nowhere.
But then, in Montevideo, she fails for the first time in her career.
She is transferred to politically heated Istanbul, her greatest challenge to date.
Between palace of justice and summer residence, secret service and German-Turkish cooperation, between affair and loneliness, she comes up against the limits of friendship, the rule of law and the European idea.
blurb / Ullstein
A beautifully researched political novel with just the right amount of humour.
The book gives a great insight into the world of work and thought, which is entertaining all around.
Lucy Fricke "The Diplomat"
2022 Ullstein, ISBN-13 978-3-548-06778-0
Price: hardcover €22, e-book €17.99, 256 pages (deviating from the format)
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Édouard Louis "Instructions to become someone else"
Édouard Louis "Instructions to become someone else" © Aufbau Verlag
How much does it cost to take control of your own life?
By the time he was in his mid-twenties, he had already had several lives: a childhood in extreme poverty, shame about his own origins, fleeing from the village to the city, setting out for Paris.
He frees himself from the limits of his origins, takes on a new name, reads and writes like a man possessed, tries things out, wants to live every life.
New worlds keep opening up to him.
With irrepressible energy, he reinvents himself again and again, makes friends and yet questions the radical self-change that never quite comes to fruition.
Blur text structure publishing house
The journey to yourself. Édouard Louis vividly describes what you leave behind when you embark on a journey to yourself.
The autobiographical novel captivates from the first page.
It's hard to put the book down.
It is therefore one of the most important books of 2022.
Édouard Louis "Instructions to become someone else"
Translated by Sonja Finck
2022 Construction of the publishing house, ISBN-13 978-3-351-03956-1
Price: hardcover €24, e-book €17.99, 272 pages (deviating from the format)
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Lena Gorelik "Who we are"
Lena Gorelik "Who we are" © Rowohlt
Saint Petersburg/Ludwigsburg 1992. A girl travels with her parents, her grandmother and her brother to freedom in Germany.
What she leaves behind is her beloved dog Asta, the fairytale phone number and almost everything that connects her with Djedushka, grandpa - ultimately her childhood.
In the west, the eleven-year-old realizes that she is now someone else and "the stranger".
A refugee child in a self-made parka who pronounces the words so strangely that others laugh.
It's also difficult for the parents, their Russian nostalgia grows in the longing west;
and the proud grandmother who once ran a business is simply an old woman with no language here.
blurb / Rowohlt
This book hit me from the first page.
Deep, warm.
I couldn't put it down.
While this book comes with a ribbon bookmark, I hardly needed it.
I devoured the story page after page.
The story of a family between two languages.
One Love.
to the language.
And to the family.
Lena Gorelik "Who will be"
2022 Rowohlt, ISBN-13 978-3-499-00528-2
Price: hardcover €22, e-book €9.99, 320 pages (deviating from the format)
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Volker Jarck "Robust Hearts"
Volker Jarck "Robust Hearts" © S. Fischer
After twelve years of marriage, Katja throws her ring into the waves where the river in her hometown flows into the sea.
In this night of snot and water, Katja's younger sister Milena also stumbles and worries.
And Leon, her "middle brother", fled from the North Sea coast to the big city, saves a human life at dawn and plans a departure for love.
Between Tallstedt, Münster and Berlin, the siblings struggle with the question of what family means.
Together they brace themselves against the wind that life is blowing around our ears - until the heart finds a home.
Cover text / S. Fischer
Life crises come and go.
Sometimes like ebb and flow.
Volker Jarck's poetic writing captivates.
The deep look at the people who accompany and support you in life crises is the great strength of the novel.
Well worth reading - and not only when you have to cope with a crisis.
Volker Jarck "Robust Hearts"
2022 S. Fischer, ISBN-13 978-3-10-397084-5
Price: hardcover €22, e-book €18.99, 336 pages (varies in format)
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Kristine Bilkau "next door"
Kristine Bilkau "Next door" © Luchterhand
A small town on the Kiel Canal, between nature, district town and industry, shortly after the turn of the year.
In the middle of everyday life, a family disappears without a trace.
The abandoned house becomes the focal point of the neighbors' thoughts: Julia, in her late thirties, who wishes in vain for a child, who recently moved from the big city with her boyfriend and runs a small ceramics shop with an online shop.
Astrid, in her early sixties, who has been running a practice in the nearby district town for decades and worries about her aging aunt.
And then there is the mysterious child who appears in the garden of the missing family.
blurb / Luchterhand
The book invites you to think.
It creates a spell that the reader can hardly resist.
Subtle and profound, quiet and sensitive.
Everything I want from a good novel.
Kristine Bilkau "next door"
2022 Luchterhand, ISBN-13 978-3-630-87519-4
Price: hardcover €22, e-book €16.99, 288 pages (deviating from the format)
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