Contemporary German Writers and Filmmakers – serie

Abbas Khider (b. 1973) has established himself as one of the leading literary voices of refugees and marginalised communities in Germany today. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Khider was at a young age a vocal critic of Saddam Hussein’s regime, during which he was jailed and tortured before fleeing the country. As a refugee, he crossed many countries before arriving in Germany, where he was eventually granted asylum. His own life experiences have served as a departure point for his novels, which similarly explore the refugee experience and the challenges that migrants to Europe face. This volume represents the first collection of essays devoted to Khider’s works to date. The contributions analyse his narrative works and probe important questions relating to political, cultural, and linguistic identity in Germany today. While his works explore what it means to be an immigrant, they do so with a wry sense of humour and an insight into the human condition that also reflect on the political situation in Germany today. His award-winning novels, including Der falsche Inder (2008, The Village Indian, 2013) and Ohrfeige (2016, A Slap in the Face, 2019), which have been translated into English, are discussed in detail. Additionally, an original interview with the author offers insight into his writing process and influences.

«Offering a range of insightful readings of texts by Honigmann, this volume is engaging and compelling. It will resonate strongly with those readers familiar with Honigmann, deepening their understanding of her work, and will constitute, for others, an urgent invitation to explore her challenging, affecting, and humane œuvre further.»(Professor Emily Jeremiah, Royal Holloway, University of London)«Barbara Honigmann is one of the most incisive and engaging Jewish authors writing in German today. This collection of original essays, many of which illuminate the Jewish dimension of her texts, offers a superb introduction to the writer and raises the analysis of her work to new levels.»(Katja Garloff, Professor of German and Humanities, Reed College)This is the first full-length book in English devoted to the work of one of the most widely read and intriguing contemporary German-language writers. Barbara Honigmann, born in East Berlin in 1949 and a resident of Strasbourg since 1986, treats the major themes of our time from the special perspective of a practising Jewish woman. Her seemingly simple language navigates and reveals hidden complexities, an effect mirrored in her masterly use of form. This book covers Honigmann’s entire œuvre, from her first breakthrough success to her most recent collection of essays and speeches. It includes detailed accounts of form and style, as well as wide-ranging discussions of themes and contexts. Approaching Honigmann’s work from a variety of angles, including aesthetic analysis, feminist and memory studies, the literary exploration of space, and the investigation of autofiction, the essays collected here discuss Honigmann’s unique voice and her treatment of identity and belonging, Jewishness across generations, migration and multiculturalism, postmemory and trauma, language and transcendence.The academic chapters in this volume are complemented by Honigmann’s translation of an installation text by Chantal Akerman, an interview the book’s editors conducted with the author in December 2021, and an extensive bibliography.

Feridun Zaimoglu made a spectacular entrance onto the German cultural scene in 1995 with Kanak Sprak: a volume of incendiary texts based on interviews with disaffected Turkish German youths, using an invented, stylized literary language, a hybrid of multiple varieties of German with a hip hop beat. A prolific and acclaimed novelist, dramatist, newspaper columnist, visual artist and live performer, Zaimoglu has remained in the public eye through controversy and reinvention. His more recent work appropriates German literary traditions in radically new ways, adapting Romantic styles, narrative forms and motifs to postmodern conditions.This volume features the suppressed original first chapter of Leyla, Zaimoglu’s critically and commercially most successful novel, first published in 2006, as well as an extensive interview with the author. Critical essays on his writing by major scholars in the field cover issues of gender, language and power, the politics of ethnicity, religion, Romanticism and anti-modernism, and the challenges of translating his work. This is the first volume of criticism in any language dedicated to Zaimoglu’s literary work.