‘Nastjas Traenen’ by Natascha Wodin (pub. 2021 hardcover, 2023 paperback, Rowohlt Verlag)

Natascha Wodin’s appealing narrative draws us deep into the life of Nastja, the middle-aged woman from Kiev who became home help to the author in her Berlin flat in the period following the end of the Cold War. The story is engaging, suspenseful, at times comedic, always touching, shot through with the timeless themes that go to make a true classic. First published in hardcover in 2021, it is now out in paperback and already a Spiegel-Bestseller. This compelling little book, only 181 pages in the original German, is poised to meet an English language readership and carries a translation grant accessible via ‘New Books in German’.

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‘Sibir’ by Sabrina Janesch (pub.2023 Rowohlt Verlag)

The true story of two childhoods fifty years apart, this book interweaves intriguing episodes from the author’s own early years in the marginalised community of ‘returners’ in small town Mühlheide with an equally compelling narrative of her own father’s childhood, cut short in 1945 when he and his loving family were forced out of their home by the Soviets and despatched to labour in what we now know as Kazakhstan. Janesch’s descriptions of the ‘east’, the steppe with its alleged spirits, the snowstorm appearing to take from them Josef’s mother, the unease experienced by those confronted with a change of language and culture are beautifully wrought, all the more so when presented through the eyes of canny children.

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‘Living in Two Worlds’ by Else Behrend and Siegfried Rosenfeld (pub. CUP 2021)

You can also enjoy this Video Reading of an extract from one of my book translations already in circulation.

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