10 important novels
Novels can open up new worlds and touch us deeply. A good book can be a faithful companion that asks questions, gives impulses and tells stories. You are never completely alone with a good book. It's not about whether someone has a whole library at home, a single stack of the right books can be very valuable. Ten works that have made a lasting impression on Andreas Salcher and that he recommends:
The corrections
Jonathan Franzen
For Andreas Salcher, Jonathan Franzen is the best living US novelist and he is not alone in his judgment: "You come away from reading it with that peculiar feeling that only great literature can awaken: You feel gifted and enriched," writes the FAZ. The novel moves with enormous ease through the complex web of relationships and emotions in the Lambert family. Their worries, hopes, fears and neuroses are portrayed in a very human way, funny and deeply sad at the same time. Readers will inevitably recognize parallels to their own life stages from youth to old age.
The bridge over the Drina
Ivo Andric
Ivo Andric was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his great novel "The Bridge over the Drina". The work is not a classic novel with a few main characters, but a chronicle of the Balkans that artfully interweaves myths and legends, fables and tales. Like an oriental storyteller, Andric combines the sequence of human destinies with reflections on time, which converge in the image of the bridge as a symbol of bridging opposites. This book about a bygone era helps us to better understand the current ethical conflicts, for example in Libya, Syria and Iraq.
Listening to the heart
Jan-Philipp Sendker
A book about the unconditional love of two people that overcomes disability and years of separation. The magic of the story set in Burma and the poetry of the language will leave no one indifferent.
Wild swans: The women in my family
Jung Chang
In this biographical novel, Jung Chang tells the moving story of her own family and thus the history of China from the imperial era through Mao's rule to the end of the 20th century. Her grandmother, her mother and she herself must experience how the ruthless implementation of political ideas cost millions of people their lives and made survival possible only with great suffering.
Stoner
John Williams
The book is a masterpiece that was only recently rediscovered. "Zeit Online" wrote: "We realize: You can only live life as best you can. You can't really understand it. Perhaps that is the greatest strength of this moving book: that it does not see through its hero, does not define him. It presents him to us in all his strengths and weaknesses, in all his middle humanity, and says: "Look, your brother." "Stoner" is one of Andreas Salcher's absolute favorite novels, which he can only recommend to everyone.
Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts
"Die Zeit", "Stern" and "Spiegel online" rightly praise this global bestseller as captivating, exciting and entertaining. With strong autobiographical overtones, the novel tells the story of an Australian who has escaped from prison and is trying to find his feet in Mumbai. In this city with lots of light and even more shadows, he experiences an eventful fate, torn between dangerous business for the mafia and helping the poorest of the poor in a slum. Against all odds, the main character tries to develop from a criminal into a "shantaram", a "man of peace".
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
A book that captivated Andreas Salcher from the first to the last page. Two stories that seem to have nothing to do with each other - the devil moving into totalitarian Moscow and Jesus in dialog with Pontius Pilate - are interwoven into a wonderful unity.
The alchemist
Paulo Coelho
"The young man's name was Santiago." This is how this book begins, which has changed the lives of many people. The Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has now sold 225 million books and encourages people to confront their own questions of meaning. Paulo Coelho has also been the patron of the Waldzell Institute since it was founded in 2003, and Andreas Salcher is proud to count Paulo among his personal friends.
The Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse
This wonderful book about man's eternal quest to fulfill his calling is unfortunately often read by many people at far too young an age. However, its fascination has rightly captivated every generation. The fictitious place "Waldzell", where selected people, the Glass Bead Players, create a spiritual and sensual work of art once a year, which has an effect far beyond the circle of players, served as a metaphor for the Waldzell Meetings 2004 to 2007.
The star of the unborn
Franz Werfel
A masterpiece about the fundamental questions of man, written as a "travel novel" in a fictional, seemingly ideal world. Franz Werfel completed this life's work just a few days before his death.