• Caroline and I are delighted to be making this announcement and we hope you’re happy to hear it. The tweets of others as early as January of this year looking forward to German Literature Month convinced us it just had to happen. And so your wishes have come true. This time, however, we are issuing a challenge.

    GLM I and II were resounding successes and we want GLM III to follow suit. One thing has concerned us though. Why were the lady writers so grossly under-represented? Only 22% of the authors read in GLM I, reducing to 19% in GLM II, were female. We want to redress that balance. Now we’re not going all Orange prize on you. We don’t want to exclude the great male authors in German(-language) literature. But we are structuring the month so that there are times to focus in on the ladies.

    We would, therefore, like the structure of German Literature Month III to look like this.

    Week 1: 1-7.11 Ladies Week

    Week 2: 8-14.11 Gents Week

    Week 3: 15-21.11 Ladies Week

    Week 4: 22-28.11 Gents Week

    Weekend 29-30.11 Read as you please

    Read anything you want: any format, any genre. As long as the works were originally written in German and are reviewed during November, they count for GLM III. The ideal female:male author ratio at the end of the month would be 50:50.

    We will also have two readalongs:

    7.11 Lizzy will lead a discussion of a title to be determined by public vote. A post will follow shortly with voting options. In the meantime if there’s a title you wish to suggest, written by a female (it will be ladies’ week after all), please leave a comment.

    29.11 Caroline will lead a War and Literature discussion of Hans Keilson’s Death of the Adversary.

    With just 5 weeks and 3 days to go it’s time to start planning. Check out those TBR’s and library catalogues. Find some female authors to read. Most of all get excited. This is the German Lit blogging event of the year. What’s not to get excited about?