Easter treats! Menasse’s The Capital (Austria), French’s The Wych Elm (Ireland), Blackwell’s The Sound of Her Voice (New Zealand)

Posted on April 18, 2019 by mrspeabody68

A short one from me today, as I’m still firmly wedged under a pile of work and have managed very little reading in the past couple of weeks. BUT that hasn’t stopped me from adding new books to my TBR list. And now that the Easter weekend is coming up, I’m hoping to get stuck into at least one of the following…

I was kindly sent a copy of Robert Menasse’s The Capital by MacLehose Press after a serendipitous meeting with translator Jamie Bulloch and editor Katharina Bielenberg at London Book Fair. Then the pressure of two Brexit deadlines kicked in, and the last thing I felt like doing was reading an Austrian satire on the EU! However, now that we’re in (temporarily) calmer waters, I’ve finally sampled the first couple of chapters and enjoyed them very much. So far, we’ve had a pig on the loose in central Brussels, a murder in the Hotel Atlas, and a thoughtful meditation on mustard – all delivered with beguilingly dry humour. We’ve also been introduced to a cast of European characters who are in some way connected to the European Commission and its possibly doomed jubilee celebration plans.

The Capital is a genre-busting political-satirical-literary crime novel, so may not be one for purists, but it’s garnered a series of excellent reviews, such as Mark Lawson’s for The Guardian, and is nothing if not timely for us Brits.

For years, fellow readers have been telling me how brilliant Tana French’s novels are – particularly her ‘Dublin Murder Squad’ series. And for years, I’ve somehow not managed to read a single one of her books. So when I was going through a pile of old Review magazines today and spotted an interview (below) about her novel The Wych Elm – a psychological thriller that’s been compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History – I knew that the time had come. It sounds like the perfect high quality escape for an Easter weekend.

‘Nobody with a lot of imagination should ever commit a crime’ (Feb 2019)

Last but not least, Nathan Blackwell’s The Sound of Her Voice is out *today* from Orion (thanks to Craig Sisterson for the heads up). I was lucky enough to have a sneak peak at this novel in August last year, when I interviewed the author, a former policeman, about this debut novel for the blog. The story centres on Auckland Detective Matt Buchanan and a traumatic crime encountered early in his career – and was nominated for both the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Best First Novel Award *and* Best Novel Award. Impressive!

You can read the full interview here – which gives fascinating insights into the author’s own policing experiences and how he’s deployed them as a writer.

Have a lovely Easter break, everyone!

‘Crime Fiction in German’ book launch and giant Krimi giveaway

Posted on April 9, 2016 by mrspeabody68

127

The book launch for Crime Fiction in German takes place on Thursday 14th April in Swansea, Wales. To celebrate this event, we’re having a giant Krimi giveaway.

Erich is very excited about the book launch

The giveaway includes two copies of Crime Fiction in German (University of Wales Press, 2016), which is the first volume in English to provide a comprehensive overview of German-language crime fiction from its origins in the early 19th century to the present day. *You can download a free chapter from the volume here*

We’re also giving away a wonderful selection of the Krimis featured in the volume, thereby showcasing the best of German-language crime in translation:

A selection from the giant Krimi giveaway

Sascha Arango, The Truth and Other Lies (Simon and Schuster, trans Imogen Taylor). A darkly humorous tale following the fortunes of the outrageous Henry Hayden. A modern-day homage to Patricia Highsmith by one of the screenwriters for the renowned TV crime series Tatort (Crime Scene).

Friedrich Glauser, In Matto’s Realm (Bitter Lemon Press, trans Mike Mitchell). Originally published in 1936, In Matto’s Realm is the second in the groundbreaking ‘Sergeant Studer’ series. Studer is shown investigating the escape of a murderer from a psychiatric institution, a setting that holds a dark mirror up to Swiss society.

Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin (Penguin, trans Michael Hofman). An extraordinary literary crime novel written in 1946, based on the genuine case of Elise and Otto Hampel, who were executed on charges of treason during the Nazi regime. Recently made into a film starring Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson and Daniel Brühl.

Auguste Groner, The Case of the Golden Bullet (Amazon, unknown trans). Groner was a pioneer of Austrian and women’s crime fiction, and created the first German-language police detective series. Joseph Müller investigates in this opening novella, originally published in 1892.

Petra Hammesfahr, The Sinner (Bitter Lemon Press, trans John Brownjohn). A gripping psychological thriller and Frauenkrimi, which excavates the reasons for an explosion of violence by young mother Cora Bender one sunny summer afternoon.

Paulus Hochgatterer, The Sweetness of Life (MacLehose, trans Jamie Bulloch). In this Austrian crime novel, Detective Ludwig Kovacs and psychiatrist Raffael Horn work on a murder case in which the only witness is a girl too traumatised to speak. Winner of the 2009 European Literature Prize.

Andrea Maria Schenkel, The Murder Farm (Quercus, trans Anthea Bell). A former resident returns to a village following a family massacre, and begins to piece together events via interviews with assorted villagers. A spare, chilling tale set in rural 1950s Germany. Winner of the German Crime Prize.

Ferdinand von Schirach, The Collini Case (Michael Joseph/Penguin, trans Anthea Bell). Barrister Caspar Leinen takes on a seemingly impossible case: his client, Fabrizio Collini, admits the murder of a rich German industrialist, but refuses to say why he committed the crime. A gripping courtroom drama that interrogates notions of justice.

Simon Urban, Plan D (Vintage, trans Katy Derbyshire). An ambitious novel that blends police procedural, detective novel and alternative history genres. Set in a 2011 in which the Berlin Wall still stands, it explores East-West tensions as the GDR teeters on brink of bankruptcy. A biting social satire.

TO ENTER the giveaway and win one of the books above, write your name in the comment section along with the answer to this question –> What is the popular term for ‘crime novel’ in German?

A. Schwarzwaldkuchen

B. Krimi

C. Bratwurst

You can be anywhere in the world to enter – from Tenby or Tokyo to Tasmania. The closing date for entries is Sunday 17th April. THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED! See below for the winners!

There was a fantastic response the Great Krimi Giveaway, with nearly 100 entries from all over the world – and amazingly everyone got the answer right ;-). Thanks to everyone who took part. The twelve lucky winners are listed below. Congratulations!

Winners – please email me your postal address and I will send your book out to you (mrspeabody68 at yahoo.co.uk).

THE WINNERS ARE……..:

John Grant (realthog) – Arango’s The Truth and Other Lies
Roberta Marshall – Aykol’s Hotel Bosphorus
Bill Selnes – Glauser’s In Matto’s Realm
Lucy Dalton – Glauser’s Fever
Annegret Harms – Fallada’s Alone in Berlin
Sebastian Raggio – Groner’s The Case of the Golden Bullet and Schenkel’s The Murder Farm (two for one because the Groner is short!)
Robert J (Robie) – Hammesfahr’s The Sinner
Bett Mac – Hochgatterer’s The Sweetness of Life
Beatriz Simonetti – von Schirach’s The Collini Case
Ankush Saikia – Urban’s Plan D
Georgie Kelley – Crime Fiction in German volume
Sarah Pybus – Crime Fiction in German volume

The faithful Krimi bag, from which the draw was made, with the pile of freshly won prizes

Mrs. Peabody gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the sponsors below, who have made this Krimi giveaway possible.

‘Crime Fiction in German’ publication day! With a FREE CHAPTER!

Posted on March 3, 2016 by mrspeabody68

Today sees the publication of Crime Fiction in German by the University of Wales Press. For all us involved in writing and producing the book, this is a hugely exciting moment, not least because Crime Fiction in German is a genuine first: the first volume in English to give a comprehensive overview of German-language crime fiction from its origins in the early nineteenth century to the present day. And it’s World Book Day here in the UK as well – what could be finer?

To celebrate there’s a FREE introductory chapter available to all readers!

About the book

Crime Fiction in German explores crime fiction from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the former East and West German states.

It investigates National Socialist crime fiction, Jewish-German crime fiction, Turkish-German crime fiction and the Afrika-Krimi (crime set predominantly in post-colonial Africa), expanding the notion of a German crime-writing tradition along the way.

It examines key areas such as the West German Soziokrimi (social crime novel), the Frauenkrimi (women’s crime writing), the Regionalkrimi (regional crime fiction), historical crime fiction and the Fernsehkrimi (TV crime drama). In the process, it highlights the genre’s distinctive features in German-language contexts. And yes, humour is one of them 🙂

It includes a map of German-speaking Europe, a chronology of crime publishing milestones, extracts from primary texts, and an annotated bibliography of print and online resources in English and German.

All quotes are given in English and German. No knowledge of German is required!

The contributors – Julia Augart (University of Namibia), Marieke Krajenbrink (University of Limerick), Katharina Hall (Swansea University), Martin Rosenstock (Gulf University, Kuwait), Faye Stewart (Georgia State University), Mary Tannert (editor and translator of Early German and Austrian Detective Fiction) – are all experts in the field of crime fiction studies.

Further details, including a table of contents, are available at the University of Wales Press website. The paperback is available from Amazon here.

Now read on for details of the FREE chapter!

The Free Chapter

While Crime Fiction in German is an academic volume that hopes to be useful to scholars in the field, a key aim has been to make the book accessible to ALL readers with an interest in crime fiction. We’re aware that not everyone may be able to buy the volume (academic texts have smaller print runs and are mainly bought by university libraries, and therefore have a different pricing structure to mass-produced books). If not, one option is to ask the local library to order a copy. Another is to read on for a very special treat…

Anyone, anywhere in the world, can download Chapter One of Crime Fiction in German for FREE.

The chapter gives an overview of the volume and of the history of German-language crime fiction. It’s PACKED with criminal goodness, and thanks to the generous financial support of Swansea University, you can download from the university’s Cronfa research repository. And did I mention that it’s FREE?

❤ In return, we ask two tiny favours ❤

If you like the chapter and want to tell other people, please send them the link below rather than the actual PDF. Why? Because then we can track how many times the chapter has been downloaded. If there’s lots of activity, more ‘open access’ projects like this one may be funded in the future.

Secondly, if you download the chapter and have a moment, could you leave a comment below saying where you’re from? This will help us see how far the chapter has travelled. It could be rather fun – I’m looking forward to seeing if we can get ‘Leipzig, Germany’, ‘Moose Jaw, Canada’, and ‘Beijing, China’ all in a row.

Right, here we go! The link to the Crime Fiction in German Chapter One is

https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa25191

Enjoy and please spread the word!

Deutschi Crime Night and the ‘Crime Fiction in German’ volume

Posted on June 12, 2015 by mrspeabody68

The wonderful Deutschi Crime Night took place yesterday at Waterstones Piccadilly. The panelists were Austrian author Bernhard Aichner, German author Sascha Arango, the acclaimed translator Anthea Bell, New Books in German editor Charlotte Ryland and me, with Euro Noir expert Barry Forshaw in the chair – who did us proud.

Photo by Charlotte Ryland

The discussion was wide-ranging and fascinating, and included the following: Sascha on his decision to set The Truth and Other Lies in a unidentifiable, universal space (like Nesser’s ‘van Veeteren’ series), in contrast to the regionally rooted writing he does for the Kiel episodes of the German TV crime drama Tatort (Crime Scene), and about the influence of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series on his writing; Bernhard on his creation of the ‘lovable serial killer’ Blum and the research he carried out for Woman of the Dead in a funeral home and at autopsies; Anthea on the process of translating the novel, which she really enjoyed, and on translating more generally, which she described as ‘finding the author’s voice’.

In addition, we took a canter through the crime fiction of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, discussing early German-language crime, crime greats from the Weimar period such as Fritz Lang’s M, Nazi crime fiction, Austrian crime fiction’s use of satire, Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s complex detective figures, and the boom in historical crime fiction since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (I drew on the forthcoming Crime Fiction in German volume when making my contribution to this portion of the discussion, of which more below). Charlotte filled us in on the work of New Books in German and some crime fiction coming our way soon, including the beguilingly entitled Der nasse Fisch (The Wet Fish) by Volker Kutscher and Melanie Raabe’s Die Falle (The Trap). She also helped us ponder the question of why German-language crime hasn’t quite had the breakthrough it deserves in the UK, with a publisher in the audience adding that she was confident it has the capacity to do so. A good boost would be provided by some German-language crime in the BBC4 Saturday crime slot…

Anti-clockwise from front: Charlotte Ryland, Anthea Bell, Bernhard Aichner, Sascha Arango, Barry Forshaw, Mrs Pea (photo by Jennifer Kerslake)

Barry also kindly gave me the opportunity to talk about the Crime Fiction in German volume, which is out in March 2016 and will provide the first comprehensive overview in English of German-language crime from its origins in the 1800s to the present day. I’ve set up a tab about the volume here, and you can see further details on the University of Wales Press website. The volume is part of the UWP ‘European Crime Fictions‘ series, which already contains volumes on French, Italian, Iberian and Scandi crime.

The cover for the Crime Fiction in German volume has just been finalised and looks gorgeous. I love the psychedelic green (Schwarzwald on speed?) and the lashings of blood. And just look at those clever little bullet holes.

Finally, as a few people from our lovely audience were asking for reading recommendations after the event, here are some past ‘Mrs. Peabody Investigates’ posts about German-language crime:

Alles Gute und viel Spaß!

Krimi-tastic! Aichner’s Woman of the Dead and Arango’s The Truth & Other Lies

Posted on June 6, 2015 by mrspeabody68

Not just one, but two seriously page-turning Krimis from the German-speaking world have crossed my path recently.

Woman of the Dead (Totenfrau, trans. Anthea Bell/Orion 2015), by Austrian writer Bernhard Aichner, features an unforgettable heroine/anti-heroine, the motorbike-riding undertaker Brünhilde Blum. She is a woman with a secret, who, when her beloved husband is killed, starts dealing with the case in a highly individual way. This fast-moving thriller is an extremely readable mash-up of Austrian and American crime. Its setting is recognizably Austrian (Innsbruck and the Tyrolean countryside), and its bleak assessment of Austrian society echoes other crime narratives such as Elfriede Jelinek’s Greed (Gier, 2000). At the same time, the book draws on Lindsay’s Dexter, Tarantino’s Kill Bill (‘the bride’) and Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Lisbeth Salander) – influences that might allow it to be viewed as ‘feminist noir’, the subject of this recent The Mary Sue post. I was gripped from start to finish, although I did find the novel’s moral framework and its call to empathize with a killer rather unsettling at times. I’ll be very interested to see where the next book in the ‘Blum trilogy’, House of the Dead, takes our highly unusual investigator. You can read an extract from Woman of the Dead here.

Sascha Arango’s The Truth and Other Lies (Die Wahrheit und andere Lügen, trans. Imogen Taylor/Simon and Schuster 2015) is equally compelling and features another off-the-wall protagonist, Henry Hayden – a famous novelist whose comfortable life begins to unravel after he makes a fatal error. Hayden is a darkly comic creation whose story involves a wife, a mistress and a floundering police team, and keeps the reader effortlessly engaged throughout. Intriguingly, even though Arango is a screenwriter for the German TV crime series Tatort, which has a strongly regional flavour, his novel has an international rather than a specifically German feel. The characters’ names sound English, American, German, Dutch, Swedish or eastern European and there are barely any discernible geographical markers. In literary terms, the obvious influence is Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, but I was also reminded of Ingrid Noll’s blackly humorous novel The Pharmacist (Die Apothekerin, 1994), whose protagonist carries out a series of crimes to smooth her way to a prosperous middle-class life. Like the latter, Arango’s Truth is a stylish, witty and entertaining read. You can listen to an audio extract here.

Both Bernhard Aichner and Sascha Arango will be appearing at the Deutschi Crime Night at Waterstones Piccadilly next Thursday, 11th June at 7.00pm, with Barry Forshaw (moderating), Anthea Bell the translator, Charlotte Ryland from ‘New Books in German’ and yours truly. The event is FREE and all you need to do if you’d like to come along is RSVP piccadilly@waterstones.com. You can find out more info here. Should be lots of fun!

Please do not adjust your sets

Posted on January 30, 2014 by mrspeabody68

In a change to my normal academic routine, I’m embarking on research leave for a whole, glorious semester. The chance for this kind of leave comes around every three to four years, and is really invaluable, as it provides time to build up some proper momentum – in my case for writing up research on German and international crime fiction.

I’ll be focusing on two key projects. The first is a book, Detecting the Past: Representations of National Socialism and its Legacy in Transnational Crime Fiction. As the title suggests, it will explore how crime writers have depicted the Nazi period and its post-war legacy since 1945, exploring themes such as criminality, morality, justice, memory and guilt in larger historical, political and social contexts. One key area of interest is how ‘Nazi-themed crime fiction’ reflects the work of historians on the period. A recent example is David Thomas’ Ostland (Quercus, 2013), which draws on perpetrator studies by historians such as Christopher R. Browning to create a portrait of an ‘ordinary man’, police detective Georg Heuser, who comes to play an active part in the Holocaust. A compelling ‘psychological thriller’, the novel is also a sobering depiction of the mechanics of the Holocaust, and of the attempts to bring perpetrators to justice in the 1960s. It’s an excellent example of how history and the findings of historians can be made accessible to a wider public by harnessing the conventions and popularity of the crime genre. Incidentally, details of the 150 primary texts I’m working on can be found here – a number of which have been discussed on this blog over the past two years.

My second project is to finish editing Crime Fiction in German, a volume of essays for the University of Wales Press, which will act as an introduction to the subject for an English-language audience. As well as exploring the development of crime fiction in Germany, Austria and Switzerland from the nineteenth century onwards, the volume examines German-language crime from a number of different angles: the crime fiction of the former GDR; regional crime fiction; women’s crime fiction, historical crime fiction; Turkish-German crime fiction; and the enduring popularity of TV series such as Tatort (Crime Scene). It’s the first time this kind of comprehensive overview will have been published in English, which is very exciting. The volume will join others in UWP’s European Crime Fiction series, such as French Crime Fiction (2009), Scandinavian Crime Fiction (2011) and Italian Crime Fiction (2011).

Focusing my energies on academic writing means that I’ll be blogging a little less than I usually do over the next few months. But I’ll still be popping up with recommendations now and then, so please do not adjust your sets! And normal service will most definitely be resumed…

Mrs. Peabody Investigates

International crime fiction, TV and film

Category Archives: Austria

Easter treats! Menasse’s The Capital (Austria), French’s The Wych Elm (Ireland), Blackwell’s The Sound of Her Voice (New Zealand)

‘Crime Fiction in German’ book launch and giant Krimi giveaway

‘Crime Fiction in German’ publication day! With a FREE CHAPTER!

https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa25191

Deutschi Crime Night and the ‘Crime Fiction in German’ volume

Krimi-tastic! Aichner’s Woman of the Dead and Arango’s The Truth & Other Lies

Please do not adjust your sets

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: