Jan 24 2018
Wladimir Kaminer left Moscow for Berlin in 1990, and since then he has lived and chronicled the life of a Russian in the German capital. In roughly two dozen books, beginning with Russendisko (Russian Disco, first published in 2000), he explores with droll humor what it’s like to make a new life in a changing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/24/goodbye-moskau-by-wladimir-kaminer/
Nov 16 2017
Wilhelm Tell, a five-act drama in verse, was Friedrich Schiller’s last major work. It tells the story of the start of the Swiss Confederation as the people of four inner cantons — Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Luzern — joined forces, swearing an oath to drive out a Habsburg ruler who is intent on limiting traditional …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/16/wilhelm-tell-by-friedrich-schiller/
May 11 2017
The cover says that Militärmusik is a novel, but I suppose the main point of that designation is to relieve Wladimir Kaminer (why doesn’t he use the usual transliteration in English?) of any obligation even to pretend to be telling a true story. I mean, Militärmusik is told in the first person, the main character …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/11/militar-musik-by-wladimir-kaminer/
Feb 25 2017
“Schiller’s Wallenstein is so great that there is nothing else like it.” — Goethe How’s that for a blurb? Goethe didn’t just offer praise, he directed the premiere of all three parts of Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy. The third, Wallenstein’s Death (published as Wallenstein II, as the two previous plays comprise the first volume), comes from …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/25/wallenstein-ii-by-friedrich-schiller/
Feb 04 2017
The best thing about zipping through Wikipedia’s entry on these two plays by Friedrich Schiller — the first volume of Schiller’s Wallenstein plays comprises Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp) and Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini) — was learning that Goethe directed both premieres. (He also directed the premiere of the trilogy’s third part, but I am still …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/04/wallenstein-i-by-friedrich-schiller/
Sep 16 2016
This spring I went to Weimar. It’s a good weekend outing from Berlin, about three hours by train, and it’s lovely in May. The park on the Ilm, in particular, is splendid, with views and points of interest coming in and out of sight just as Goethe had intended. His country house, where he lived …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/16/die-rauber-by-friedrich-schiller/
Apr 29 2016
Louis Aragon swore that it was the most beautiful love story in the world. Dshamilja is beautiful, and it is a love story, among other things, but I am not sure I would go as far as Aragon. On the other hand, Aragon was a committed Communist, and Dshamilja is a story of love among …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/29/dshamilja-by-tschingis-aitmatow/
Jul 27 2015
Writing in the mid-1990s in post-Communist Poland, Andrzej Sapkowski produced The Time of Contempt. Writing in the mid-1990s in post-Communist eastern Germany, Ingo Schulze produced Simple Storys (the plural is not correct in German either; it’s symptomatic of the anglicisms and pseudo-anglicisms that entered the language at that time). The two books could hardly be …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/27/simple-storys-by-ingo-schulze/
Jun 10 2015
In the mid-1990s, Steffen Möller went against the usual tide of migration and moved from Germany to Poland. He started with a two-week language course in Krakow, which he found out about from a poster hung in his university’s cafeteria. From such a simple starting point, his whole career grew: first as a student of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/10/viva-polonia-by-steffen-moller/
Oct 14 2014
This was the immensely satisfying end to a very good trilogy, although I will have to think about it a little longer to say just why. The author thanks her English translator in the acknowledgements to German edition, so she is presumably very happy with its rendering as Inkdeath.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/14/tintentod-by-cornelia-funke/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire