Robert Ames is a 37-year-old insurance broker. He lives with his wife Kala and their son Jonathan in an unassuming house in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada).

One Friday morning, he sets off for work as usual - little does he know that his life will never be the same again. He will fall in love ...

What constitutes a family today and who is actually part of it?

Angela and Erich are the parents, Simon and Katrin the children. Together they make up a family. But just listing the members doesn't mean it is a proper family. Erich and Angela have ...

In her new novel, Antje Rávic Strubel gives us a highjacked plane and a difficult, if not impossible, quest for the truth. She has taken a real story as her inspiration: in 1978 a Tupolew 134 was hijacked by two citizens from East Germany who were on a flight from Gdansk to West Berlin. The ...

Stories

Art and life - when one throws us off track, the other puts us back on the rails. Or is it the other way around?
In the first of three stories, a dissident author retreats from the public eye in order to save his life and finds in the art exhibit entitled "The German ...

The true, world-spanning story of an extraordinary book

Two men, two centuries - bound together by one extraordinary book. Thomas Bridges, the author, grows up as the foster son of a British missionary at the end of the world, in Tierra del Fuego, among the children of the ...

A century and a life - transformed into literature

As Helga Schubert's mother explains to her daughter, she has accomplished three acts of heroism in her lifetime: refusing to abort her daughter, taking her along when fleeing from enemy troops during World War II, and not shooting ...

Violence of the past, love of the present

When Nike leaves her apartment in the Berlin-Mitte district, she has to pass her great-grandmother's Stolperstein. Stones like this are small memorials for the victims of persecution and murder during the Third Reich, and there are many of ...

A story of human longing and failure, of German history, and the ethics of science

Against his father's will, Hermann Oberth moves to Göttingen in 1920 in order to study physics - the most exciting science of his age in the most exciting city there is. Hermann wants to turn the ...

A girl named Johnny

Early on, Joana Wolkenzin knows that she is different. She spends hours reading and learns song lyrics by heart. As she grows older, she falls in love with both boys and girls. In the No Man's Land of Western Pomerania in the 1990s, she gives herself a new name: ...

An extraordinary adventure and an unforgettable hero

Bartholomew is an orphan from Bombay, he's twelve years old and speaks almost as many languages. This is why, in the year 1854, he is hired as a translator by the brothers Schlagintweit from Germany, who, with the support of ...

"I was always alone. With my mother. My mother was always alone. With me. My mother lived for me and destroyed her life. But not mine. Someone else did that."

As a child, Wolf slept during the day and was awake at night. He was only allowed to leave their apartment if ...

Jochen, Oliver, Bill - almost half of the human race is composed of men. They still set the tone for many issues, even though their facade started to crack a long time ago. Enough of a reason to look more closely. What facets characterize the other gender? With a woman's eyes, Johanna Adorján ...