Contemporary German Fiction

Contemporary German Fiction
Author: Stuart Taberner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2007-06-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139464159

The profound political and social changes Germany has undergone since 1989 have been reflected in an extraordinarily rich range of contemporary writing. Contemporary German Fiction focuses on the debates that have shaped the politics and culture of the new Germany that has emerged from the second half of the 1990s onwards and offers the first comprehensive account of key developments in German literary fiction within their social and historical context. Each chapter begins with an overview of a central theme, such as East German writing, West German writing, writing on the Nazi past, writing by women and writing by ethnic minorities. The authors discussed include Günter Grass, Ingo Schulze, Judith Hermann, Christa Wolf, Christian Kracht and Zafer Senocak. These informative and accessible readings build up a clear picture of the central themes and stylistic concerns of the best writers working in Germany today.

The Reader

The Reader
Author: Bernhard Schlink
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2001-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375726977

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany. "A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." —Los Angeles Times When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel

The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel
Author: Graham Bartram
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2004-04-05
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521483926

The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel, first published in 2004, provides a broad ranging introduction to the major trends in the development of the German novel from the 1890s to the present. Written by an international team of experts, it encompasses both modernist and realist traditions, and also includes a look back to the roots of the modern novel in the Bildungsroman of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The structure is broadly chronological, but thematically-focused chapters examine topics such as gender anxiety, images of the city, war, and women's writing; within each chapter, key works are selected for close attention. Unique in its combination of breadth of coverage and detailed analysis of individual works, and featuring a chronology and guides to further reading, this Companion will be indispensable to students and teachers.

Measuring the World

Measuring the World
Author: Daniel Kehlmann
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2009-03-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307496759

Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment. Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napolean world.

The German Student Movement and the Literary Imagination

The German Student Movement and the Literary Imagination
Author: Susanne Rinner
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2013-02-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0857457551

Through a close reading of novels by Ulrike Kolb, Irmtraud Morgner, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Bernhard Schlink, Peter Schneider, and Uwe Timm, this book traces the cultural memory of the 1960s student movement in German fiction, revealing layers of remembering and forgetting that go beyond conventional boundaries of time and space. These novels engage this contestation by constructing a palimpsest of memories that reshape readers’ understanding of the 1960s with respect to the end of the Cold War, the legacy of the Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Topographically, these novels refute assertions that East Germans were isolated from the political upheaval that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. Through their aesthetic appropriations and subversions, these multicultural contributions challenge conventional understandings of German identity and at the same time lay down claims of belonging within a German society that is more openly diverse than ever before.

Renegotiating Postmemory

Renegotiating Postmemory
Author: Maria Roca Lizarazu
Publisher: Dialogue and Disjunction: Stud
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2020
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 164014045X

With the disappearance of the eyewitness generation and the globalization of Holocaust memory, this book interrogates key concepts in Holocaust and trauma studies through an assessment of contemporary German-language Jewish authors.

German Literature: A Very Short Introduction

German Literature: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Nicholas Boyle
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2008-02-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0199206597

German writers, be it Goethe, Nietzsche, Marx, Brecht or Mann, have had a profound influence on the modern world. This Very Short Introduction illuminates the particular character and power of German literature, and examines its impact on the wider cultural world.

Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit

Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit
Author: Bruce Campbell
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2014
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1571135936

The first broad treatment of German genre fiction, containing innovative new essays on a variety of genres and foregrounding concerns of gender, environmentalism, and memory. Some of the most exciting research and teaching in the field of German Studies is being done on "genre fiction," including detective fiction, science fiction, and what is often called "poplit," to name but a few. Such non-canonical literature has long been marginalized by the German tradition of Bildung and the disciplinary practice of German literary studies (Germanistik). Even today, when the examination of non-canonical texts is well established and uncontroversial in other academic contexts, such texts remain understudied in German. And yet, the trend toward "German Studies" and "cultural studies" approaches within the field has raised considerable interest in theanalysis of genre fiction, resulting in both a great deal of new scholarship and a range of new courses. This first broad treatment of German genre fiction brings together innovative new scholarship, foregrounding themes of gender, environmentalism, and memory. It is an ideal companion to research and teaching. Written in accessible English, it speaks to a wide variety of disciplines beyond German Studies. Contributors: Bruce B. Campbell, Ray Canoy, Kerry Dunne, Sonja Fritzsche, Maureen O. Gallagher, Adam R. King, Molly Knight, Vibeke Rützou Petersen, Evan Torner, and Ailsa Wallace. Bruce B. Campbell is Associate Professor of German Studies at the College ofWilliam and Mary. Alison Guenther-Pal is Assistant Professor of German and Film Studies at Lawrence University. Vibeke Rützou Petersen is Professor Emerita of Women's Studies at Drake University.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture

The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture
Author: Eva Kolinsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 1998
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780521568708

One of the most intriguing questions of our time is how some of the masterpieces of modernity originated in a country in which personal liberty and democracy were slow to emerge. This Companion provides an authoritative account of modern German culture since the onset of industrialisation, the rise of mass society and the nation state. Newly written and researched by experts in their respective fields, individual chapters trace developments in German culture - including national identity, class, Jews in German society, minorities and women, the functions of folk and mass culture, poetry, drama, theatre, dance, music, art, architecture, cinema and mass media - from the nineteenth century to the present. Guidance is given for further reading and a chronology is provided. In its totality the Companion shows how the political and social processes that shaped modern Germany are intertwined with cultural genres and their agendas of creative expression.

German History in Modern Times

German History in Modern Times
Author: William W. Hagen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2012-02-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316025225

This history of German-speaking central Europe offers a very wide perspective, emphasizing a succession of many-layered communal identities. It highlights the interplay of individual, society, culture and political power, contrasting German with Western patterns. Rather than treating 'the Germans' as a collective whole whose national history amounts to a cumulative biography, the book presents the pre-modern era of the Holy Roman Empire; the nineteenth century; the 1914–45 era of war, dictatorship and genocide; and the Cold War and post-Cold War eras since 1945 as successive worlds of German life, thought and mentality. This book's 'Germany' is polycentric and multicultural, including the multinational Austrian Habsburg Empire and the German Jews. Its approach to National Socialism offers a conceptually new understanding of the Holocaust. The book's numerous illustrations reveal German self-presentations and styles of life, which often contrast with Western ideas of Germany.