Suhrkamp Insel

Ulrich Beck

German Europe/Das deutsche Europa

In his famous speech in Hamburg in 1953, Thomas Mann warned the Germans never again to strive for a »German Europe«. As a result of the Euro crisis, however, that is exactly what has happened: the continent’s strongest economic power is in a position to dictate the terms under which struggling Euro nations can apply for further credit, to the point where the democratic autonomy of the Greek, Italian, Spanish – and ultimately also the German – parliaments are completely eroded.

Klaus-Michael Bogdal

Europe Invents the Gypsies/Europa erfindet die Zigeuner

Natural born thieves and liars, companions of Satan, backwoodsmen, untameable savages, a pack of antisocial outsiders … These are just some of the terms used to ostracise and marginalise Europe’s Romani population over the past 600 years. In this brilliantly researched, comparative study, Klaus-Michael Bogdal tells the story of how this centuries-old hatred was able to survive in the tension between fascination and contempt right down to the present day.

Lily Brett

Lola Bensky/Lola Bensky

Lola Bensky is a nineteen-year-old rock journalist who irons her hair straight and asks a lot of questions. A high-school dropout, she’s not sure how she got the job – but she’s been sent by her Australian newspaper right to the heart of the London music scene at the most exciting time in music history: 1967.

László Darvasi

The Flower Eaters/Blumenfresser

Like in his novel Die Legende von den Tränengauklern (A könnymutatványosok legendája, Jelenkor 1999, German edition by Suhrkamp 2001), in The Flower Eaters László Darvasi constructs an historical backdrop against which to tell an affecting tale of love and desire, violence and war.

Ulrike Edschmid

The Disappearance of Philip S./Das Verschwinden des Philip S.

A terse and unsentimental love story about love and death, mourning and survival.

Mischa Gabowitsch

Putting Out Putin/Putin kaputt!?

The Russian parliamentary elections of December 2011 gave rise to a massive protest movement. Turnout for the demonstrations against electoral fraud, Vladimir Putin, and the ruling United Russia party was unprecedented in Russia’s post-Soviet history. While the protests did not prevent Putin’s return to the presidency or force new elections, they have fundamentally altered Russia’s protest repertoire and generated a plethora of new self-organized groups and networks across the country.

Marjana Gaponenko

Who is Martha?/Wer ist Martha?

Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Prize 2013 A novel with trumpets and timpani

Felix Hartlaub

Italian Journey/Italienische Reise

»Everything is fabulously light and teeming, lustrous and festive.« Felix Hartlaub (1913-1945), one of the great hopes of 20th Century German literature, went missing in Berlin in 1945 on one of the last days of the war. A historian by profession, Hartlaub left behind a small literary œuvre – his central work are his »Notes from the Second World War«, written in 1940/41 in occupied Paris, and later in the Führer Headquarters.

Christoph Hein

Ahead of Time/Vor der Zeit

A new take on antiquity

Eva Illouz

The New Love Order/Die neue Liebesordnung

E.L. James’ BDSM trilogy Shades of Grey was an enormous success worldwide, particularly with women. But why? Because of the allegedly pornographic content? Because it was backed by a cleverly formulated marketing strategy?  

Anna Kim

The Anatomy of a Night/Anatomie einer Nacht

»The nights in Amarâq are an impenetrable dark mass, they are what you imagine nothing to be: the image that the eye fails to see.« Eleven final hours

Pola Kinski

Kindermund/Kindermund

The autobiography of a childhood destroyed

Friedrich A. Kittler

The Truth of the Technological World/Die Wahrheit der technischen Welt

Few German scholars in the past 50 years have had such a lasting impact on the cultural situation of our time, including its academic institutions, as Friedrich Kittler. It is in large part due to his writings that the radio, the gramophone, and the computer are not just objects of cultural fascination, but also of philosophical reflection.

Ulli Lust, Marcel Beyer

The Karnau Tapes/Flughunde

A sensational graphic novel

Nicolas Mahler

Alice in Sussex/Alice in Sussex

Alice meets Frankenstein’s Monster Alice is back in Wonderland. Here she meets the White Rabbit, who leads her down into his rabbit hole in search of an illustrated edition of H. C. Artmann’s Frankenstein in Sussex. Over the course of the novel Alice repeatedly runs into the Rabbit who quotes freely from other literary works by the likes of Herman Melville and E. M. Cioran.

Christoph Menke

The Power of Art/Die Kraft der Kunst

Art has never been so visible, present and malleable as it is today, and at the same time it has also never been part of such a sheer number of social processes: art is a commodity, a conversation, an opinion, an awareness, an act. The societal omnipresence of art accompanies the increasing lack of that we might call aesthetic power.

Jan-Werner Müller

Where Europe Ends/Wo Europa endet

»As far as democracy and the rule of law are concerned, Europe shouldn’t leave anything to chance.« Could there be a dictatorship within the European Union? Just a few years ago such a question would have been dismissed as a fanciful thought experiment for political scientists. But in light of the dramatic developments in EU member states such as Romania and Hungary, we are now forced to confront a scenario that has never been openly discussed in Brussels: namely that the processes of democratisation in these (relatively) recent members of the EU might in fact prove to be reversible.

Andreas Reckwitz

The Invention of Creativity/Die Erfindung der Kreativität

Be creative! In today’s society the pressure and the desire to be creative and to produce ever newer things is extraordinarily widespread.

Hartmut Rosa

Alienation and Acceleration/Beschleunigung und Entfremdung

»What is a good life – and why aren’t we living it?« »This book is a short essay on modern life. It strives to ask the ›right‹ sorts of questions that would allow social philosophy and sociology to speak to the everyday reality of people living in late-modern societies.«

Annika Scheffel

Before It All Disappears/Bevor alles verschwindet

Losing your mind won’t save you either »Back then, when everything was different, when they still didn’t know anything about anything and their imaginations were wide open, they were given two prophecies: first, one day you will be very happy, and second, everything perishes.«