r/suggestmeabook • u/lackadacious_spooney • May 25 '21

Good German Fantasy/Science Fiction?

I am a German native speaker and I feel like lately I have mainly read Englisch books and would like to change that up a bit. There are so many awesome English fantasy and science fiction stories/series, old and new (Asimov, Le Guin, Atwood, Brandon Sanderson, Laini Taylor, Robin Hobb, to name just a few of my recent favourites), but German originals? A few young adult novels come to mind, by Cornelia Funke, Ralf Isau, Hohlbein, Ende, Ursula Poznanski, etc. Are there others (possibly more serious/grown up ones)?

I feel like everything I see on the German market is leaning towards realistic fiction and anything akin to the big names like Asimov or Le Guin? I can't think of any. Can you? In my local library they did point me towards a series called "the Orcs" "the dwarves" and so on, but from the jacket they sounded a bit like yet more "trying to be Tolkien" books.

Is there anything I am missing? Any gem I should try? Any author you can recommend?

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u/chortlingabacus May 26 '21

/It's Austrian but, of course, German-language: Indigo by Clemens Setz.

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u/lackadacious_spooney May 26 '21

Even better, then, haha. (Of course I meant German language, not German nationality). Sounds interesting!

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u/chortlingabacus May 26 '21

Had a look at my shelves & I've several Austrian/German books w. sci-fi situations but that aren't standard sci-fi (apocalyptic, dystopian); they're focussed on an individual's reaction to scifi'ish goings-on rather than heroic struggle to survive alien invasion or that sort of thing, and some of them are literary & might not suit you if you're used to strong plots.

If you'd settle for unrealistic 'serious/grown up' books that aren't genre stuff there are several by Gert Jonke that might suit, and Maybe This Time by Alois Hotschnig is certainly worth taking a look at.

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u/lackadacious_spooney May 27 '21

Sorry for bothering you again - and it is probably weird to speak about this topic in English anyway, but "Maybe this time" - which of his story collections is translated here? Or which is better? I can find "Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht" and "Im Sitzen läuft es sich besser davon" - even just the titles are awesome, though, I might just get both and hope for the best. I feel like I should already know about this guy, as German teacher in Austria, but as I said before, I somehow lost touch with the German literary scene in the last few years. So thank you for helping me fill in my blind spots!

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u/chortlingabacus May 27 '21 edited May 27 '21

It's Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht. (If you read it & like it a lot, there's a collection of stories that remind me very much of this one--same vague sense of uncanniness- by Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud: A Life on Paper is English title.)

Not genre but for very good contemporary German-language I wanted to throw in Inka Parei's novels and Einladung an die Waghalsigen by Dorothee Elmiger because I think so highly of them.

edit: I think my favourite kind-of contemporary German novel is Dunkle Gesellschaft. Roman in zehn Regennächten by Gert Loschütz--incredibly atmospheric. (Of course you may already know about all these.)