Enjoy stories about East Germany? Here’s a list of contemporary fiction dealing with, or set in East Germany (sorted by author surname).
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The novel's sin?
It painted an all too accurate picture of East German society. Rummelplatz, translated here by Samuel P. Willcocks, focuses on a notorious East German uranium mine, run by the Soviets and supplying the brotherland's nuclear program. Veterans, fortune seekers, and outsiders with tenuous family ties like narrator Peter Loose flock to the well-paying mine, but soon find their new lives bleak. Safety provisions are almost nonexistent and tools are not adequately supplied. The only outlets for workers are the bars and fairgrounds where copious amounts of alcohol are consumed and brawls quickly ensue. In Rummelplatz, Bräunig paints his characters as intrinsically human and treats the death of each worker, no matter how poor, as a great tragedy.
But the West is not all she hoped for. Nelly and her children are held in Marienfelde, a processing centre and no-man’s-land between East and West. There she meets Krystyna, a Polish woman who hopes that medical treatment in the West will save her dying brother; Hans, a troubled actor released from prison in the East; and John, a CIA man monitoring the refugees for possible Stasi spies.
All lives cross here, and the cramped confines of the camp breed defamation and violence.
In contemporary Germany, Aaron works for a Stasi archive, making his way through old files, reconstructing the tragic history of thousands of families. But one file in particular catches his eye; and soon unravelling the secrets at its heart becomes an obsession.
When Ella finds a stash of her mother's notebooks, she and Tobi embark on a search that will take them back to Berlin. Her fate clashes with Aaron's, and they piece together the details of Ella's past... and a family torn apart.
But when a senior officer has a messy affair, it falls to Reim to do the clearing up.
It should be a straightforward job. Lean on a few people to get them to shut up. Intimidate neighbours, bribe officials and appeal to the socialist conscience of Party members. But when Reim starts his interrogations, he realises his boss is hiding more than just a lover.
Lieutenant Reim begins to investigate his superior—and what he uncovers puts his own life at risk.
Delving deep into the psyches of both East and West Germany, The Sleep of the Righteous reveals a powerful, apocalyptic account of the century-defining nation’s trajectory from 1945 to 1989. From a youth in a war-scarred industrial town to wearying labor as a factory stoker, surreal confrontations with the Stasi, and, finally, a conflicted escape to the West, Hilbig creates a cipher that is at once himself and so many of his fellow Germans.
Evoking the eerie bleakness of films like Tarkovsky’s Stalker and The Lives of Others, this titan of German letters combines the Romanticism of Poe with the absurdity of Kafka to create a visionary, somber statement on the ravages of history and the promises of the future.
On the grass of No-man's Land, fat rabbits ate and strolled about as if they'd never been hunted and nothing could disturb them. This was their land and they ruled it, and there were three parts to Berlin: East, West and Rabbit.
Magda, a brilliant but disillusioned young linguist, is desperate to flee to the West. When a black market deal brings her into contact with Robert, a young Scot studying at Leipzig University, she sees a way to realise her escape plans. But as Robert falls in love with her, he stumbles into a complex world of shifting half-truths – one that will undo them both.
Many years later, long after the Berlin Wall has been torn down, Robert returns to Leipzig in search of answers. Can he track down the elusive Magda? And will the past give up its secrets?
Their son returns from the other direction, having emigrated to Moscow and found himself banished to Siberia. He returns with his Russian wife to a country mired in petit bourgeois values, yet also brings with him an unwavering belief that they can be changed. The grandson, meanwhile, feels increasingly constricted in a heimat that was not of his choosing, and heads to the West on the very day that his grandfather, the family patriarch, turns 90.
The glittering lights of a political utopia that once shone enticingly seem to be gradually fading as time wears unwaveringly on.
Published originally in German, Harry Guest has provided a funny and engaging translation. The story is sprinkled with outlandish characters, from Granma Otti perpetually in search of her next husband, to Fishface Winkler, whose demise at the hands of an unknown assailant scandalizes the square and leads to the search for the perpetrator. At times a mystery, at others a cultural travelogue, A Square in East Berlin reveals the reality of life beyond the Berlin Wall.
But Theresa has also caught the eye of a cocky young scriptwriter who delights in satirizing Krug’s work.
The ailing government's only hope lies in economic talks with the West, but then an ally of the GDR’s chairman is found murdered—and all the clues suggest that his killer came from within the Stasi.
Detective Martin Wegener is assigned to the case, but, with the future of East Germany hanging over him, Wegener must work with the West German police if he is to find the killer, even if it means investigating the Stasi themselves. It is a journey that will take him from Stasi meeting rooms to secret prisons as he begins to unravel the identity of both victim and killer, and the meaning of the mysterious Plan D.
In London Anthony Blunt's staff at the Courtauld Institute of Art adore him, and are shocked at the suggestions that he could be involved in any spying scandal. The book's character Dinah works at the Courtauld, so gives an insight into Blunt's life at this time. Dinah's husband works at the BBC and is also, unwittingly, drawn into the world of spies and espionage. He, like many of the other characters in the book also has another side hidden from his wife and friends. Wonderful examples are given of social behaviours in the 1950s, as the charade of normality covers investigations and goings on that are (according to the book) common at this time. (From http://emmabbooks.blogspot.nl)
When Oberleutnant Karin Müller is called to investigate a teenage girl's body at the foot of the wall, she imagines she's seen it all before. But when she arrives she realises this is a death like no other: the girl was trying to escape - but from the West.
Müller is a member of the national police, but the case has Stasi written all over it. Karin is tasked with uncovering the identity of the girl, but her Stasi handlers assure her that the perpetrators are from the West - and strongly discourage her asking questions.
The evidence doesn't add up, and Muller soon realises the crime scene has been staged. But this is not a regime that tolerates a curious mind, and Muller doesn't realise that the trail she's following will lead her dangerously close to home . . .
Can you help make this list better?
To keep the list to a manageable size I’ve arbitrarily limited it to contemporary fiction (written after 1989) in the English language (incl. translations into English), and first in series only.
- Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?
- Know any books that should be on this list (fiction, post-1989, actually about life in the GDR – more than a few scenes set there, in English)?
Have I missed anything? Please let me know if you think I’ve missed a novel set in the GDR.