Andrew Plowman - Böcker

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall many East German writers were praised in the Western world as dissident voices of truth, bravely struggling with the draconian constraints of living under the GDR's communist regime.

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall many East German writers were praised in the Western world as dissident voices of truth, bravely struggling with the draconian constraints of living under the GDR's communist regime. However, since unification, Germany has been rocked by scandals showing the level to which the Stasi, the East German Secret Police, controlled these same writers. This is the first study in English to systematically explore how the writers have responded to the challenge of dealing with the Stasi from the 1950s to the present day. MICHAEL BUTLER Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Birmingham, UK CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING Associate Professor of German, Southwest Missouri Satte Univesrity, USA MIKE DENNIS Professor of Modern German History, University of Wolverhampton, UK OWEN EVANS Lecturer in German, University of Wales, Bangor, UK STEPHEN J.EVANS University of Wales, Swansea, UK KRISTIE FOELL Associate Professor of German, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA ALISON LEWIS Lecturer, Department of German and Swedish Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia GEORGINA PAUL Lecturer in German Studies, University of Warwick, UK JULIAN PREECE University of Kent, UK KARL-HEINZ SCHOEPS Professor Emeritus of German, University of Illinois, USA DENNIS TATE Professor of German Studies, University of Bath, UK JILL TWARK Assistant Professor of German, East Carolina University, USA REINHARD K. ZACHAU Professor of German, University of the South (Sewanee), USA

Offers readings of key contemporary trends and themes in the vibrant genre of short-story writing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with attention to major practitioners and translations of two representative stories.Since the 1990s, the short story has re-emerged in the German-speaking world as a vibrant literary genre, serving as a medium for both literary experimentation and popular forms. Authors like Judith Hermann and Peter Stamm have had a significant impact on German-language literary culture and, in translation, on literary culture in the UK and USA. This volume analyzes German-language short-story writing in the twenty-first century, aiming to establish a framework for further research into individual authors as well as key themes and formal concerns.An introduction discusses theories of the short-story form and literary-aesthetic questions. A combination of thematic and author-focused chapters then discuss key developments in the contemporary German-language context, examining performance and performativity, Berlin and crime stories, and the openendness, fragmentation, liminality, and formal experimentations that characterize short stories in the twenty-first century. Together the chapters present the rich field of short-story writing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, offering a variety of theoretical approaches to individual stories and collections, as well as exploring connections with storytelling, modernist short prose, and the novella. The volume concludes with a survey of broad trends, and three original translations exemplifying the breadth of contemporary German-language short-story writing.

The Allied agreement after the Second World War did not only partition Germany, it divided the nation along the fault-lines of a new bipolar world order. This inner border made Germany a unique place to experience the Cold War, and the "German question" in this post-1945 variant remained inextricably entwined with the vicissitudes of the Cold War until its end. This volume explores how social and cultural practices in both German states between 1949 and 1989 were shaped by the existence of this inner border, putting them on opposing sides of the ideological divide between the Western and Eastern blocs, as well as stabilizing relations between them. This volume's interdisciplinary approach addresses important intersections between history, politics, and culture, offering an important new appraisal of the German experiences of the Cold War.