Under the somewhat abstract title Weltenwechsel (Change of Worlds), Kraft tells the story of a Black girl growing up in southern Germany shortly after the end of the Second World War. With this perspective on the post-war period, Kraft fills a gap in the German literary landscape.
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There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak begins with the omniscient “character” literally falling into the story. A water molecule which takes the form of a raindrop and lands in the hair of King Ashurbanipal, the last king of the doomed city of Nineveh. From there, the book follows three timelines which are visited in different forms by this same water molecule.
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As a staunch supporter of books reflecting the diversity of South Asian voices and experiences, I love that Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian is a story grounded in real life struggles bolstered by ancient magic and spirituality, history, and a nerve-jangling heist.
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For several months, I kept circling around the same book in my local bookshop. Some of the keywords on the back cover of Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel piqued my interest: Trinidad, Rastafari, cemetery, gravedigger, magical love story, family legend.
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I picked up up Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard at the beginning of this year – I’ll let you work out which events prompted me to reach for this book about a guy who garners a lot of adoring followers that sincerely believe he has the answers to everything – because as we know, books are a way of contextualizing the world.
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It is probably the most touching and authentic love story I have read in a long time. Open Water is the debut novel by British-Ghanian writer and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson.
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Zahlreiche Schriftsteller*innen halten der Buchbranche in ihren Romanen den Spiegel vor und befassen sich dabei mit unterschiedlichen Fragen: Für welche Leser*innen werden Bücher gemacht? Wer darf über was schreiben? Mangelt es der Literaturbranche an Diversität? Oder auch: Ist sie rassistisch?
In dieser Folge sprechen Anna und Susi über Erasure von Percival Everett (oder Ausradiert in deutscher Übersetzung, Übersetzer*in unbekannt), The Other Black Girl von Zakiya Dalila Harris (gleicher Titel in der deutschen Übersetzung von Heike Schlatterer), und Yellowface von R.F. Kuang, (ebenfalls gleicher Titel in der deutschen Übersetzung von Jasmin Humburg).
Shownotes
The House of Broken Bricks is a sad and beautiful story about the cracks in the lives of the Hembrys, a mixed-race family in rural Somerset. It’s a family of four in a difficult situation and it seems like it’s going to break them. But maybe there is still a chance that they can somehow find their way back to each other?
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Why are there connections between the well-being of the people in New Orleans and Ibadan? How is the destructive hurricane in one place connected to the drying up river in the other? In Olufunke Grace Bankole’s sad and beautiful debut novel The Edge of Water, this is due to a disregarded prophecy.
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Rosarita, Desai’s newest novel, is the story of Bonita, a young Indian woman from New Delhi who has come to San Miguel, Mexico for Spanish immersion courses. One day in the Jardín, she is confronted by the woman Vicky who becomes The Stranger and later, The Trickster. The Stranger claims to have known Bonita’s mother, Sunita. Except, The Stranger calls her Rosarita. Rosarita, insists The Stranger, was once a great artist who had travelled from India to learn from the great painters of Mexico.
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