Whats your favourite book and why?

[Rev. Rye]

I'll keep that in mind for when my German gets better   

I prefer reading works in their original language if I can, naturally. Learning German will open up a whole new literature for me in that way .

I hear Mein Campf is better in the original German.

The jury's still kind of out on that. On the one hand, Ralph Manheim (the most common translation) was one of the top translators in the literary world, and translations of (among other works) The Tin Drum and The Neverending Story will bear this out. On the other hand, it was one of the first (if not the first) of his translations to be published, and he tried to emulate Hitler's unique style, which is, unfortunately, impossible to get through, given how rambling and free-flowing his style is, ranging from wangst about his upbringing to wangst about the fact that Jewish people dare to be allowed to freely roam Europe. I can remember reading it and thinking "If I was a German/Austrian in the 1920s with little stake in the 'Jewish Question' this book would make me hate the anti-semites precisely for its crappy prose." For what it's worth, apparently the National Vanguard actually considers Manheim's translation (in spite of his hostility to Naziism) to be pretty faithful to the original text, at least more faithful than the one the Nazis actually authorised if that means anything. As for whether or not it's better in the German, given the choice between a book written by a jackass who didn't really know how to write properly, or a translation by one of the greatest translators that makes a valiant attempt at conveying what he was trying to say, it's not too hard for me to make the choice.

That said, it's worth noting there's quite a bit of pre-Goethe German language writings worth reading (from Simplicius Simplicissimus to The Nibelungenlied to Parzifal to The Ship of Fools), although it really flourished from Goethe on. My personal favourite of the era is Kleist's Michael von Kohlhaas, and knowing Aegon listed Ragtime as his favourite book, he might like Kohlhaas, especially since Coalhouse Michael is indeed based on Kohlhaas. [Also, while I haven't seen the film version of Ragtime since it was on VHS, long before I read it, it's safe to say a film that caused James Cagney to come out of retirement should be worth a look.] It took forever to find a decent-condition hardcover of that book, but I found one this summer.

There's also other interesting, underrated German-language, relatively contemporary, authors like Walter Moers (reportedly the German equivalent to Terry Pratchett) and Freidrich Durrenmatt (Swiss writer of both dark mystery novellas and absurdist Brechtian dark comedic drama)

As for my favourite book, I'm torn between two books: The Catcher in the Rye, the book that really turned me onto the true potential of fiction (having been largely turned off reading fiction because Wishbone set my expectations higher than my school library was willing to go), and really mirrored my state of mind, especially at that point of time, when I was bullied (sanctioned by my teachers, no less) pretty much for existing and hated everyone because of it.

The other book is The Brothers Karamazov. Kurt Vonnegut once said the book can teach you everything you need to know about life, and he's not too far off. I love it so much that I actually used Dostoevsky as my license plate (though not in so many letters) as soon as I inherited my Mum's old car. And just as one example, one passage that really struck me was that, during a discussion of justice between Ivan and Aloysha, after Aloysha suggests a nobleman who shot a serf's child after he broke one of his hunting dogs' paws, he says: “Bravo! If even you say so, then… See what a little devil is sitting in your heart!” Around the same time, I was discovering A Clockwork Orange (with its later scene of Alex [and his actor] being beaten and drowned within an inch of his life affecting me just as much as the earlier scenes of him beating people up) and my mother was watching Lauren Velez-Mitchell and Nancy Grace, whose programs were so vitriolic that you almost find yourself sorry for rapists and murderers, whether or not they were actually right. You can easily imagine this perfect storm caused a pretty sizable sea change in my view of what constitutes justice.