Btb Btb i(A59511 works by) (Organisation) assertion
Born: Established: Munich,
c
Germany,
c
Western Europe, Europe,
;
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Works By

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17 59 y separately published work icon No Friend but the Mountains : Writing From Manus Prison No Friend but the Mountains : The True Story of an Illegally Imprisoned Refugee Behrouz Boochani , Omid Tofighian (translator), ( trans. Manfred Allié et. al. )agent with title Kein Freund außer den Bergen ) Munich : Btb , 2020 14342605 2018 selected work prose

'Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the land of mountains...

'Since 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani has been held in the Manus Island offshore processing centre.

'People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests...

'This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through five years of incarceration and exile.

'Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains? '  (Publication summary)

2 1 y separately published work icon What Came Before Anna George , Munich : Btb , 2017 7459114 2014 single work novel thriller

'My name is David James Forrester. I'm a solicitor. Tonight, at 6.10, I killed my wife. This is my statement.'

'In Melbourne's inner west, David sits in his car, dictaphone in hand. He's sick to his stomach but determined to record his version of events. His wife Elle hovers over her own lifeless body as it lies in the laundry of the house they shared. David thinks back on their relationship – intimate, passionate, intense – and what led to this terrible night.

'From her eerie vantage point, Elle traces the sweep of their shared past too. Before David, she'd enjoyed a contented life – as a successful filmmaker, a much-loved aunt and friend. But in the course of two years, she was captivated and then undone by him. Not once in those turbulent times did she imagine that her alluring, complex husband was capable of this.

'Dark, atmospheric and gripping, What Came Before is a stunning literary thriller about the risks you take when you fall in love.' (Publication summary)

4 40 y separately published work icon Eyrie Tim Winton , ( trans. Klaus Berr with title Schwindel Roman ) Munich : Btb , 2017 6008228 2013 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

'Eyrie tells the story of Tom Keely, a man who’s lost his bearings in middle age and is now holed up in a flat at the top of a grim highrise, looking down on the world he’s fallen out of love with. He’s cut himself off, until one day he runs into some neighbours: a woman he used to know when they were kids, and her introverted young boy. The encounter shakes him up in a way he doesn’t understand. Despite himself, Keely lets them in. What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times – funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting – populated by unforgettable characters. It asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing..' (Publisher's blurb)

6 28 y separately published work icon Sarah Thornhill Kate Grenville , ( trans. Karina Of with title Sarahs Traum ) Munich : Btb , 2015 Z1882145 2011 single work novel historical fiction 'Sarah Thornhill is the youngest child of William Thornhill, convict-turned-landowner on the Hawkesbury River. She grows up in the fine house her father is so proud of, a strong-willed young woman who's certain where her future lies. She's known Jack Langland since she was a child, and always loved him. But the past is waiting in ambush with its dark legacy. There's a secret in Sarah's family, a piece of the past kept hidden from the world and from her. A secret Jack can't live with... ' (Trove record)
4 28 y separately published work icon The Street Sweeper Elliot Perlman , ( trans. Grete Osterwald with title Tonspuren : Roman ) Munich : Btb , 2015 Z1796895 2011 single work novel 'How breathtakingly close we are to lives that at first seem so far away.

'From the civil rights struggle in the United States to the Nazi crimes against humanity in Europe, there are more stories than people passing each other every day on the bustling streets of every crowded city. Only some survive to become history.

'Recently released from prison, Lamont Williams, an African American probationary janitor in a Manhattan hospital and father of a little girl he can't locate, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly patient, a Holocaust survivor who had been a prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau. A few kilometres uptown, Australian historian Adam Zignelik, an untenured Columbia professor, finds both his career and his long-term romantic relationship falling apart. Emerging out of the depths of his own personal history, Adam sees, in a promising research topic suggested by an American World War II veteran, the beginnings of something that might just save him professionally and perhaps even personally. As these two men try to survive in early twenty-first-century New York, history comes to life in ways neither of them could have foreseen. Two very different paths - Lamont's and Adam's - lead to one greater story as The Street Sweeper, in dealing with memory, love, guilt, heroism, the extremes of racism and unexpected kindness, spans the twentieth century to the present, and spans the globe from New York to Melbourne, Chicago to Auschwitz.

'Epic in scope, this is a remarkable feat of storytelling.' (From publisher's website.)
13 1 y separately published work icon The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim Jonathan Coe , ( trans. Walter Ahlers with title Die Ungeheuerliche Einsamkeit Des Maxwell Sim ) Munich : Btb , 2013 Z1714821 2010 single work novel

'Maxwell Sim seems to have hit rock bottom. Estranged from his father, newly divorced, unable to communicate with his only daughter, he realizes that while he may have seventy-four friends on Facebook, there is nobody in the world with whom he can actually share his problems.

'Then a business proposition comes his way - a strange exercise in corporate PR that will require him to spend a week driving from London to a remote retail outlet on the Shetland Isles. Setting out with an open mind, good intentions and a friendly voice on his SatNav for company, Maxwell finds that this journey soon takes a more serious turn, and carries him not only to the furthest point of the United Kingdom, but into some of the deepest and darkest corners of his own past.

'In his sparkling and hugely enjoyable new book Jonathan Coe reinvents the picaresque novel for our time.' (From the publisher's website.)

13 52 y separately published work icon Truth Peter Temple , ( trans. Hans M. Herzog with title Wahrheit ) Munich : Btb , 2013 Z1594714 2009 single work novel crime thriller (taught in 2 units)

'Stephen Villani is the acting head of the Victoria Police homicide squad. But his first months on the job have not gone well: two Aboriginal teenagers shot dead in a botched operation he authorised in the provincial city of Cromarty; and, no progress on the killing of a man in front of his daughter outside a private girls' school.

Now five men are found dead in horrifying circumstances on the outskirts of the city. Villani's superiors and the media are baying for arrests. To add to his woes, some of the country's richest people are alarmed by the baffling killing of a young woman in the high-security tower where they live.

Villani, a man who has built his life around his work, begins to find the certainties of both crumbling. As the pressure mounts, he finds that he must contemplate things formerly unthinkable. Truth is a novel about murder, corruption, family, friends, honour, honesty, deceit, love, betrayal and truth.' (from Quercus website)

7 24 y separately published work icon Caleb's Crossing : A Novel Geraldine Brooks , ( trans. Judith Schwaab with title Insel zweier Welten ) Munich : Btb , 2012 Z1753531 2011 single work novel historical fiction

'In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Here, Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks imagines that Caleb was befriended by Bethia Mayfield, whose minister father wants to convert the neighboring Wampanoag and makes educating Caleb one of his goals. Bethia, herself desperate for book learning, ends up as an indentured servant in Cambridge, watching Caleb bridge two cultures.'

Source: Readings website, www.readings.com.au
Sighted: 10/01/2011

2 13 y separately published work icon The China Garden Kristina Olsson , ( trans. Mechthild Barth with title Der Porzellangarten Roman ) Munich : Btb , 2012 Z1559414 2009 single work novel

'The China Garden follows three protagonists over a 2-week period that culminates in a shocking event that affects them all. Fifty-year-old Laura has come home from Italy to bury her mother Angela and get her affairs in order. However, she has an unexpected surprise waiting for her. Until Angela's death, Laura had believed she was an only child, but the will has made allowance for a brother she had never known, adopted out at birth. In another part of town, 70-year-old Cress is grieving the loss, not only of Angela, but of her own faith. She consoles herself with irregular thefts from the op shop where she volunteers: an old wedding dress, a silver fork, small pictures of the Virgin Mary. Somewhere among these things, she knows, she will relocate faith, she will fend off fear. Kieran, the watcher, sees them both. Kieran is a gatherer of information, a 30-year-old quiz show addict who failed junior school but is good at other kinds of knowing; who knits his world together with cunningly garnered facts and lovingly stored information. As the tragic event looms, it pierces and links the lives of the three characters. The China Garden explores identity in mid-century and mid-life; examining the effects of social policies in a country struggling to re-establish a facade of goodness and morality after a major world war. It shows how the events of mid-life, the death of parents, the confrontation with lost faith or the fruits of youthful mistakes might unravel the various versions of ourselves that we construct in order to survive.' Source: Provided by publisher.

4 44 y separately published work icon The Idea of Perfection Kate Grenville , ( trans. Anne Rademacher with title Eine Ahnung von Vollkommenheit : Roman ) Munich : Btb , 2010 Z141413 1999 single work novel (taught in 5 units)

Set in the eccentric backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales, this is the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a shy and clumsy engineer who meets Harley Savage, a woman who is known for being rather large and abrupt. Harley Savage is a plain, rawboned woman, a part-time museum curator and quilting expert with three failed marriages and a heart condition. Douglas Cheeseman is a shy, gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, one marriage gone sour, and a crippling lack of physical courage. Seeming to be incompetent was something Douglas did to protect himself, just as having a "dangerous streak" served the same purpose for Harley. Douglas is there to pull down a quaint old bridge and Harley aims to foster heritage. They are clearly on a collision course - but when they meet they are unaware that something unexpected is going to happen. (Source: Trove)

 

11 93 y separately published work icon Breath Tim Winton , ( trans. Klaus Berr with title Atem : Roman ) Munich : Btb , 2010 Z1457075 2008 single work novel (taught in 21 units) 'Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and about learning to live with its passing.'
Source: Publisher's website
3 3 y separately published work icon I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes Jaclyn Moriarty , ( trans. Mo Zuber with title Buttermilchküsse ) Munich : Btb , 2010 Z1156457 2004 single work novel

'Cath Murphy, second-grade teacher, was feeling awkward and foolish, but she also felt this: quirky, cocky, small, funny, wicked and extremely blonde. As her mother liked to say, all meetings with new people, even locksmiths or seven-year-olds, can make you a little afraid. She was about to meet her new class and she had just met the new teacher: Warren Woodford.However, Cath Murphy has yet to meet the Zing family...' (Publication summary)

8 29 y separately published work icon Seven Types of Ambiguity Elliot Perlman , ( trans. Matthias Jendis with title Sieben Seiten der Wahrheit : Roman ) Munich : Btb , 2010 Z1050772 2003 single work novel thriller

'At once a psychological thriller and a social critique, Seven Types of Ambiguity is a novel of obsessive love in an age of obsessive materialism.

'Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events no one could have anticipated.

'This is a story of impulse and paralysis, of empty marriages, lovers and a small boy, gambling and the market, of adult children and their parents, of poetry and prostitution, psychiatry and the law.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Faber ed.).

28 37 y separately published work icon People of the Book Geraldine Brooks , ( trans. Almuth Carstens with title Die Hochzeitsgabe ) Munich : Btb , 2008 Z1448742 2008 single work novel historical fiction 'When Hannah Heath gets a call in the middle of the night in her Sydney home about a precious medieval manuscript which has been recovered from the smouldering ruins of war-torn Sarajevo, she knows she is on the brink of the experience of a lifetime. A renowned book conservator, she must now make her way to Bosnia to start work on restoring The Sarajevo Haggadah, a Jewish prayer book - to discover its secrets and piece together the story of its miraculous survival. But the trip will also set in motion a series of events that threaten to rock Hannah's orderly life, including her encounter with Ozren Karamen, the young librarian who risked his life to save the book.' (Publisher's blurb)
16 188 y separately published work icon The Secret River Kate Grenville , ( trans. Karina Of et. al. )agent with title Der verborgene Fluss : Roman ) Munich : Btb , 2008 Z1194031 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 69 units)

'In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.

'But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.

'Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them.

'Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.

'Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.' (From the publisher's website.)

15 98 y separately published work icon Dirt Music Tim Winton , ( trans. Klaus Berr with title Der singende Baum ) Munich : Btb , 2007 Z918096 2001 single work novel (taught in 15 units)

'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.

'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)

11 24 y separately published work icon Year of Wonders : A Novel of the Plague Geraldine Brooks , ( trans. Mirjana Živković with title Godina čuda ) Munich : Btb , 2006 Z900724 2001 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 1 units) This historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the 'Plague Village,' in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, a tainted bolt of cloth from London carries bubonic infection to this isolated settlement of shepherds and lead miners. A visionary young preacher convinces the villagers to seal themselves off in a deadly quarantine to prevent the spread of disease. The story is told through the eyes of eighteen-year-old Anna Frith, the vicar's maid, as she confronts the loss of her family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love. As the death toll rises and people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna emerges as an unlikely and courageous heroine in the village's desperate fight to save itself. (Source: Trove)
13 45 y separately published work icon March Geraldine Brooks , ( trans. Leon Mengden with title Auf freiem Feld ) Munich : Btb , 2005 Z1182868 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 2 units) "An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union, which is also capable of barbarism and racism, but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief." -- Book Jacket
17 8 y separately published work icon Nine Parts of Desire : The Hidden World of Islamic Women Geraldine Brooks , ( trans. Bernhard Robben with title Die töchter Allahs ) Munich : Btb , 2002 Z1804386 1994 single work non-fiction "Australian writer Geraldine Brooks is best-known today for her Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction. But as a foreign correspondent Geraldine spent six years covering the Middle East. For her, headline events were also the backdrop to a less obvious but more enduring drama: the daily life of Muslim women, and Nine Parts of Desire is the story of her intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils. Fair-minded and often revelatory, Nine Parts of Desire is an extraordinarily rich tapestry of the different lives women lead under Islam, and a captivating and diverse portrait of a little known world. An international bestseller, this new edition of Nine Parts of Desire features an Australian Afterword."--Provided by publisher.
4 3 y separately published work icon A Troubadour's Testament : A Novel James Cowan , ( trans. Krista Thies with title Das Testament des Troubadours ) Munich : Btb , 1999 Z87360 1998 single work novel
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