SWR2 Magazine worth reading including John Irving’s new book – SWR2

April 23rd is World Book Day, and we’re celebrating it by highlighting five truly great novels, all of which are still hot out of the press:

Benjamin von Stuckrad’s eagerly-anticipated new work has become a Roman act in clef about Springer’s “Boysclub?”

At the age of eighty-one, Dean of the United States John Irving presented another 1,000-page author with many illustrious characters: “The Last Chairlift.”

Salman Rushdie’s first novel after last year’s assassination will also be released: City of Victory, a powerful epic that also tells of the power of words against any kind of bigotry.

With the Swiss “Die Krume Brot”, Lukas Bärfuss begins a trilogy about a young woman who seems to be carrying the entire burden of her family on her shoulders. As usual, politically committed and aggressively dangerous.

It is the first novel by tycoon Olga Tokarczuk after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: Impogene engages in a sophisticated dialogue with Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

And we talk to literary scholar and author Jennifer Becker from the University of Hildesheim about how artificial intelligence like ChatGPT could change literary writing in the future.

Benjamin von Stuckrad Bre – Are you still awake?
Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag, 384 pages, €25
ISBN 978-3-462-00467-0
Frank Hertwick Review

Salman Rushdie, the city of victory
Translated from the English by Bernard Rubin
Penguin Verlag, 416 pages, 26 euros
ISBN 978-3-328-60294-1
Cornelia Zecchi review

What do AI systems like ChatGPT mean for literary writing?
A conversation with Jennifer Becker, Institute for Literary Writing and Literary Studies at the University of Hildesheim

John Irving – The Last Elevator
Translated from American English by Anna Nina Kroll and Peter Torberg
Diogenes Verlag, 1088 pages, 36 euros
ISBN 978-3-257-07222-8
Review by Teresa Hubner

Lucas Parvus – crumb
Rowohlt Verlag, 224 pages, €22
ISBN 978-3-498-00320-3
Alexander Wassner review

Olga Tokarczuk – Empress. Naturopathic horror story
Translated from Polish by Lisa Palmis and Lothar Koenkenstein
Kampa Verlag, 384 pages, €26
ISBN 978-3-311-10044-7
Ulrich Rüdenauer review

music:
Norah Jones – Never again
Label: Capitol Records