Hey German friends

[feuervogel]

I'm looking for a novel published between, say, 2005 and 2010, by a Turkish German. A Bekanntin from Twitter gave me this, which kind of helps (though not if I can't find any of those books here for reasonable prices).

The reason I want this is so I can write a paper for my grad school application. (I need to give them a 10-20-page paper, theoretically written during my undergraduate German studies. We never wrote real academic papers, with journal references and stuff, in college. So I need to make one now.) I want to write about Turkish Germans, though I don't have a paper topic specifically.

My alternate idea was to write about reunification viz Friedrich Christian Delius' "Die Birnen von Ribbeck," which we read in one of the college classes, maybe "lit since 1945," and the current state of affairs. (The pears thing uses a lot of metaphors, like "you have to graft trees together carefully, otherwise it won't take.")

If I knew anything about film/media analysis, I'd write about Gegen die Wand (which I have a bunch of articles on) or Das Leben der Anderen. Or Türkisch für Anfänger.

ETA: Do you have recommendations? Have you read any of those books and liked them? Or books by other German Turkish writers? If I click, Amazon helpfully gives me similar books, but I don't know anything about them.

Comments

[acari]

I don't know any of the books. I know Seyran Ates & Necla Kelek only from TV appearances or articles they wrote. Another possible film would be Almanya -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630027/

[feuervogel]

I've heard of Almanya. I should look that up. I wonder if there's a captioned version; sometimes I have trouble understanding movies.

I'll ask in deutschland, too, probably smart.

[zing_och]

here via deutschland! I immediately thought of "Leyla" by Feridun Zaimoglu (which is on that list, too) and might be available in the US. "Leyla" mostly takes part in Turkey (though it was written in German). I really like his style, it's lyrical and very interesting. So that's a recommendation - unfortunately I don't know the others on the list.

If you like hard-boiled detective stories, I can recommend the Kayankaya books by Jakob Arjouni, starting with "Happy Birthday, Türke". It's classic noir, a Turkish German private eye in Frankfurt, Main. I'm not sure if this qualifies, though, since "Happy Birthday, Türke" came out in 1985, but the newest in the series, "Bruder Kemal", (which I haven't read yet) is from last year.

Hope that helps!

[feuervogel]

Thank you! I think Leyla has some scholarship on it, which is important. I'm looking around Amazon and AbeBooks to see where I can get the best price. Import books are expensive...

It's hard to know what books are good, and not boring/badly written, etc, from Amazon reviews, especially when there are only half a dozen. The commenter on my post in deutschland suggested Selam Berlin, which also sounds good, and is harder to find reasonably priced here :P

[zing_och]

Just now I voted a couple of amazon reviews down because they were just "I don't like it because I didn't understand it!" (literally!) or "this is not the book I wanted to read! This is what should have happened!" It makes me feel vindictive, but also satisfied. *g*

I haven't read "Sealm Berlin", but it does sound interesting. *adds to wishlist*

(If you can't get stuff otherwise reasonably priced, I can send it to you - Büchersendungen cost 3€ or 3,45€.)

[feuervogel]

Ooh, I may take you up on that offer... I can get Leyla from a US seller on Amazon for $18 including shipping and Selam for $27, which are kind of ridiculous. From AbeBooks, I can get them from the same seller in Germany and combine shipping, for about $30. If you think you can get better prices (on shipping, definitely...), we can work out paypal and whatnot.

[feuervogel]

Damn, the one shop that had both books sold their only copy of Selam. They've now got like 5 listings for Leyla, though.