WThe Aesthetics of Resistance is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss.
WAm kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee is the third novel by author Thomas Brussig. The novel is set in East Berlin in the real-life street of Sonnenallee sometime in the late-1970s or early-1980s. The film Sonnenallee, also written by Brussig, is based upon the same characters, but depicts a significantly different storyline. Unusual is the fact that the screenplay for Sonnenallee served as the basis for the novel, rather than the other way around.
WThe Amber Witch is a German novel published by Wilhelm Meinhold (1797–1851) in 1838. Its German title is Maria Schweidler, die Bernsteinhexe. The novel was originally published as a literary hoax which purported to be an actual 17th-century chronicle. Meinhold later admitted to the hoax but had some difficulty in proving that he was its author. In 1844, it was published in Britain as The Amber Witch in two English translations: one by E. A. Friedlander and another, more enduring, translation by Lucie, Lady Duff-Gordon.
WAusterlitz is a 2001 novel by the German writer W. G. Sebald. It was Sebald's final novel. The book received the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, it was ranked 5th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
WBilliards at Half-Past Nine is a 1959 novel by the German author Heinrich Böll. The entirety of the narrative takes place on a day in the fall of 1958, with flashbacks, and characters' retellings from memory by the characters. It focuses on the Faehmel family's history, from the end of the 19th century, until that day; it largely reflects the opposition of the author had to the period of Nazism, as well as his aversion to war in general.
WBuddenbrooks is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck, and their milieu.
WCat and Mouse, published in Germany in 1961 as Katz und Maus, is a novella by Günter Grass, the second book of the Danzig Trilogy, and the sequel to The Tin Drum. It is about Joachim Mahlke, an alienated only child without a father. The narrator Pilenz "alone could be termed his friend, if it were possible to be friends with Mahlke" (p. 78); much of Pilenz's narration addresses Mahlke directly by means of second-person narration. The story is set in Danzig (Gdańsk) around the time of the Second World War and Nazi rule.
WA Dangerous Encounter is a 1985 novel by the German writer Ernst Jünger. The story is set in Paris in the late 19th century and follows a murder investigation in a decadent aristocratic environment. The book was published in English in 1993, translated by Hilary Barr.
WDog Years (Hundejahre) is a novel by Günter Grass. It was first published in Germany in 1963. Its English translation, by Ralph Manheim, was first published in 1965. It is the third and last volume of his Danzig Trilogy, the other two being The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse. The novel consists of three different chronological parts, from the 1920s to the 1950s. The main characters are Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel.
WEndstufe is a 2004 novel by the German writer Thor Kunkel. Set in a hedonistic version of the Third Reich, it follows a biologist who works for the SS where he oversees the secret production of pornographic films.
WJud Süß is a 1925 historical novel by Lion Feuchtwanger based on the life of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer.
WLichtenstein is a historical novel by Wilhelm Hauff, first published in 1826, the year before his early death. Set in and around Württemberg, it is considered his greatest literary success next to his fairy-tales, and, together with the work of the almost forgotten Benedikte Naubert, represents the beginning of historical novel-writing in Germany.
WLucius Flavus is one of the most famous historical novels by the Swiss writer and Roman Catholic priest Joseph Spillmann, first published in 1890 by Herder publishers in Freiburg, Germany. The novel has been translated in English and French.
WThe Meeting at Telgte is a 1979 novel by the West German writer Günter Grass. The narrative revolves around a fictional meeting for intellectuals hosted by Simon Dach during the Thirty Years' War. The story combines a depiction of leading seventeenth-century literary figures with an analogy for the post-World War II society in Germany, and of Group 47 in West Germany, of which Grass was a member.
WNaked Among Wolves is a novel by the East German author Bruno Apitz. The novel was first published in 1958 and tells the story of prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp who risk their lives to hide a young Polish-Jewish boy. Apitz himself had been imprisoned in Buchenwald as a communist from 1937 to 1945. The boy, whose name in the novel is Stefan Cyliak, was revealed to be based on Stefan Jerzy Zweig after publication of the novel.
WThe Nazi and the Barber of the German-Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath is a grotesque novel about the Holocaust during the time of National Socialism in Germany. The work uses the perpetrator's perspective telling the biography of the SS mass murderer Max Schulz, who after World War II assumes a Jewish identity and finally emigrates to Israel in order to escape prosecution in Germany.
WNovember 1918: A German Revolution is a tetralogy of novels by German writer Alfred Döblin about the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The four volumes—Vol. I: Bürger und Soldaten, Vol. II Verratenes Volk, Vol. III, Heimkehr der Fronttruppen, and Vol. IV, Karl und Rosa —together comprise the most significant work from Döblin's period of exile (1933–1945). The work was highly praised by figures such as Bertolt Brecht, and critic Gabriele Sander has described the tetralogy as representing the culmination of Döblin's work in the genre of the historical novel.
WThe Phoenix (ISBN 0-385-50677-5) is a 2000 historical novel written by German author Henning Boëtius. Its central plot revolves around the 1937 Hindenburg disaster.
WRoyal Highness is a 1909 novel by Thomas Mann. It is Mann's second novel and was written between the summer of 1906 and February 1909. Royal Highness is characterized by its fairytale-like qualities and was modeled after Mann's own romance and marriage to Katia Mann in February 1905. First published in 1909 in Die neue Rundschau, the novel was met with great enthusiasm from the public. However, it was met with a more divided reception from critics.
WDie schöne Wilhelmine is a 1965 novel by the German writer Ernst von Salomon. It tells the story of the romance between the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm II and his mistress Wilhelmine Encke during the second half of the 18th century.
WThe Settlers of Catan by Rebecca Gable is a historical fiction novel based on Klaus Teuber’s popular board game Catan. The novel was first released in Germany in 2003 and was translated to English in 2011.
WStruggle for Rome is a historical novel written by Felix Dahn. The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing "glanced through" the 1878 translation in July 1897 whilst researching the Ostrogoths in Rome for his own novel Veranilda which remained unfinished at his death. He wrote in his diary that Dahn's novel was "a poor, unprofitable book. Can do better than that".
WThe Tables of the Law is a 1944 novella by German writer Thomas Mann. It is a dramatic retelling of the Biblical story of Moses contained in the Book of Exodus, although some of the laws which Moses proscribes for his followers are taken from Leviticus. It was the only story that Mann was ever commissioned to write, and he finished it in just eight weeks, beginning on January 18, 1943, and ending on March 13, 1943. Publisher Armin L. Robinson, believing the Ten Commandments to be the basis on which civilization was founded, wanted to make a movie detailing the Nazis' "desecration of the Mosaic Decalogue." Instead, he settled on a book, entitled The Ten Commandments: Ten Short Novels of Hitler's War Against the Moral Code, with ten authors, one for each commandment. Mann's novella, which he was paid $1000 to write, was originally meant to be the introduction to the volume, but Robinson liked it so much that he decided to make it the first story, under the heading "Thou Shalt Have No Other God Before Me." Mann considered his story to be greatly superior to that of his fellow contributors, and he considered the overall book a "failure".
WThe Three Leaps of Wang Lun is a historical novel by German author Alfred Döblin that narrates upheaval and revolution in 18th-century China. Published in 1916, this epic historical novel was Döblin's third novel. It earned him the Fontane Prize. Favorably received by critics, who praised its detailed and exotic depictions of China, it was a literary breakthrough for Döblin. Wang Lun also had an influence on younger German writers, including Lion Feuchtwanger, Anna Seghers, and Bertolt Brecht; for the latter, Wang Lun provided an impulse for the development of the theory of epic theatre. In commercial sales, it is Döblin's most successful novel after Berlin Alexanderplatz. The title of the novel refers to the rebel leader Wang Lun.
WThe Tin Drum is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass. The novel is the first book of Grass's Danziger Trilogie. It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980.
WDer tote Preuße is an unfinished novel by the German writer Ernst von Salomon, published posthumously in 1973. It has the subtitle Roman einer Staatsidee. The novel was supposed to be in three volumes and explain the concept of Prussia through an epic narrative. Salomon described the project as his "chief work"; however, he only wrote the first volume, which does not go beyond medieval times, and it was published in its unedited manuscript form. The book has a preface by Hans Lipinsky-Gottersdorf.
WWallenstein is a 1920 historical novel by German author Alfred Döblin. Set in Central Europe during the Thirty Years War, the novel's plot is organized around the polar figures of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, on the one hand, and Albrecht von Wallenstein, on the other. Döblin's approach to narrating the war differed from prevailing historiography in that, rather than interpreting the Thirty Years War primarily as a religious conflict, he portrays it critically as the absurd consequence of a combination of national-political, financial, and individual psychological factors. Döblin saw a strong similarity between the Thirty Years War and the First World War, during which he wrote Wallenstein. The novel is counted among the most innovative and significant historical novels in the German literary tradition. In large part, contemporary critics found the novel to be difficult, dense, and chaotic—a reception Döblin discussed in his 1921 essay "The Epic Writer, His Material, and Criticism"—yet writers such as Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Blei, and Herbert Ihering praised Wallenstein for its formal innovation, poetic language, epic scope, and bold departure from other German writing of the time. Despite the novel's difficulty, the critical consensus was that Wallenstein was a major achievement and confirmed the promise seen in Döblin's earlier historical novel, The Three Leaps of Wang Lun.
WWitiko is a historical novel by Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter about the founding of the Kingdom of Bohemia in the 12th-century. Published in several volumes from 1865 to 1867, Witiko takes its name from its protagonist, the knight Witiko of Prčice, father of the Vítkovci dynasty. His descendants would come to play such an important role at the Prague royal court that they were called "the real lords of the kingdom."