Books in languages

[schneefink]

The vast majority of fiction I've read in the past several years was in English, and mostly fic or science fiction/fantasy. When I started writing the D&D session summaries I noticed that it's been a while since I've written in German, so I decided to read more German books again.

It's surprisingly difficult to find science fiction/fantasy books written in German! Even in bookstores the shelves are full of translations, and there's no filter function for that anywhere, very annoying. There are a couple of German SFF authors, but I already know most of them from when I couldn't read English as well yet. I was disappointed.

One bookstore clerk recommended "Das Licht hinter den Wolken" by Oliver Plaschka. I've read the first few chapters now and I'm not sure I want to continue, I'm not really interested in anyone or anything yet. On top of that, the female main character is called "April." April! It's an English first name, but not a German one. It seems strange every time I read it, why would you do that.
There were a couple of other times too when I read a word and knew which English one would be in its place, and sometimes one language fit better and sometimes the other. That's probably just how it is with languages.

Maybe I'll stick to English science fiction/fantasy and try reading other books in German, maybe the genre switch helps. It's been a while since I've read other genres, might be interesting again.
(Or maybe I'll read Russian books once I figure out the translation function with Russian on my ebook reader, I should try that again...)

Comments

[extrapenguin]

It is annoying, isn't it? Finnish SF does seem to have a more active writerbase, but most of it seems to be fantasy, and libraries are wall-to-wall translations. Do you have any local SF clubs or cons? That's how I found out about Finnish-language SF.

Sometimes, word-names in other languages work – Hannu Rajaniemi has a character called Mieli, "mind", despite writing in English – though I suppose it's less jarring if the word is not a commonly used name in the other language. I find the English names in translated-into-Finnish works jarring, too.

[schneefink]

There are almost certainly ways to find German SFF that I'd discover if looking more closely, but it's annoying that that's necessary, and also I'm lazy. Maybe I'll get around to it.

[ambyr]

I remember quite liking Kai Meyer's children's fantasy The Water Mirror when I read it in English, and I think it was translated from German, if that helps? Although for all I know you've already read everything he's written (there seem to be a lot!).

[schneefink]

I loved that trilogy! I should reread it. I read a lot of Kai Meyer many years ago, he's probably written new things by now. I remember I was often very impressed by his worldbuilding (but not always by his plots.)

[liriel]

/wave

Hi, I saw you commenting in extempore's journal and got curious since I'm from Vienna too.

Regarding SF/F written in German: I'm way not up to date but I remember some of the novels published in the Shadowrun-universe were written by german authors ("Deutschland in den Schatten").

Heyne (iirc) published works within the Das schwarze Auge-universe by german writers. Christel Scheja, Charlotte Engmann, Andrea Tillmans are names that come to mind. I don't know if they are still active (or even how their works hold up) but it might be worth investigating.

[schneefink]

Hi! Nice to "meet" you :)

That sounds worth checking out, thanks. Female writers even!, even better.