Book Donations Helps Expand German Selection at GNS

April 29, 2022

Academics

GNS

This year, the Senior School Learning Commons received a donation of German-language books. Emily Esser ’22 and her mother Carla Palm approached the publishing company, Diogenes, about donating to GNS. The company was pleased to comply and sent a large selection of books to Emily’s home in Switzerland.

When Carla traveled to Victoria in February, she was able to bring the books with her. Some of the books include Toronto by Kenneth Bonert, Der Richter und sein Henker and Der Besuch der alten Dame by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Hard Land by Benedict Wells, Elefant and Der Koch by Martin Suter, and Kanada by Gefährliche Ferien.

Emily noted that these books are easy to read, especially for people who are new to learning German.

“They are all pretty famous books, and I’ve read some of them in school,” said Emily. “They are typical school books. Like for example here we would read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, so people in Germany and Switzerland know these books.”

The donation of these books is a great way for the Senior School Learning Commons to grow their foreign language book collection. GNS has a variety of students who speak many languages, and providing them with books to read in different languages is important.

“We’ve been wanting to expand our foreign language collection,” said Ms. Lisa Drury, Library Administrator. “We were talking to Emily about how German was one of the languages we wanted to expand, and she noted her mom had a connection to a publishing company.”

The publishing company, Diogenes is based in Zurich and is one of Europe’s largest independent literary publishers. Over its 70 year history, they have published more than 8,000 titles by over 800 writers and artists.