THE BOOKS OF 2024
My little AAINO readers circle about the reads, old and new, that made their year.
Reading, to me, is magic. Always has been, always will be. But with seemingly millions more interesting books than hours for undisturbed reading, it is getting harder and harder to choose from my ever-growing want-to-read list. So consider this latest edition of the AAINO newsletter my answer to my own, very desperate cry for help.
I asked four of the most passionate readers among my friends — those whose book recommendations never disappoint — to look back at the year gone by and choose the one read that left the greatest impression on them. And to try to put into words why.
An so, if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to read more books but you’re unsure what to pick, I believe these six are an excellent place to start.
FERN VON HIER
by Adelheid Duvanel
Recommended by my friend Rahel. With her being a fellow writer — culture editor at NZZ, to be precise — discussing other people’s written works together came naturally. And to this day, I can say with the deepest of conviction: if Rahel loved it, I will too.
I’ll tell it like it is: the short stories collected under the title Fern von Hier by Adelheid Duvanel among the finest narrative achievements of the 20th century. At times, the Swiss author allows us to see the world with fresh eyes: a flock of swallows drifts across the blue sky like fleeting handwriting; or shivers of cold ripple over the brown skin of the river, which writhes like a snake. Such imagery is psychedelic. And mind-expanding. These visions are gathered in 251 stories — some barely a page long, others extending to three — all of them exploring, as the afterword observes, people who cannot reconcile themselves with the rules of the world: eccentrics, the lonely, runaways, drug addicts, and sleepwalkers. With a few deft strokes, Duvanel sketches an entire life story and, in the briefest space, produces a razor-sharp portrait of a character. Yet one never feels that the author knows where the story will go. There is no destination — catastrophes occur silently, like miracles. Each of her stories is a literary drug trip, a plunge into a world that is at once unsettling, illuminating, and unforgettable.
KAIROS
by Jenny Erpenbeck
Recommended by Joëlle, who, besides sharing my love of books and art — she works as a collection manager at a renowned gallery — has something even more fundamental in common with me: genetic material. She is my favourite (and only) sister.
Many novels try and answer questions; fewer ask them. I loved that Kairos is one of the latter. Jenny Erpenbeck tells the story of a romance that began in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s, against the background of the declining GDR, when 19-year-old Katharina meets a married writer in his fifties named Hans. With great sweep, she describes the path of the two lovers, as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not-always-ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears. There is not a hint of judgement to be found among this book’s pages; Erpenbeck writes with incredible neutrality and leaves the story’s various complexities unresolved. The ending brings none of the all-too-common closure, making Kairos a novel that lingers: not an easy read, but a confronting one.
