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DeutschThe most popular books in English
from 19401 to 19600
What books are currently the most popular and which are the all time classics? Here we present you with a mixture of those two criteria. We update this list once a month.
Ingeborg Bachmann
This is collection of the stories written by a distinguished German author who died in 1973. Reading these stories entails abandoning the terms of one's own comfort. The author's relentless vision demands that readers allows themselves to be hypnotised, taken over by her …
Wolfgang Koeppen
"A recovered masterpiece....Remarkable as a sidelong, searing appraisal of the legacy of the Nazi years."―Publishers Weekly, starred review A masterpiece by a writer long neglected in America, The Hothouse created a literary stir when it appeared in hardcover. Evoking …
Alfred Andersch
The Father of a Murderer takes place in a classroom of the Wittelsbach Gymnasium in 1920s Munich over the course of a single Greek lesson. Head-master Himmler (the father of Heinrich Himmler) enters the classroom, apparently to observe the students' progress. However, he soon …
John Banville
Hugo von Hoffmannsthal made his mark as a poet, as a playwright, and as the librettist for Richard Strauss’s greatest operas, but he was no less accomplished as a writer of short, strangely evocative prose works. The atmospheric stories and sketches collected here—fin-de-siècle …
Bertolt Brecht
Stories of Mr. Keuner gathers Bertolt Brecht's fictionalized comments on politics, everyday life, and exile. Written from the late 1920s till the late 1950s, Stories of Mr. Keuner is the precipitate of Brecht's experience of a world in political and cultural flux, a world of …
Hans Keilson
Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II, The Death of the Adversary is the self-portrait of a young man helplessly fascinated by an unnamed "adversary" whom he watches rise to power in 1930s Germany. It is a tale of horror, not only in its evocation of …
Georg Büchner
Lenz is a novella fragment written by Georg Büchner in Strasbourg in 1836. It is based on the documentary evidence of Jean Frédéric Oberlin's diary. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, a friend of Goethe, is the subject of the story. In March 1776 he met Goethe in Weimar. Later he …
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and …
Mary Wesley
An Imaginative Experience is a novel by British author Mary Wesley. The story concerns a young mother who has lost her husband and son in a car crash and the guilt and self-reproach she has to go through as a consequence of her loss.
Nino Ricci
Lives of the Saints is a novel by Nino Ricci. The author's first book, it forms the first part of a trilogy. The other two novels are In a Glass House and Where She Has Gone. Lives of the Saints was first published in 1990 and was the winner of the 1990 Governor General's Awards …
Wayson Choy
All That Matters is a novel by Wayson Choy. First published in 2004 by Doubleday Canada, it is the sequel to his debut novel, The Jade Peony, and was nominated for the Giller Prize. Set in Vancouver, Canada during the 1930s and 40s, All That Matters follow the lives of the Chen …
Charles Bukowski
Bone palace ballet is a poetry book written by Charles Bukowski.
Ludwig von Mises
Liberalism is an influential book by Austrian School economist and libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises, containing economic analysis and indicting critique of socialism. It was first published in 1927 by Gustav Fischer Verlag in Jena and defending classical liberal ideology …
Oswald Spengler
The Decline of the West, or The Downfall of the Occident, is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918. Spengler revised this volume in 1922 and published the second volume, subtitled Perspectives of World History, in …
Bernard MC Laverty
Grace Notes is a novel by Bernard MacLaverty, first published in 1997.
James Ellroy
Because the Night is a crime fiction novel written by James Ellroy. Released in 1984, it is the second installment of a trilogy often titled "Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy", after its main character, or "L.A Noir", after the hard-book copy that was released containing all three books in …
V.S. Naipaul
The Mimic Men is a novel by V. S. Naipaul first published by Andre Deutsch in the UK in 1967.
Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué
Undine is a fairy-tale novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué in which Undine, a water spirit, marries a knight named Huldebrand in order to gain a soul. It is an early German romance, which has been translated into English and other languages.
Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction "trilogy" by Douglas Adams. The novel is an adaptation of the first four parts of Adams' radio series of the same name. The novel was first published in …
Elke Heidenreich
A bold and self-serving tom cat reigns supreme both in the farmyard in Italy where he was born and later in the comfortable home in Germany to which a vacationing couple takes him and his helpless sister. A bold and self-serving tom cat reigns supreme both in the farmyard in …
Günter Grass
The Call of the Toad, published in Germany in 1992 as Unkenrufe, is a novel by Danzig-born German author Günter Grass. It describes the love story between the German widower Alexander Reschke and Alexandra Polin widowed Piatkowska. It was adapted into a 2005 film directed by …
Herman Wouk
War and Remembrance is a novel by Herman Wouk, published in October 1978, which is the sequel to The Winds of War. It continues the story of the extended Henry family and the Jastrow family starting on 15 December 1941 and ending on 6 August 1945. This novel was adapted into the …
Ricky Gervais
Flanimals is a children's book series written by comedian Ricky Gervais. The book, illustrated by Rob Steen, depicts a list of seemingly useless or inadequate animals, and their behaviour. The cover Flanimal is the Grundit. The book is published by Faber and Faber, which has …
Olaf Stapledon
Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest is a 1935 science fiction novel by the British author Olaf Stapledon. The novel explores the theme of the Übermensch in the character of John Wainwright, whose supernormal human mentality inevitably leads to conflict with normal human …
Anthony Burgess
1985 is a novel by English writer Anthony Burgess. Originally published in 1978, it was inspired by, and was intended as a tribute to, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Franz Kafka
The Zürau Aphorisms are 109 aphorisms of Franz Kafka, written from September 1917 to April 1918 and published by his friend Max Brod in 1931, after his death. They are selected from his writing in Zürau in West Bohemia where he stayed with his sister Ottla, suffering from …
R. L. Stine
The Werewolf of Fever Swamp is the fourteenth book in Goosebumps, the series of children's horror fiction novellas created and authored by R. L. Stine. The story follows Grady Tucker, who moves into a new house with his parents next to the Fever Swamp. After a swamp deer is …
Imre Madách
The Tragedy of Man is a play written by the Hungarian author Imre Madách. It was first published in 1861. The play is considered to be one of the major works of Hungarian literature and is one of the most often staged Hungarian plays today. Many lines have become common …
Courtney Love
Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love is a memoir by rock musician and actress Courtney Love. The book, published by Faber & Faber and released in October 2006, contains journal entries, letters, poetry, handwritten song lyrics, artwork, collages, school and juvenile …
Carolyn J. (Carolyn Janice) Cherryh
Yvgenie is a fantasy novel by American science fiction and fantasy author C. J. Cherryh. It was first published in October 1991 in the United States in a hardcover edition by Ballantine Books under its Del Rey Books imprint. Yvgenie is book three of Cherryh's three-book Russian …
James R. Hansen
First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong is the official biography of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon. It was written by James R. Hansen and published in 2005 by Simon & Schuster.
Keiji Nishitani
Religion and Nothingness is a 1961 book by the Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani.
Gail Godwin
A mother and two daughters is a book written by Gail Godwin.
Willa Cather
Sapphira and the Slave Girl is Willa Cather's last novel, published in 1940. It is the story of Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert, a bitter but privileged white woman, who becomes irrationally jealous of Nancy, a beautiful young slave. The book balances an atmospheric portrait of …
Carolyn Keene
The Ghost of Blackwood Hall is the twenty-fifth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1948 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson.
Yasuko Aoike
Follows the adventures of a British aristocrat, who sidelines as an international art thief, and his partner, a straight-laced N.A.T.O. officer, as they travel around the world in the late 1970s.
Yasuko Aoike
Follows the adventures of a British aristocrat, who sidelines as an international art thief, and his partner, a straight-laced N.A.T.O. officer, as they travel around the world in the late 1970s.
Simon Scarrow
Trouble is brewing in Syria, on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. With the troops in a deplorable state, centurions Macro and Cato are despatched to restore the competence of the cohort. But another challenge faces them as, Bannus, a local tribesman, is brewing up …
Desmond Bagley
Running Blind is a first person narrative espionage thriller novel by English author Desmond Bagley, first published in 1970 with a cover by Norman Weaver.
John Feinstein
A March to Madness: A View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference is a book written by John Feinstein. It was written about the 1996-97 Atlantic Coast Conference basketball season, chronicling each ACC school's team's season, from the first practice, to the Big Dance. …
Amiri Baraka
Blues People is a seminal study of Afro-American music by Amiri Baraka, who published it as LeRoi Jones in 1963. In Blues People Baraka explores the possibility that the history of black Americans can be traced through the evolution of their music. It is considered a classic …
Randall Garrett
Too Many Magicians is a novel by Randall Garrett, an American science fiction author. One of several stories starring Lord Darcy, it was first serialized in Analog Science Fiction in 1966 and published in book form the same year by Doubleday. It was later gathered together with …
Booth Tarkington
Penrod is a collection of comic sketches by Booth Tarkington that was first published in 1914. The book follows the misadventures of Penrod Schofield, an eleven-year-old boy growing up in the pre-World War I Midwestern United States, in a similar vein to The Adventures of Tom …
Gael Baudino
Maze of Moonlight is a novel written by Gael Baudino in 1993. It is the second in the Strands of Starlight tetralogy. The other novels are Strands of Starlight, Shroud of Shadow, and Strands of Sunlight.
Naoki Urasawa
20th Century Boys, Vol. 21 is a book written by Naoki Urasawa.
Hilaire Belloc
Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the Admonition of Children between the ages of eight and fourteen years is a 1907 children's book written by Hilaire Belloc. It is a parody of the cautionary tales that were popular in the 19th century. The work is in the public domain …
Joshua Mowll
Operation Typhoon Shore is the second novel in The Guild of Specialists trilogy following Operation Red Jericho by Joshua Mowll.
Poul Anderson
A Midsummer Tempest is an 1974 alternative history fantasy novel by Poul Anderson. In 1975, it was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the Nebula Award for Best Novel and won the Mythopoeic Award.
Jose Canseco
Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big is a 2005 book by Jose Canseco and his personal account of steroid usage in Major League Baseball. The book is autobiographical, and it focuses on Canseco's days as a major leaguer, his marriages, his …
Henning Mankell
Secrets in the Fire is a children's novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell. It was published in 1995 and was translated into English by Anne Connie Stuksrud. Secrets in the Fire was based on the true story of land mine victim Sofia Alface. The book has won the 2002 Sankei …
Christine King Farris
My Brother Martin: A Sister Remembers Growing Up With the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a book.
Johann D. Wyss
The Swiss Family Robinson is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Port Jackson, Australia.
