The narrator of Volatile Texts: Us Two falls in love with Pierre, the book’s secret protagonist. During their trysts she rediscovers Switzerland, a place where every valley has its own language and ev
Alfred Doblin was a titan of modern German literature. This collection of stories—astonishingly, the first collection of his stories ever published in English—shows him to have been equally adept
Kafka’s work has been attributed a universal significance and is often regarded as the ultimate witness of the human condition in the twentieth century. Yet his work is also considered paradigmatic fo
The Echo of Die Blechtrommel in Europe presents an overview of the critical reception of Gunter Grass’s classic novel throughout Europe since its publication in 1959.
Moritz Wenk is an averagely unsuccessful painter, and Judith Wenk, a dental hygienist, are a close and harmonius couple. During a week in a very hot summer, in perhaps Zurich, he's found work cutting
A grand hotel in the center of 1920s Berlin serves as a microcosm of the modern world in Vicki Baum’s celebrated novel, a Weimar-era bestseller that retains all its verve and luster today. A
Ornament as Crisis explores the ways in which the novels of Hermann Broch’sSleepwalkers (Schlafwandler) trilogy participate in and employ the history of architecture, architectural theory, and contemp
The novel, according to standard scholarly narratives, depicts an individual's path to maturity. Scholarship on the rise of the novel in Germany and in Europe more broadly, from Watt to Moretti, has e
An early masterpiece from the winner of the Nobel Prize hailed as the laureate of life under totalitarianismRomania--the last months of the Ceausescu regime. Adina is a young schoolteacher. Paul is a
Bavarian glaciologist Zeno Hintermeier is taking his last voyage to the Antarctic as a lecturer on board an international cruise ship. He attends to the curiosity of a privileged few as they marvel at
Kafka's Ethics of Interpretation refutes the oft-repeated claim, made by Kafka's greatest interpreters, including Walter Benjamin and Harold Bloom, that Kafka sought to evade interpretation of his wri
Kafka's Ethics of Interpretation refutes the oft-repeated claim, made by Kafka's greatest interpreters, including Walter Benjamin and Harold Bloom, that Kafka sought to evade interpretation of his wri
"A knocking on the barn door drags us out of our sleep. No, the knocking isn't inside us, it's outside, where the other people are." With that, six blind beggars in 16th century Flanders-a r
