The Science of Nature (formerly Naturwissenschaften) retracted two papers from the 1940s by the Nobel Prize–winning physicist—illuminating the hazards of retroactively applying “contemporary standards regarding duplicate publication or self-plagiarism to historical papers.” (Science, 6/26/26; Ars Technica, 6/28/26)
Robert Seethaler’s The Last Movement, translated by Charlotte Collins, is “a miniature portrait of a genius all at sea, both literally and metaphorically”—an ailing Gustav Mahler, on his last transatlantic crossing in 1911. (The Michigan Daily, 4/10/26; Financial Times, 5/4/26)
In 1949, Susan Sontag and two high school friends looked up Thomas Mann in the phone book and paid him a visit at his home in Pacific Palisades. Seventy-seven (!) years later, Merrill Rodin returned to the room where it happened. (The New Yorker, 3/14/26)
In memoriam: Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026), “philosopher, social theorist and defender of humane Enlightenment values.” He helped to transform postwar Germany’s, and the world’s, public sphere for the better. (The New York Times, 3/14/26; The Guardian, 3/15/26; Foreign Policy, 3/16/26)
It’s Pippi Longstocking’s 80th birthday! Look out for A World Gone Mad: The War Diaries of Astrid Lindgren—a new docudrama by Wilfried Hauke about Pippi’s creator, and how her beloved stories “arose from the darkest days” of World War II. (The Guardian, 12/15/25)
“It is to be expected that in the coming years we will experience entirely new episodes of annihilation.” The narrator of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s first Weimar-era novel was tragically prescient. It’s finally been translated into English, as Berlin Shuffle, by the talented Philip Boehm. (Literary Hub, 12/9/25; Literary Hub, 12/9/25)
What makes Goethe so special? “He was the German Shakespeare, the German Cervantes, and the German Racine, and perhaps even the German Franklin and the German Huxley, compressed into one endlessly energetic and kaleidoscopic figure.” (The New Yorker, 12/1/25)
A new novel by Jo Salas—Mrs. Lowe-Porter, about Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, shines a light on the accomplished woman who introduced Thomas Mann to English readers. (The New York Times, 1/30/24)
Krabat and the Sorcerer’s Mill, the classic children’s novel written by Otfried Preussler and translated by Anthea Bell, is now available in paperback. (The Wall Street Journal, 1/5/24)
Why read the Heinrich Böll story “Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen” all by itself when you could enjoy Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Gesammeltes Schweigen instead? (Love German Books, 11/23/23)
Clemens Meyer’s “stark yet tender rendering” of post-reunification eastern Germany has earned him literary laurels. His 2006 debut novel, Als wir träumten, was translated this year by Katy Derbyshire, as While We Were Dreaming. (New Statesman, 11/16/23)
“Clinging to the undercarriage of her sentences, like fugitives, are intimations of Germany’s politics, history and cultural memory.” Jenny Erpenbeck’s latest novel, Kairos, has been translated into English by Michael Hofmann. (The New York Times, 5/29/23; The New Republic, 6/21/23; Los Angeles Review of Books, 7/6/23; World Literature Today, 11/2023)
Critical praise for Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth: “Keiron Pim’s elegant, detailed and judicious biography is the first comprehensive English-language introduction to an author whose astonishing literary talent consistently overrode the careless failures, debacles and staggering afflictions of his life.” (Times Literary Supplement, 10/7/22; Los Angeles Review of Books, 12/24/22)
“As you translate a book, you don’t just get a feel for it, the book inhabits you.” Tim Mohr explains the unexpected joys of translating and being translated—with possibly the best origin story for a literary translator ever. (Lithub, 5/15/23)