My 15 books of the year 2020

For those who need some inspiration for Christmas gifts or for what to read next, here are my reading highlights of 2020. I chose 15 books that have influenced my thinking this year.

Jürgen Habermas. Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie. Band 1 und 2 (This Too a History of Philosophy)

I spend 3 years of my life with Jürgen Habermas, because I wrote my PhD on his theory of democracy. Next to Richard Rorty, he is my favorite philosopher. Now, at the age of 90 (!) he publishes his new masterpiece. 1700 pages in two volumes. I started my reading year with these two books and they blew me away. It rarely happens that I read a book by a philosopher and have the feeling that I cannot stop reading. This one is a page turner that contains the concentrated wisdom of a brilliant thinker at the end of his life. Habermas shows that we got it all wrong when we discussed faith and knowledge as opposed forces that followed each other in a historic process, in which faith got disenchanted and replaced by knowledge – a process we use to call the Enlightenment. In reality, there is no knowledge without faith and no faith without knowledge and what looks like knowledge, might be repacked older faith. Starting deep in our past by examining the relation between faith and knowledge in societies dominated by myths, he slowly moves forward from Greek to Rome to the rise of the Christian Europe, to early modernity ending with Pierce and his pragmatism. He shows in a breathtaking ride through the history of European philosophy, how our modern thinking takes shape not as the opposition of faith but in constant dialogue with it. The book is not yet translated into English. If you do not read German, you need to be patient a bit. Polity has bought the rights for the English version. But maybe you learn German. Just for this one thinker and his work, it would be worth it.

Ayad Akhtar. Homeland elegies.

Maybe future historians will argue that we got it all wrong when we understood the fall of the Berlin wall as the decisive historic moment of our time. Instead, they might point at an event that happened 12 years later on September 11, 2001 – the fall of the Twin Towers, which finally led to this “clash of civilizations” that Samuel Huntington had predicted in 1996. The war against terror led the US to reestablish torture and to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. What collapsed with these two towers was the presumed superiority of the Western model. The rest of the world started to consider the Enlightenment as a colonialization project and human rights as a hypocrisy of those who would not hesitate to violate such rights of others if it would be in their advantage. Maybe this is also the moment, in which the West itself started to doubt in its own story of progress, cosmopolitanism and the arc of history that bends towards moral improvement of humanity. Maybe this is the moment were Trump’s America was born. Homeland Elegies is a novel that takes the perspective of a second generation immigrant, the son of a Pakistani family in the USA who struggles with this double identity of being American and being a Muslim and with this impulse to defend both the American way of life and the terrorist attacks on it. Gregory Bateson had called this a double bind situation, in which an individual is caught in a lose-lose situation with incompatible external expectations. Ayad Akhtar, who tells his own story packaged in fiction shows this crack that opened up wide as a consequence of the terror attack on the USA not just in his identity, but across the entire country. He starts his story before the terror attack and ends up in Trump’s presidency. With Homeland Elegies, Akthar might have written the novel of our time, the one that captures best these fateful last 20 years.

Ivan Krastev& Stephen Holmes. The light that failed

“The Light that Failed” is an amazing book by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes that explains the current state of the world as the result of the failed cosmopolitan project of the 1990s. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, we had a dream in the West that nationalism would lose its relevance, that we would build a democratic and pluralistic society in formerly repressed Communist states. It was supposed to be the “End of history” as Francis Fukuyama wrote triumphantly. We celebrated pluralism and diversity. I wrote my PhD on the beauty of reasonable dissensus in the mid 1990s. Most of us young philosophers looked down on communitarian ideas of society as backward oriented and conservative. The future was transnational and cosmopolitan. We would finally approach Kant's dream of a world united under the same (abstract) rules. Krastev and Holmes show how our universalization project failed. Globalization took away production jobs in the US and Europe, the borderless society led to mass emigration from the East to the West of the best educated young citizens and the financial crisis of 2007/8 was devastating for those already struggling countries. Economically, it never felt like progress and liberation in many parts of the “liberated” East. But not only economically, also culturally the universalization project failed. In the mid-1990s, I had spent a year in former East Germany and I was shocked by the level of frustration and anger that I observed. East Germans saw the reunification as a hostile takeover. The total devaluation of their East German biographies by the “victors” already then led to a growing polarization and radicalization. Now imagine the same humiliation but without the financial support of the German government and you have the situation in which Orban and the Kaczynski brothers could successfully develop their narrative of the threatened national identity which had to be defended against the colonialist Western Europeans and their celebration of diversity and pluralism and against non-European immigrants. Imagine that humiliation in Russia, the trauma of being destabilized by the US and you have Putin who in turn now feels justified in destabilizing the US and Europe in return. And finally you arrive at Trump and the refusal of any universal values and cosmopolitan mission over parochial interests and communitarian protectionism. The end of the universal liberal project also fuels the growing irrelevance of facts since in a gated world what counts is whether you can make claims that serve your camp and damages the other camp – a zero sum game within and across countries. Trump, Putin, Orban and the Kaczynskis are the sobering consequence of the failed project of the Enlightenment, which we considered close to completion when the Berlin Wall came down. How naive we were.

Grete de Francesco. The power of the charlatan (Die Macht des Charlatans).

Saltimbanco was the name, Italians gave to the charlatan – the person jumping on a bench on the market place in the middle ages. A travelling acrobat, salesman, doctor, and actor who played many roles and sold magic to people. He promised salvation and cure and until people realized that they had been duped, the charlatan was long gone to enchant people in the next village with his tricks. Kings and other rulers fell for the alchemist charlatans who promised them to turn worthless material into gold. Later, with the rise of science and technology, the saltimbanco used magical machines that could perform many tricks – always with a constant charlatan interest: to take the money and run. "The power of the Charlatan was that he knew how to exploit and direct all the uncertainties of a religious, spiritual, historical or economic situation by means of manifold falsifications in such a way that a world of values was created in which his own non-values became values". This is what Grete di Francesco alias Margarethe Weissenstein writes in her book "The Power of the Charlatan" in 1937. Weissenstein was a Jew and she was murdered in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in February 1945. She had eventually become a victim of the most destructive form of charlatanism – the politicians-turned-charlatans themselves in the disguise of Fascist ideology. A fascinating book of great topicality. The mechanisms of charlatanism, the revaluation of values and the seduction of the masses remain constant throughout the centuries. The book is only available in antiquarian bookshops (it seems to be available as a pdf online as well).

Frank Kermode. The sense of an ending.

We are all doomed, right? The signs on the wall are pretty clear. We might just have ten years left before we might have killed ourselves with CO2. Of course, throughout history, there were always moments, in which people were convinced that the end was near. We know this, but today, we know that their apocalypse was a ridiculous myth while we have all the evidence that this time, we are right. But so did previous generations of end-game prophets and followers. And yet, as we know, the world never ended. Kermode gives a wonderful overview over this “sense of an ending” and he shows how humans organize their time in narratives and that those narratives seem to have this believe in the end as an unavoidable element, once narratives mature. It is, in a way, a great relief to see that we are not the first ones who believe to be doomed and that this awareness that narratives unavoidable bend towards a kind of endgame phantasy is pretty normal. It is at the same time motivating to see that instead of waiting for the end, we should rather restart our narrative so that also future generations will have this privilege of believing that they are the last ones.

Stefan Zweig. The World of Yesterday (Die Welt von Gestern)

Zweig starts to write this book in 1934 in Vienna, shortly before the Anschluss to the German Reich. It describes the lost world of the Habsburg Empire with its Cosmopolitan spirit and transnational community of intellectuals. This Europe, in which he could travel to Paris without even having a passport with him then descended into the hell of the first world war. Zweig was shocked to see, how fast mutual hatred could spread and he was shocked by the violence of the war. He sees the return of hope in this short period of the roaring 20s and the second descend into more hatred and more violence. The rise of the Hitler regime and the beginning of the second world war destroys all his hope for a survival of the European civilization as he had seen it emerging at the turn of the 19th century. He finished the manuscript of this book in 1942, sent it to his publisher and killed himself. It is fascinating to see these periods of hope, freedom and joy de vivre, in the decade before the first world war and then again before the second world war. We often consider the 1960 as the liberating years, while there had been similar powerful movements with very similar ideas and hopes twice before the period of sex, drugs and rock & roll.

Ernst Jünger. Storm of Steal (Im Stahlgewitter)

Ernst Jünger volunteered as a German soldier in the first world war. Storm of Steal is a book that emerged from the notes he took when fighting in some of the most atrocious battles between Germany and France in this war. It is a highly ambivalent book that describes in detail the brutal mass dying in continuous bombardment (the storm of steal), but at the same time remains strangely ambivalent in its assessment of violence. Jünger describes in numerous passages how he only really feels alive in the constant fire of the enemy. He sees war as the most extreme experience of this human struggle for survival, which Darwin had established as the natural default of any form of life. Only in dying or at least in a close encounter with death and surrounded by dying comrades, in the heroic storming of the enemy, the real meaning of life can be grasped. It is an anti-war book that is sobering in its detailed description of the suffering, but at the same time a book that gives an insider perspective of this enthusiasm of young people who sat singing on the trains that transported them to the front. Millions of young people saw this as a short excursion and never returned home or came back mutilated, traumatized and impoverished. Today, we have by and large forgotten this war, which once was called the “Great War” by those who could not know that a much greater war was coming over them.

Antonio Scurati. M. A Novel (M. Il figlio del secolo) Forthcoming in English by HarperCollins, on January 5, 2021

This book presents the history of Italian Fascism as a novel, written from the perspective of “M”, which is: Benito Mussolini. Carefully following historic facts, but filling the gaps with masterly storytelling skills, Scurati liberates Italian history from this myth of the Fascist leader who also did good things by showing, how within a few years after the Great War, Mussolini drowned Italy in the violence of his blackshirts or squadristi. Many members of this paramilitary militia were demoralized soldiers who had fought in the first world war and struggled to find their place in their post-war society. Trained to kill, they simply applied what they had learned during the war and for the war in the streets of Italy, hunting down socialist, first silencing critical voices and then forcing the majority into a terrorized collusion, which soon would magically transform into enthusiastic support. The book describes this crescendo of violence, the failure of the democratic institutions to hold firm against it and the fading away of freedom under the regime of Mussolini. This is a fascinating book about the origin of Fascism in Europe, which ideally should be read after Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steal and his description of the fascination of violence in this period of our European history. As Scurati describes well, one of the sources of inspiration was futurism, an artist movement created by Marinetti which was built on the assumption that a violent destruction of the present was necessary so that the new society could be born. It is this spirit of violence that returns from the front line with these soldiers who then easily joined the blackshirts. The book closely follows historic sources and all direct quotes are original. I have read it in the original Italian, if you want to read it in English, you can buy the translated version from January on.

Alessandro Baricco. An Iliad (Omero, Iliade)/Madeline Miller. The song of Achilles

Madeline Miller is one of my favorite authors. Her book Circe was my books of the year in 2019 and her Song of Achilles is on my list of 2020. In this book she narrates the Trojan War as a kind of side stage to the love story between the Greek hero Achilles and his lover Patroclus. As it had been prophesied that the death of Achilles would bring the victory to the Greek – and both Achilles and Patroculs knew it and could see it coming. While reading Miller’s reinterpretation of Homer’s old story as a love story, I was in parallel listening to an audio version of Alessandro Baricco’s interpretation of the very same story “Omero”. I must admit that this was partly confusing, since I could not always keep track on who described what and in particular where both authors offer alternative variation of the story, the parallel reading became tough. However, it nonetheless turned out to be a rewarding experiment since both offer totally different perspectives, which together give a deep understanding of the old classic story. Baricco changes the voice of the narrator from chapter to chapter, letting 21 of the Greek and Trojan heroes tell their story of courage, cowardice, living and dying in this decade long fight. Like Jünger, Baricco highlights this search for meaning in the heroic fight. However, while the French and German soldiers in the first world war were dying in this anonymous storm of steal, the Greek heroes fought man against man, hoping to become immortal in the memory of Greek or Trojan songs. Baricco shows, how these heros try to find meaning, this confirmation of their identity in violence. Miller, in her beautiful language contrasts the war with the love of her two protagonists, contrasting the fighting and dying. Both write in a beautiful language and I would not even be able to decide, which of the two version I loved more.

Elena Ferrante. My brilliant friend; The Story of a New Name; Those who leave and those who stay; The Story of the Lost Child – a tetralogy of novels

Do women write different from men? I actually never thought about this before. I did not even think about whether a book was written by a man or a woman, it was simply not relevant to me. Until I read Elena Ferrante and her story of a friendship between two women in Napoli. It is rare that while I read a novel I have to admire and enjoy in parallel the way an author writes. This happened to me when I discovered Circe by Madeleine Miller last year and Elena Ferrante this year. Two women, Lila and Elena who are born into one of the poor quarters of Napoli and who grow up in a world in which people are able to express their feelings mostly through violence and in which this inability to communicate, to solve problems, to express feelings is almost painful for the reader. Two women who try to find their way in a world that seems too difficult to control. Frantumaglia – jumble of fragments is the word that Ferrante uses to describe this fight for survival in a seemingly random and hostile world. The world is in pieces and to live means to create to give some preliminary order and structure to those pieces and fragments by inventing our own story. As Ferrante once wrote in an essay collection, which she published after this four-novel-long story: “The frantumaglia is an unstable landscape, an infinite aerial or acquatic mass of debris that appears to the I, brutally, as its true and unique inner self. The frantumaglia is the storehouse of time without the orderliness of a history, a story. The frantumaglia is an effect of the sense of loss, when we’re sure that everything that seems to us stable, lasting, an anchor for our life, will soon joint that landscape of debris that we seem to see.” Each moment of success is unavoidably followed by a loss, by desperation. Moments of happiness get worn out through this constant return of suffering, because who could enjoy the moment, knowing that there would be a price to be paid later on? How to move through such a world with dignity is what these two women try and maybe achieve – each of them in her own way. These four books are pure magic. They were my absolute highlight in 2020 and maybe in my entire reading life. As a man, reading Ferrante, you get transformed into a feminist at high speed. You might have been one rationally before, but the story of Elena and Lila makes you one emotionally because you are sucked as a male reader into the thoughts and bodies of two female heroes.