50 Books That Travel 2020

After an idyllic childhood among the rolling hills and forests of North Germany, fate leads Hans into the guardianship of...

After an idyllic childhood among the rolling hills and forests of North Germany, fate leads Hans into the guardianship of his eccentric English aunt, Alex. A professor of art history at Cambridge, Alex will make sure his application to St John’s College is accepted, but in return Hans must help her investigate a secretive Cambridge institution known as the Pitt Club. The club has existed for centuries, its long legacy of tradition, privilege, and decadence largely unquestioned.

Hans is drawn into a glamorous world of debauchery and macho solidarity. And when he falls in love with fellow student Charlotte the stakes of his deception are raised. For there are dark secrets in the club’s history, as well as in its present – and Hans soon finds himself in the inner sanctum of a dangerous institution. A provocative and timely novel from a highly regarded young writer, The Club is an invitation into a world behind closed doors, one of long-held secrets, hallowed history and toxic behaviour.

This true account of a pianist’s escape to Germany from wartorn Syria offers a deeply personal perspective on the most...

This true account of a pianist’s escape to Germany from wartorn Syria offers a deeply personal perspective on the most devastating refugee crisis of this century. Aeham Ahmad, a second-generation Palestinian refugee, was born to a blind violinist and carpenter who taught him from an early age to love music and play the piano. After being forced to flee the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Aeham’s family had built a new life in Syria, in Yarmouk camp, home to more than 160,000 Palestinian refugees. Before they could return to their homeland, another fight overran their asylum. Their only haven was in music and in each other.

Forced to leave his family behind, Aeham sought a safe place for them to call home and build a better life, taking solace in the indestructible bond between fathers and sons to keep moving forward. Heart-wrenching yet ultimately full of hope, and told in a raw and poignant voice, The Pianist from Syria is a gripping portrait of one man’s search for a peaceful life for his family and of a country being torn apart as the world watches in horror.

In Scatterbrain, we learn why perfectionism is pointless. Boredom awakens the muse, distractions spark creativity and misjudging time creates valuable...

In Scatterbrain, we learn why perfectionism is pointless. Boredom awakens the muse, distractions spark creativity and misjudging time creates valuable memories. These are just some of the benefits of our faulty minds – the faults them- selves being secret weapons that prove our superiority to computers and artificial intelligence.

The hilarious asides and brain-boosting advice from award-winning neuroscientist Henning Beck make for delightful reading throughout, as we take on board the most cutting-edge neuroscience our brains will (maybe never) remember.

In Winterlust, a farmer painstakingly photographs five thousand snowflakes, each one dramatically different from the next. Indigenous peoples thrive on...

In Winterlust, a farmer painstakingly photographs five thousand snowflakes, each one dramatically different from the next. Indigenous peoples thrive on frozen terrain where famous explorers perish. Icicles reach deep underwater, then explode. Rooms warmed by crackling fires fill with scents of cinnamon, cloves and pine. Skis carve into powdery slopes and iceboats traverse glacial lakes.

This lovingly illustrated meditation on winter intertwines the spectacular with the everyday, expertly capturing the essence of this beloved yet dangerous season – all the more precious in an era of climate change.

In many western societies today, optimism has given way to a deep unease and sense of foreboding. After the financial...

In many western societies today, optimism has given way to a deep unease and sense of foreboding. After the financial crisis, many people feel worse off and the future seems bleak. The mood has changed – that’s clear. But what is „the mood“? How can feelings be shared by many people, and how do these shared feelings shape the course of events? Sociologist Heinz Bude offers a highly original analysis of this vital but neglected topic.

Moods, he argues, are ways of being in the world. Moods shape how we experience the world, but they are not purely private. On the contrary, they give basic colour to our collective existence and experience. They are crucial in determining our political outlook and preferences, our attitudes and identities, and they provide much of the energy for forms of collective action, including social movements that seem to appear suddenly from nowhere. With the growing significance of the politics of discontent, Bude’s insightful analysis of the power of collective moods could not be more relevant. His book will appeal to anyone who wants to understand how our societies are changing in these profoundly uncertain times.

Ernst Jünger was one of the most important – and most controversial – twentieth-century German writers. Decorated for bravery in...

Ernst Jünger was one of the most important – and most controversial – twentieth-century German writers. Decorated for bravery in World War I and author of Storm of Steel, the acclaimed memoire of the Western Front, he depicted the horrors of war frankly, even as he extolled its glories. As a Wehrmacht captain during World War II, Jünger kept a detailed journal in occupied Paris and continued writing on the Eastern Front and in Germany, until the defeat came – writings that are of major historical and literary significance. Jünger’s Paris journals document his Francophile excitement, romantic affairs, and fascination with botany and entomology, alongside mystical and religious ruminations and trenchant observations on the occupation and the politics of collaboration.

While working as a mail censor, he led the privileged life of an officer, encountering artists such as Céline, Cocteau, Braque, and Picasso. His notes from the Caucasus depict the chaos after Stalingrad and atrocities on the Eastern Front. On returning to Paris, Jünger observed the French resistance and was close to the German military conspirators who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944. After fleeing France he re-joined his family as Germany’s capitulation approached. Both a participant and a commentator; close to the horrors of history but often distancing himself from them, Jünger turned his life and experiences into a work of art. These wartime journals, with their insights into the upheavals of the twentieth century, appear in English for the first time.

Between Germany and Russia is a region strewn with monuments to the horrors of war, genocide and disaster – the...

Between Germany and Russia is a region strewn with monuments to the horrors of war, genocide and disaster – the bloodlands where the murderous regimes of Hitler and Stalin unleashed the violence that scarred the twentieth century and shaped so much of the world we know today. In September 2016 the German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani set out to discover this land and to travel along the trenches that are now re-emerging in Europe, from his home in Cologne through Eastern Germany to the Baltics, and from there south to the Caucasus and to Isfahan in Iran, the home of his parents.

This beautifully written travel diary, enlivened by conversations with the people Kermani meets along the way, brings to life the tragic history of these troubled lands and shows how that history leaves its traces in the present. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with current affairs and with the events that have shaped and continue to shape the world we live in today.

A quirky piece of Cold War history unlike anything you’ve heard before, The Zookeepers’ War is an epic tale of...

A quirky piece of Cold War history unlike anything you’ve heard before, The Zookeepers’ War is an epic tale of desperate rivalries, human follies and an animal-mad city, where zoos became a focus of politics by other means. Berlin’s two zoos quickly became symbols of the divided city’s two halves. So it was not very surprising when the head zookeepers on either side started an animal arms race, stockpiling pandas and hippos rather than nuclear warheads.

Soon, state funds were being quietly diverted to give new animals lavish welcomes worthy of visiting dignitaries. West German presidential candidates talked about zoo policy on the campaign trail. And politicians on both sides of the Wall became convinced that, if their zoo was proved to be inferior, that would mean their country’s whole ideology was too.

Frank and refreshing, Brigitte Reimann’s collected diaries provide a candid account of life in socialist Germany. With an upbeat tempo...

Frank and refreshing, Brigitte Reimann’s collected diaries provide a candid account of life in socialist Germany. With an upbeat tempo and amusing tone, I Have No Regrets contains detailed accounts of the author’s love affairs, daily life, writing and reflections. Like the heroines of her stories, Reimann was impetuous and outspoken, addressing issues and sensibilities otherwise repressed in the German Democratic Republic. She followed the state’s call for artists to leave their ivory towers and engage with the people, moving to the new town of Hoyerswerda to work part-time at a nearby industrial plant and run writing classes for the workers.

Her diaries and letters provide a fascinating parallel to her fictional writing. By turns shocking, passionate, unflinching and bitter – but above all life-affirming – they offer an unparalleled insight into what life was like during the first decades of the GDR.

The story of the aftermath of World War I, a transformative time when a new world seemed possible, told from...

The story of the aftermath of World War I, a transformative time when a new world seemed possible, told from the viewpoint of people, famous and ordinary, who lived through the turmoil. Sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, is translating sorrow and loss into art. Captain Harry Truman is running a men’s haberdashery in Kansas City, hardly expecting he will soon go bankrupt and then become president of the United States. Moina Michael is about to invent the remembrance poppy, a symbol of sacrifice that will stand for generations to come. Meanwhile Virginia Woolf is questioning whether that sacrifice was worth it, and George Grosz is so revolted by the violence on the streets of Berlin that he decides everything is meaningless.

Daniel Schönpflug deftly describes this watershed time as it was experienced on the ground: open-ended, unfathomable, its outcome unclear. Combining a multitude of acutely observed details, he depicts a world suspended between enthusiasm and disappointment, one in which the window of opportunity opened suddenly, only to close again quickly.