Gut reaction: book celebrating digestive tract becomes German bestseller

Giulia Enders, whose book, Darm mit Charme, has been at the top of the German paperback charts for the last eight weeks. Photograph: Franziska Krug/Getty Images

To dismiss Giulia Enders' debut work as a "toilet book" would do it great injustice – not least because the author argues that we shouldn't really be reading books in the lavatory anyway.

Darm mit Charme ("Charming Bowels") – which has sat atop the German paperback charts for the last eight weeks and shifted more than 200,000 copies in the process – may deal with defecation, constipation and other bowel movements, but its message is far from flippant: our gastrointestinal tract is not only the body's most under-appreciated organ, but "the brain's most important adviser".

In the book, which was published in Germany in March and whose UK rights have already been bought by Scribe, Enders argues that we are unduly proud of the complex achievements of our brain and heart, while regarding our bowels as little more than a shameful tube that produces "small brown heaps and farting noises".

Few know that only the last of our digestive tract's eight metres deals with faeces, that it produces more than 20 kinds of hormone, contains more than a thousands species of bacteria and is controlled by a nervous system that is almost as complex as the brain's.

And Enders argues that even scientists like her – a 24-year-old doctoral student at Frankfurt's Goethe University – have only in recent years started to explore the possibility that the health of our bowels could have a more direct influence on our mental wellbeing, our motivation, memory and sense of morality than our DNA.

Enders' gut manifesto calls on its readers to celebrate their lower bodies' achievements, rather than apologise for them: a burp or a fart may be considered coarse, yet the movement it requires from our bowels is "as elegant as a ballet dancer". We complain about having to throw up, when in fact we should thank our body for the "masterful performance" it is putting on to protect us.

Along the way, Darm mit Charme issues practical advice: sitting, rather than crouching while doing your business unnecessarily prolongs the process and may explain why haemorrhoids and bowel diseases like diverticulitis are more common in Europe than in Asia. Placing a little stool in front of the toilet could help us all pass our stool, says Enders – and we'd no longer need that pile of books in the bathroom.

In Germany, her book has been received enthusiastically. The YouTube clip of Enders competition-winning "science slam" in 2012, which prompted a publisher to commission her, has long gone viral, and this year Enders has already appeared in many major talk shows.

Germans have long had to live with the charge of harbouring an unusually strong fascination with the baser bodily functions. In the 1980s, the American anthropologist Alan Dundes suggested that his study of folk tales revealed an "anal-erotic element in the German character". Dundes' conclusions may since have been discredited, but the success of Enders' book makes it harder to suggest he wasn't on to something after all.

In the German publishing world, Darm mit Charme is hardly a new phenomenon: in 2008, Charlotte Roche enjoyed a similarly unexpected bestseller with Wetlands, a novel about an 18-year-old girl sent to hospital for a haemorrhoid operation.

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Immigrant becomes ‘Good American’

The immigrant experience as seen through the eyes of those who settled in America's heartland is the honest and delightful story Alex George tells in A Good American.

Most Americans are immigrants or descended from them. This universal experience grounds George's debut in sentiment and nostalgia relatable to many.

A Good American starts in 1904 in Germany, where Frederick Meisenheimer and Jette Furste, a lovelorn couple, decide to flee to New York after Jette is disowned by her family for getting pregnant.

They hop the first steamer not realizing it's headed to New Orleans. From the coastal Louisiana city, they head north to Missouri, where Frederick hopes to find work.

They settle in Beatrice, Mo., where generations of the Meisenheimer family will flourish and fulfill the proverbial American dream.

Like most immigrants of that time, Frederick turned his back on Europe and "looked ahead into the bright lights of the young century."

Those lights shine brightly on four generations of his family in George's novel.

Like all families, they have memorable characters — Frederick's grandsons, who form a barbershop quartet; grandson James, inspired by P.G. Wodehouse, who yearns to be a writer; his aunt Rosa, who's a chess whiz.

What makes this epic and lyrical novel's characters so compelling is not so much their uniqueness as the ordinariness of their lives. And through good times and bad, we watch as they walk through history. World War I, Prohibition, the Great Depression and World War II come alive as does their All-American yearning to pursue a life abundant with happiness.

Music is a hallmark of this novel, too — through the songs coming out of the radio, to the ballads and blues sung in the family restaurant, to the arias Frederick's son Joseph sings to woo his wife. Do you hear me, Broadway? This story would make a delightful musical.

Readers also will be moved by this novelist's personal story. George was born in Great Britain but now lives in Missouri. Sometime soon, he'll be sworn in as a citizen of the United States of America.

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