Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - German

The Lord Chandos Letter by Joel Rotenber

2012-05-16T00:30:00-05:00

The Lord Chandos Letter And Other Writings
Written by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
Translated by Joel Rotenber
Introduction by John Banville

eBook | NYRB Classics | Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays; Fiction - Classics; Literary Criticism & Collections - German | $14.95 | 978-1-59017-543-9 (1-59017-543-3)

Hugo von Hoffmannsthal made his mark as a poet, as a playwright, and as the librettist for Richard Strauss’s greatest operas, but he was no less accomplished as a writer of short, strangely evocative prose works. The atmospheric stories and sketches collected here—fin-de-siècle fairy tales from the Vienna of Klimt and Freud, a number of them never before translated into English—propel the reader into a shadowy world of uncanny fates and secret desires. An aristocrat from Paris in the plague years shares a single night of passion with an unknown woman; a cavalry sergeant meets his double on the battlefield; an orphaned man withdraws from the world with his four servants, each of whom has a mysterious power over his destiny.

The most influential of all of Hofmannsthal’s writings is the title story, a fictional letter to the English philosopher Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he is no longer able to write. The “Letter” not only symbolized Hofmannsthal’s own turn away from poetry, it captured the psychological crisis of faith and language which was to define the twentieth century.

Gathering Evidence & My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard

2011-11-29T00:30:00-05:00

Gathering Evidence & My Prizes A Memoir
Written by Thomas Bernhard

Trade Paperback, 416 pages | Vintage | Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Literary Criticism & Collections - German | $16.95 | 978-1-4000-7762-5 (1-4000-7762-1)

Written with a dark pain and drama that recalls the novels of Dickens, Gathering Evidence is a powerful and compelling memoir of youth by one of the twentieth century’s most gifted writers.

Born in 1931, the illegitimate child of an abandoned mother, Thomas Bernhard was brought up by an eccentric grandmother and an adored grandfather in right-wing, Catholic Austria. He ran away from home at age fifteen. Three years later, he contracted pneumonia and was placed in a hospital ward for the old and terminally ill, where he observed first-hand—and with unflinching acuity—the cruel nature of protracted suffering and death. From the age of twenty-one, everything he wrote was shaped by the urgency of a dying man’s testament—and where this account of his life ends, his art begins.

Included in this edition is My Prizes, a collection of Bernhard’s viciously funny and revelatory essays on his later literary life. Here is a portrait of the artist as a prize-winner: laconic, sardonic, shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself.

The Emergence of Memory by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

2011-01-04T00:30:00-05:00

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W.G. Sebald
Written by W.G. Sebald
Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

eBook | Seven Stories Press | Literary Criticism & Collections - German; Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays | $15.95 | 978-1-60980-061-1 (1-60980-061-3)

When German author W. G. Sebald died in a car accident at the age of fifty-seven, the literary world mourned the loss of a writer whose oeuvre it was just beginning to appreciate. Through published interviews with and essays on Sebald, award-winning translator and author Lynne Sharon Schwartz offers a profound portrait of the writer, who has been praised posthumously for his unflinching explorations of historical cruelty, memory, and dislocation.
With contributions from poet, essayist, and translator Charles Simic, New Republic editor Ruth Franklin, Bookworm radio host Michael Silverblatt, and more, The Emergence of Memory offers Sebald’s own voice in interviews between 1997 up to a month before his death in 2001. Also included are cogent accounts of almost all of Sebald’s books, thematically linked to events in the contributors’ own lives.
Contributors include Carole Angier, Joseph Cuomo, Ruth Franklin, Michael Hofmann, Arthur Lubow, Tim Parks, Michael Silverblatt, Charles Simic, and Eleanor Wachtel.

The Emergence of Memory by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

2010-04-06T00:30:00-05:00

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W. G. Sebald
Written by W.G. Sebald
Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Trade Paperback, 176 pages | Seven Stories Press | Literary Criticism & Collections - German; Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays | $15.95 | 978-1-58322-915-6 (1-58322-915-9)

The Emergence of Memory by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

2007-11-06T00:30:00-05:00

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W. G. Sebald
Written by W.G. Sebald
Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Hardcover, 176 pages | Seven Stories Press | Literary Criticism & Collections - German; Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays | $23.95 | 978-1-58322-785-5 (1-58322-785-7)

German Encounters with Modernity by Katherine Roper

1991-04-01T00:30:00-05:00

German Encounters with Modernity
Written by Katherine Roper

Hardcover, 279 pages | Humanity Books | Literary Criticism & Collections - German | $61.99 | 978-1-57392-602-7 (1-57392-602-7)

The novels of imperial Berlin constitute a body of material of immense historical richness. Their importance as a historical source lies in the intricate connections their authors make between the individual lives of characters, a modernizing city, and a newly unified nation. Taken together, they constitute a significant piece in the complicated puzzle of how the society of imperial Germany, as it underwent the social and economic upheavals of modernization, transformed the rule of traditional elites into new authoritarian forms.

Using individual works to illustrate the fictional treatment of a spectrum of problems of nationhood and modernity, Katherine Roper argues that Berlin novelists used their works to search for a German identity that spoke to modern realities and to envision a particularly German revolution that would bring genuine national greatness. As the young nation matured, however, these visions were impeded, the author suggests, by specific obstacles, including traumatic historical events, inherited cultural ideals, powerful mythologies, social anxieties, and political indifference. This book documents what Berlin novelists conceived as a struggle for Germany's soul—and traces the stages of its defeat.

Goethe's Faust by Walter Kaufmann

1962-12-04T00:30:00-05:00

Goethe's Faust
Written by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Translated by Walter Kaufmann
Introduction by Walter Kaufmann

Trade Paperback, 512 pages | Anchor | Poetry - Single Author - Continental European; Literary Criticism & Collections - German | $11.95 | 978-0-385-03114-1 (0-385-03114-9)

The best translation of Faust available, this volume provides the original German text and its English counterpart on facing pages. Walter Kaufmann's translation conveys the poetic beauty and rhythm as well as the complex depth of Goethe's language. Includes Part One and selections from Part Two.

Random House New Releases - Literary Criticism & Collections - German

The Lord Chandos Letter by Joel Rotenber

The Lord Chandos Letter And Other WritingsWritten by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal Translated by Joel Rotenber Introduction by John Banville

Gathering Evidence & My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard

Gathering Evidence & My Prizes A MemoirWritten by Thomas Bernhard

The Emergence of Memory by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W.G. SebaldWritten by W.G. Sebald Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The Emergence of Memory by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W. G. SebaldWritten by W.G. Sebald Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The Emergence of Memory by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W. G. SebaldWritten by W.G. Sebald Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

German Encounters with Modernity by Katherine Roper

German Encounters with Modernity Written by Katherine Roper

Goethe's Faust by Walter Kaufmann

Goethe's Faust Written by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Translated by Walter Kaufmann Introduction by Walter Kaufmann

The Lord Chandos Letter And Other Writings
Written by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
Translated by Joel Rotenber
Introduction by John Banville

Gathering Evidence & My Prizes A Memoir
Written by Thomas Bernhard

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W.G. Sebald
Written by W.G. Sebald
Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W. G. Sebald
Written by W.G. Sebald
Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

The Emergence of Memory Conversations with W. G. Sebald
Written by W.G. Sebald
Edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

German Encounters with Modernity
Written by Katherine Roper

Goethe's Faust
Written by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Translated by Walter Kaufmann
Introduction by Walter Kaufmann