As of: January 29, 2024, 1:10 p.m
By: Sven Trautwein
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In February, a new edition of the Literary Quartet on ZDF will once again focus on four exciting books.
Host Thea Dorn discusses with three guests.
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Many books in 2023 were a topic of conversation.
The literary year that has just begun is once again providing readers with exciting titles.
In the last December issue of the Literary Quartet there was an innovation that will continue in the next show: Without a live audience, host Thea Dorn discusses four books with three guests, including Eva Menasse, Svenja Flaßpöhler and Adam Soboczynski.
Included are the new books by Bodo Kirchhoff and Haruki Murakami.
The Literary Quartet in February: Four titles in discussion
On February 2, 2024, Thea Dorn will discuss four new publications with guests as part of the Literary Quartet.
© dts news agency/Imago/dtv (montage)
Nathan Hill “Wellness”
The English Guardian is very impressed by Nathan Hill's storytelling.
Fellow writer John Irving (“The Last Chairlift”) also considers him to be the best new literary author in America.
Despite being over 700 pages long, it is an entertaining book peppered with ironic elements.
When Jack and Elizabeth become a couple in 1993, everything speaks against them.
But the young photographer with farming roots and the psychology student from a good family get married - and experience exciting first years in Chicago's vibrant art scene.
But not everything goes smoothly.
Amidst mindfulness seminars, polyamorous acquaintances and shrill real estate dreams, her marriage threatens to fail.
Blurb/Piper
Nathan Hill “Wellness”
Translated by: Stephan Kleiner, Dirk van Gunsteren
2024 Piper, ISBN-13 978-3-492-07214-4
Price: Hardcover €28, 731 pages
Order from Amazon
Bodo Kirchhoff “Since he shared his life with an animal”
A fun book about aging.
Bodo Kirchhoff can tell you what he proves again with “Since he shared his life with an animal”.
In 2016, Kirchhoff won the German Book Prize for his novel “Widerfahrnis”.
When he isn't telling great stories himself, he and his wife regularly organize writing seminars on Lake Garda.
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Four days before the peak of summer, where Louis Arthur Schongauer, once a gloomy German in Hollywood films, retreated after the death of his wife.
Now he just wants to live with his dog, in the middle of old olives above Lake Garda.
But then a travel blogger gets stranded in his driveway while turning around, and the next day he is waiting for an author who wants to bring him out of oblivion with a portrait: two women with a feeling for the wounds in his life.
His animal, for which there is only one here and now, becomes all the more important to him...
Blurb/dtv
Bodo Kirchhoff “Since he shared his life with an animal”
2024 dtv, ISBN-13 978-3-423-28357-1
Price: Hardcover €24, e-book €19.99, 383 pages (varies by publisher)
Order from Amazon
Haruki Murakami “The City and its Uncertain Wall”
A new novel by Haruki Murakami has been expected for a long time.
The new book has now been published to coincide with his 75th birthday and shows the author at his best, as
Stern
writes.
The novel was written during the pandemic.
He wrote the manuscript almost restlessly, as the author writes in the book's afterword.
Humorous elements and well-thought-out dialogues turn the material into a novel worth reading that belongs on the bookshelf with the six important books.
A walled city that can only be entered by those who leave their own shadows behind: this is where the true self of the girl lives, with whom the nameless narrator falls madly in love at the age of seventeen.
He goes looking for him, reaches the city and its mysterious library, but the girl no longer recognizes him.
Under mysterious circumstances, the narrator finds himself back in the world beyond the wall.
He moves to Tokyo, works in a bookstore, and has a variety of girlfriends.
Blurb/Dumont
Haruki Murakami “The City and its Uncertain Wall”
Translated by Ursula Gräfe
2024 Dumont, ISBN-13 978-3-8321-6839-1
Price: Hardcover €34, e-book €27.99, 640 pages (different format)
Order from Amazon
Diane Oliver “Neighbors”
Diane Oliver is considered the greatest American author of the 20th century.
The book is a journey into the era of the civil rights movements, which show us racism again and again every day.
A book that is timeless and important and has been waited 60 years.
Above all, the question might be: Is there a difference between what is best for society and what the individual needs?
Oliver is always concerned with both the political and the personal, and thus with general questions about our existence and our coexistence.
Blurb/structure of the publishing house
Diane Oliver “Neighbors”
2024 Aufbau Verlag, ISBN-13 978-3-351-04224-0
Price: can be pre-ordered, hardcover €24, 304 pages
Order from Amazon
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It is still unclear whether the February issue of the Literary Quartet will cause as many laughs as the September 2023 issue.
The February edition of the Literary Quartet will be broadcast on February 2nd at 11:30 p.m. on ZDF.
It can be accessed a little earlier in the media library.
The program is recorded in the foyer of the Berliner Ensemble.