The most beautiful family and romance novels
1. Jonathan Franzen: Freedom
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For nine years, Jonathan Franzen has been working on this novel, which is now causing a worldwide sensation (the "Time" magazine took the man on the title) and has us so excited that we have placed him at number 1 on our charts. Franzen tells of the Berglunds, a family from which everyone wants to get out. First of all, Patty, a middle-class mom with unfulfilled yearnings devoted to self-pity, alcohol, and finally her husband's best friend. Brilliant entertainment, classy literature.
(B: Bettina Abarbanell / Eike Schönfeld, 736 p., 24.95 euros, Rowohlt)
2. Morgan Callan Rogers: Ruby-red heart, ice blue sea
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Swimming with Mom, catching lobster with daddy, messing with the clique and being pampered by Grand, the affectionate grandmother - for Florine Gilhalm, life could go on and on. But the wholesome world of the eleven-year-old girl from a fishing village in Maine breaks apart when her life-hungry mother Carlie does not return from a trip. No call. No letter. No sign of life. Only painful questions. What happened? Is Carlie still alive? No one can mitigate Florine's despair, which over the years turns into anger and hatred - for everyone and for everything. And when Florine soaks up the scent of her mom's clothes, the words blur as she reads, so frightening is the girl's despair. The title of the debut of the American Morgan Callan Rogers is a bit cheesy, but do not be fooled: "Ruby heart, ice-blue sea" has even blew the well-versed many-readers in our editorial.
(Over: Claudia Feldmann, 432 p., 19.90 euros, mare)
The audio book "Ruby-red heart, ice-blue sea" is also available on our download platform.
3. Sofi Oksanen: Purgatory
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Zara, a young Estonian, is on the run from her brutal Russian pimps. She finds refuge with Aliide, her grandmother's sister. But the old woman does not trust the boy. Flashbacks tell how Aliide was humiliated and abused 50 years ago by Russian occupiers - and even charged himself with heavy guilt. This linguistically recounted family tragedy with political background develops an irresistible pull - thrilling as a thriller written by Sofie Oxanen, the Lisbeth Salander of Scandinavian literature.
(T: Angela Pläger, 400 p., 19.95 euros, Kiepenheuer & Witsch)
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Her mother is Estin, her father Finn. How much family is in "Purgatory"?
Sofi Oksanen: As a kid, I was often with my grandparents in West Estonia who lived in a military zone. There I learned that important things are discussed in the garden - so that nobody can overhear. This constant fear makes people paranoid. Like the two main characters Aliide and Zara, who are suspicious of each other.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: A country is occupied, the women are raped. Why are women always victims of you?
Sofi Oksanen: Of course, men can also be victims, but I wanted to write about women. I wanted to know what happens in the mind. Regardless of the cultural background, there are similar patterns of behavior of victims of sexual violence. They have the urge to purify themselves constantly, and they usually avoid any eye contact. Aliide recognizes suffering comrades in the street - and avoids them.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: The only real love in your book ends with a betrayal. Do not you believe in love?
Sofi Oksanen: Dictatorships and times of overthrowing change relationships in families and between lovers. That's bad, but terrible love stories are always more interesting than the lucky ones.
4. Joshua Ferris: To the outdoors
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Joshua Ferris is 36 and one of the most original younger US authors. His debut, the office satire "We were immortal", has been revolving for months as a "must read" in the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde editors. "Into the Free", his second novel, grabs us for quite different reasons, he is at the same time bold and oppressive and in a serious way bizarre: Ferris tells the story of a man who simply marches off, following a mysterious compulsion. Tim Farnsworth is a lawyer, has a good job, a great wife, a flawless New York middle-class life. No need to run away, but Tim has no choice: he has to. It drives him away. His illness has no name, and there is no cure, even Anketten does not help permanently, Jane, his wife, has tried. Tim keeps going, sometimes Jane finds him half frozen, at some point she does not look for him anymore.She believes that even love stops when one goes his own way, but that's not true. This is the real drama of this story: no longer finding each other; loving each other - everyone for themselves.
(Over: Marcus Ingendaay, 340 p., 19.95 euros, Luchterhand)
The audiobook "Ins Freie" is also available on our download platform.
5. Jodi Picoult: Fragile
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The story: Willow is six, a smart, funny kid. But even a touch can be enough to break her bones: Willow has the vitreous bone disease. Her mother Charlotte does everything for her, but there is always the worry that she will not be able to pay for her expensive treatments in the long run. Therefore, she decides to complain: Against the gynecologist, the Willows disease on the ultrasound images has recognized late, too late for an abortion. Charlotte complains of unwanted birth - a child she really loves about everything.
The author: Jodi Picoult, 43, American, loves controversial subjects. The woman makes complex family novels out of complex topical issues (killing spree in "19 minutes", bone marrow donation in "In the life of my sister") without too much sentimentality - you have to get that done first.
You have to go through: Five narrative perspectives, where - honestly - one would have sufficed. Then one would have saved one or the other narrative loop.
That's one of them: An opinion on an ethical dilemma. Because one inevitably finds out: how do I stand to it?
Price-performance ratio: 19.99 euros for over 620 pages are perfectly fine - and there is a piece of cake, because Charlotte, a trained pastry chef, bakes the frustration with cinnamon crumbs from the soul and delivers the detailed instructions with the same.
Perfect for: everyone who likes to like a gang more relentless in the often fiddly genre family novel.
The audiobook "Ins Freie" is also available on our download platform.
(T: Rainer Schumacher, 622 p., 19.99 euros, Lübbe)
6. Jean-Philippe Toussaint: The truth about Marie
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He must come immediately, has begged Marie, and though they have not been a couple since she left him, the narrator rushes out into the thundery Parisian summer night. He can still see a man being carried out of Marie's apartment in the flare of the emergency ambulance and then standing in front of her again. In front of his Marie, with whom a love unites him, so overwhelming, so great and unconditional, that Jean-Philippe Toussaint has already written his third novel about the couple. However, he does not simply continue his story, but rather recounts it: complements, varies, deepens. A book that sprays with intensity, and once again is not the whole "truth about Marie". We can probably hope for another band. What luck.
(T: Joachim Unseld, 240 p., 19.90 euros, Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt)
7. Tomás Eloy Martínez: Purgatorio
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The best we have found at this year's Argentina Focus at the Frankfurt Book Fair: Simón has disappeared. Thirty years ago, he and his wife were arrested during the period of military dictatorship, like thousands of other men, women and children in Argentina. Emilia was quickly free again, her father was finally one of the most influential men who pulled the strings in the background of the regime. Was he after the unloved son-in-law? Emilia can not shake the suspicion, she is looking for her Simón for decades. When he finally stands in front of her in a restaurant in New Jersey, he does not seem to have aged a day. The moving novel by Tomás Eloy Martínez is the book of a great, desperate love, a human life destroyed by the dictatorship, a devastated family. And he is also an impressive book about one of the darkest chapters of Argentina.
(Over: Peter Schwaar, 304 p., 19.95 euros, S. Fischer)
8. Buddhadeva Bose: The girl of my heart
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What do you do when you can do nothing but wait? The question is four men who have to wait one night at an Indian train station for their train. In her waiting room it is uncomfortable and cold, sleep is out of the question. The four follow their thoughts until a young couple passes by. And everyone immediately thinks of the time when he himself was so in love, until an electrifying thought of silence comes to an end: "We tell each other our stories." And one after the other speaks of the girl of his heart. Not every one of the four love stories comes to a happy end - yet everyone is so fabulous and beautifully told that you're disappointed when it gets mornings and the men finally get on their train. The original Bengali edition was published in Calcutta in 1951, the author Buddhadeva Bose died long ago - our dearest rediscovery, an absolute stroke of luck.
(B: Hanne-Ruth Thompson, 181 p., 18 euros, Ullstein)
9. Lisa-Marie Dickreiter: Breathing under water
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Time heals all wounds? Time does not heal for miners.One year after the 16-year-old daughter Sarah was murdered, the pain is still as great as on the first day. Especially Sarah's mother Anne can not imagine a life without Sarah. She sleeps in her bed and talks to her in thought. Lisa-Marie Dickreiter tells from the different perspectives of the family members what it feels like to lose a loved one. That sounds awful - but it's written so great and rousing that it leaves you hopeful in the end.
(269 p., 19.90 euros, Bloomsbury Berlin)
10. Monika Helfer: Before I can sleep
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Josi Bartok, psychiatrist, wife, mother of two grown-up children, has lost a lot: after a cancer surgery both breasts, after 20 years of marriage her husband, who suddenly confesses to his gay behavior. However, Josi never loses her dry sense of humor. To get away first, she travels to Greece - not without first asking her daughter Karla, how to recognize a good lover. A great mother-daughter dialogue. That's why we wholeheartedly recommend this novel to you. (223 p., 17.90 euros, Deuticke)
"How does a woman realize that the man is good in bed, Karla? Heavens, do not look like that! You're twenty-six, and I'm your mother, well?" ... Karla went into the kitchen and came with a large glass Water back. She drank it in one go. Then she said, "For example, if you get three times in a row and he can make it a fourth time." "Thanks," said Josi. "That's okay," Karla said.
11. Herman Koch: Prepared
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The venue is a fine restaurant: Two brothers and their wives have made an appointment to eat, because they have to talk about their sons. With sharp wit, the narrator Paul, a sympathetic loser, describes his older brother as a cheeky and success-spoiled politician. Only gradually does it become clear: The children have done something terrible. Paul and his wife Clara are determined to protect their son; Brother Serge is just thinking about his career. Funny, touching and with subtle meanness, the Dutch author Herman Koch reveals the weaknesses of adults - and the harrowing act of the guys from a good home. An irresistible composition of bizarre-comic social analysis and family drama.
(B: Heike Baryga, 336 p., 19.95 euros, Kiepenheuer & Witsch)
12. Hans-Christian Schmidt and Andreas Német: I'll show you something, come follow me
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Sure, he can not wait any longer: across the street and the bushes, over the clover and a cow that stands in the way, over the Schuldach and over the football field he has painted his thick white line, once through the whole Place, to the front door of his lover. Now he pulls her to the balloon to show her the world, but above all his work from above - a huge heart. A crazy love salutation in a crazy picture book, happily rhymed and gently collaged.
(28 p., 9,95 Euro, Minedition. For all lovers from 3 years)
13. Tom Rachman: The imperfect
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Journalists usually appear as heroes in novels: brave fighters like Mikael Blomkvist in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. Rarely, as anxious clerks plagued by unfulfilled dreams, as in Tom Rachman's great debut novel. From a dozen different perspectives, the 35-year-old American, a journalist himself, talks about the employees of an unsuccessful English-language newspaper in Rome. The bored obituary writer suddenly suffers a real tragedy; the economist lives with a dreamer lying on her pocket; the lonely Parisian correspondent invents a sensation out of despair; the manager falls in love with an editor she just fired ... What starts as a puzzle, blends into a wonderful book about family members - real and those who are our peers. And about love, about other people, and about the seemingly old-fashioned product: the newspaper printed on paper.
(Over: Pieke Biermann, 400 p., 14.90 euros, dtv premium)
14. Torben Guldberg: Theses on the existence of love
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Across the world, across five centuries, the narrator travels from Torben Guldberg's profound novel to collect love stories. He wants to know what love is. A heavenly power? A vibration in space? An indescribable happiness of which we tell again and again? Although he finds no clear answer, but the realization that love can be anywhere and like to hide. Maybe it's just a shooting star she's hiding in.
"Mr. Guldberg, you wrote two and a half years to the novel, what do you know about love?" "I did a lot of research, but most of what I learned about love was because I was writing with a woman I'm married to today."
(T: Ulrich Sonnenberg, 462 p., 19.95 euros, S. Fischer)
The audio book "Theses on the existence of love" is also available on our download platform.
15thAnne Wiazemsky: My Berlin kid
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This is the author: Anne Wiazemsky was born in Berlin in 1947 and is the granddaughter of French Nobel laureate François Mauriac. Wiazemsky is also a well-known actress and director and has starred in films by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Jean-Luc Godard, with whom she was married from 1967 to 1979.
And that's how her book sounds: "He likes to go out in the evening and I hate that. He likes to meet with friends and I hate that. He likes to drink and I hate that. He likes to tell funny stories and I hate that. We have no common ground but I believe with him maybe I have a tiny chance to be happy. "
(T: Grete Oswald, 259 p., 19.95 euros, C.H. Beck)
16. Erik Orsenna: Song for a beloved wife
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When Gabriel finds love for life in his mid fifties, Isabelle and he have just four years together. Then she becomes less and less, ever weaker, until she finally dies. But Gabriel does not want to give up. He wants to bring back his lover from the hereafter. For Orpheus it was still clear where to look, but Gabriel reads book by book, talks to thinkers and believers, even learns to dance what Isabel loved for a lifetime: just to be close to her. In Erik Orsenna's moving, astonishingly airy book, it is not the time that heals all the wounds, but rather the rebellion against it: in a defiant, unflinching love.
(T: Sabine Müller / Holger Fock, 156 p., 18.95 euros, C.H. Beck)
17. Claude Ponti: Parent's Catalog. Make, order, try out
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Our favorite children's book on the subject of family, by the French picture-book artist Claude Ponti: a catalog from which annoyed children can select new parents, order them and exchange them with the old ones within 48 hours. 35 variants are on offer, from the model "discreet" with invisibility belt and Schimpfdämpfer to the model "happy" with ceilings made of trampoline cotton candy. But beware: all have their advantages and disadvantages. This is enlightening for children, facilitating for parents and for all pretty funny. And, do not worry: the original parents, it is said somewhere in the fine print, if necessary returned to informal request by return mail.
(B: Tobias Scheffel, 48 p., 12.95 euros, Gerstenberg, from 8 years)
18. Mario Fortunato: Innocent days in the war
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At the end of the Second World War, their paths crossed at the gates of Rome: the Italian Nina finds a soulmate in Alastair, the British bomber pilot crashed over Italy. But she has already been forgiven, married the family of her deceased sister for the sake of her family. And he is suddenly furiously jealous. Nina believes she can soothe this surge of emotion by initiating her husband into Alastair's secret. A mistake ... From the depths of Russia to London, Italy and Africa, Mario Fortunato has drawn the web of fate in this beautiful and painful book, full of despair and love hunger. And he shows that a kiss is not only a kiss, but also encouragement - or betrayal.
(T: Marianne Schneider, 248 p., 19.95 euros, Schöffling & Co.)
19. Sadie Jones: Small Wars
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What is the war with love? Can one kill during the day and come home in the evening as a loving husband and father? The small relationship wars between Henry Treherne and his wife Clara are inevitable consequences of the cruel service that the ambitious soldier made in Cyprus in the 1950s. There, the British hold the position against Cypriot independence fighters. Distraught, Clara has to experience how her husband becomes a stranger. A great love story that evolves into a drama. And we understand how war unfolds its destructive power and penetrates into the very core of relationships.
(Over: ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Walitzek, 448 p., 22.95 euros, Schöffling & Co.)
The audio book "Kleine Kriege" is also available on our download platform.
20. David Levithan: The Dictionary of Lovers
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A how extraordinary (adjective): This is this dictionary of the American David Levithan. For here a love story from the point of view of a man from A like "breathtaking" to Z like "zenith" is told encyclopaedically and in short dialogues, snapshots and train of thought. A love in Manhattan - between two who get to know each other via the Internet and then rush through all stages of love, through happiness, insecurity, doubt, deception, family reunion, great expectations, small disappointments and the realization that nothing is more fleeting than love.
Z as summary (noun): Sometimes the German translation reduces the charm of this love in lexicon form. But in the end, there are enough wonderful little moments like breathtaking, (adj.) Breathtaking: "If we kiss each other in the morning and give each other, for an hour, before we say a single word." Or candid, (adj.) Open, outspoken, sincere: He: "Mostly, if I sleep with someone, I would rather read." She: "Mostly when I read, I would rather sleep with someone."
(T: Andreas Steinhöfel, 211 p., 18 euros, Graf)
