VOX Cultural Digest, Issue N.11
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… the man who never reads lives only one
George R.R. Martin
We have compiled a list of books for C1 and C2 levels, in German, French, Spanish, English and Italian. There are some great reads here for you to choose from! We hope you will enjoy it.
in German
| Im Westen nichts Neues by Erich Maria Remarque The book describes the German soldiers’ extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front. |
| Die verlohrene Ehre der Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll The story deals with the sensationalism of tabloid news and the political climate of panic over Red Army Faction terrorism in the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany. |
| Drei Kameraden by Erich Maria Remarque This classic novel is written in first person by the main character Robert Lohkamp, whose somewhat disillusioned outlook on life is due to his horrifying experiences in the trenches of the First World War’s French-German front. |
in English
| The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseini The first novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul. |
| The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt The Goldfinch is a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other honors. Published in 2013, it was Tartt’s first novel since The Little Friend in 2002. |
in Spanish
| Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez A1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the (fictitious) town of Macondo. |
in Italian
| Il nome della rosa by Umberto Eco A historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, and an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. |
| Il barone rampante by Italo Calvino Described as a conte philosophique and a metaphor for independence, it tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom. |
in French
| Changer l’eau des fleurs by Valérie Perrin “Changer l’eau des fleurs” by Valérie Perrin follows Violette Toussaint, a cemetery caretaker with a mysterious past, as she tends to the lives and graves of others. While humorous moments punctuate the narrative, the novel primarily explores emotional depth and character development. |
| L’élégance du hérisson by Muriel Barbery This novel, first published in 2006, quickly became an international bestseller and has been translated into over forty languages. |
Thank you for taking the time to read this issue of the VOX Cultural Digest.
Have fun reading, and learning these languages!
Changer l’eau des fleurs is not hilarious whatsoever. It is about grief, social inequalities, and how to find happiness in the little things after a dramatic event.