Category German
‘AFTER THE OLYMPICS WE’LL GET RUTHLESS’: Berlin 1936 by Oliver Hilmes, translated by Jefferson Chase
Reviewed by Peter Hegarty Translator Jefferson Chase would have found Oliver Hilmes’s Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August pleasantly familiar. A resident of Berlin, he walks the same streets as Hilmes’s characters. He knows their haunts, the places where they lived, caroused, suffered. He can easily visit the austerely beautiful Olympic stadium on which the […]
SMOTHERED BY A STORY: PETER STAMM’S AGNES, TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL HOFMANN
Reviewed by Daniel Kennedy Although Agnes is the sixth of Peter Stamm’s books to be published in the US by Other Press in Michael Hofmann’s translation, it is in fact his debut novel. With this slim volume, first published in 1998, Peter Stamm established himself as one of the most promising Swiss writers of his […]
Narration Between Species: Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Translated by Susan Bernofsky
Reviewed by Jordan A. Y. Smith [Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar is one of those novels that makes one loathe to reveal not only the ending but the beginning, so I will open with my clichéd but earnest recommendation that you trust me—and Tawada’s stellar and well-earned reputation—go read the novel, then continue reading this […]
Boundless Language: Melinda Nadj Abonji’s Fly Away, Pigeon, Translated by Tess Lewis
Reviewed by Rachel Harland In an interview given shortly after receiving the 2010 German Book Prize* for her semi-autobiographical novel Fly Away, Pigeon, Serbian-born Swiss author Melinda Nadj Abonji was asked whether it annoyed her that in the run-up to the award announcement commentators had labeled her book “immigrant literature.” Her response? “It doesn’t annoy […]
“The Country of Old Men”: Maxim Leo’s Red Love, Translated by Shaun Whiteside
Reviewed by Rachel Harland “I had the feeling that the GDR only really came to an end at that moment,” writes Berlin-based journalist Maxim Leo in the prologue to his autobiographical narrative Red Love: The Story of an East German Family. “Eighteen years after the fall of the Wall the stern hero had disappeared. Before […]
What His Shadow Did: Karl Krolow’s Selected Poems, Translated by Stuart Friebert
Reviewed by Joshua Daniel Edwin As a poet, translator, critic, and essayist, Karl Krolow’s influence is enormous. In his remarks on the back jacket of Puppets in the Wind: Selected Poems of Karl Krolow, translator Stuart Friebert notes that “[f]ew writers who lived during Krolow’s lifetime were without his direct or indirect support.” In addition […]