THE BOOKSHELF

Here is a catalogue of all my translations from the German. All those not yet published as books can be downloaded for free as PDFs.  Introductions to these undeservedly neglected writers can be found on the website.

Günther Anders

•   The Molussian Catacombs    The only novel by the philosopher of the 20^th century’s Promethean hubris, written in the 1930s but not published until 1992. It plays in thought-provoking and entertaining ways with the many techniques of language-perversion used by tyrannies – many still very much relevant today.
• Ancestor Murder and other Molussian Pieces   Throughout his life, Anders scattered Molussian references in his writings, and even presented “scientific reports” from archaeological and philological investigations, complete with straight-faced references to fictional scholarly volumes and conferences. The pieces collected here, fascinating in their own right, also look askance at the presuppositions that can distort actual scholarly investigations of the past.

Richard A. Bermann

• The Jungle Ship    “Oh, one can never attain the true Dorado, even if one at last by luck treads golden pavements… You never arrive; not yet arriving is called living.” Austrian magical realism depicts Orellana’s pioneering voyage down the Amazon, within a frame narrative of a 1930s voyage up the Amazon stymied by a military revolt at Manaus.

Alfred Döblin

• Wallenstein   Written during the First World War, this epic redefined the historical novel.
• The Babylonian Exile, or, Pride goes before a Fall   Written at the start of Döblin’s own exile, this picaresque epic follows a fallen Babylonian god proceeding as a human through 1930s Europe.
• German Masquerade: Politics, Life and Literature in a Chaotic Age   This first compilation in English of Döblin’s non-fiction includes over fifty pieces written between 1905 and 1955.
• The Cutting Room Floor   Eight outcast and orphaned pieces that merit restoring to the Döblin oeuvre, including his (unused) contribution to the Oscar-winning film Mrs Miniver, and his neglected last work of fiction, The Pilgrim Aetheria.

Six other Döblin titles in translation are available as books:   

• The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (2^nd ed., NY Review Books 2015);
• Mountains Oceans Giants (Galileo 2021);
• Manas (Galileo 2021); see also my adaptation as a Play for Voices ;
• The Land without Death (Galileo 2022);
• Citizens & Soldiers (vol. 1 of November 1918) (Galileo 2024);
• The Epic Worlds of Alfred Döblin – Adventurous Reader’s Guide (Galileo 2024)

Paul Gurk

• ToZoB-37. The Myth of Grey Humanity, or of the Number 1   A techno-dystopia that evaded Nazi censors, written in a style that masterfully matches the subject matter. A monstrous system of cyborg Human-machines must advance to become Machine-machines – a radical declaration of war not only on humans and their culture, but on Nature too. Everything natural must be eliminated. When will an Anglophone publisher show interest in a novel that deserves a place alongside Huxley, Orwell and Zamyatin?

Arno Holz

• Phantasus   The first edition of this poem cycle presents a charming (and critical) view of fin de siècle Berlin. The greatly expanded 1916 edition includes enormously lengthened flights of imagination.

Robert Müller

• TROPICS – The Myth of Travel   Published in 1915, this masterpiece of Viennese Expressionism starts as a Boys’ Own adventure in search of lost Conquistador gold, segues into hallucinatory explorations of consciousness, civilisation, colonialism, evolution, and Viennese manners, and ends as an unsolved murder mystery. It lay forgotten for 60 years after the author’s untimely suicide, and is now the focus of numerous scholarly studies. Regrettably, Anglophone publishers have so far shown no interest.

Two of Müller’s novellas have also been translated:   Manhattan Girl    and  The Island Girl .

Leo Perutz

• The Third Bullet   Several of Perutz’s beautifully constructed thrillers (admired in their time by Ian Fleming, Alfred Hitchcock and many others) were published in English around 1990. This, his first venture into thriller writing in 1915, was somehow left behind. How did an obscure conquistador come to kill the Mexican emperor?

Wilhelm Speyer

• Charlott – a bit loopy!  This delightful romantic crime comedy from 1927 was forgotten between 1933 and 2008, even though it had delighted German readers and critics with its cunning plot and deft characterisations of upwardly mobile mid-Weimar men and women.
• I must go out and leave you here. The story of a fashion model. Speyer’s 1930 follow-on novel, written in collaboration with his old school friend Walter Benjamin, presents another deftly-plotted tale of financial shenanigans, with an extra dose of social commentary. My translation is a work in progress, and should be ready by the end of 2025.