Lyn Marven & Stuart Taberner 
Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century 

Presents fifteen new German-language novelists and a close reading of an exemplary work of each for academics and the general reader alike.


After the international success in the 1990s of authors such as Bernhard Schlink, Marcel Beyer, and Thomas Brussig, an impressive number of new German-language novelists are making a significant impact. Some, like Karen Duve, Daniel Kehlmann, and Sasa Stanisic, have achieved international recognition; some, like Julia Franck, have won major prizes; others, like Clemens Meyer, Alina Bronsky, and Ilja Trojanow, are truly ’emerging authors’ who have begun toattract attention. Between them they represent a range of literatures in German, from women’s writing to minority writing (from Turkish immigrants and Eastern Europe), to ‘pop literature’ and perspectives on the former GDR and on Germany’s Nazi past.

This volume devotes individual essays to fifteen such writers, examining in detail a major work of each. Translated excerpts from works by Vladimir Vertlib and Clemens Meyer round out the book, which willbe of interest not only to academics and students of English and Comparative Literature in the UK, the US, and beyond, but also to the general reader, for whom titles of texts and quotations are translated.


Contributors: Lyn Marven, Stuart Taberner, Anke S. Biendarra, Stephen Brockmann, Rebecca Braun, Frauke Matthes, Brigid Haines, Julian Preece, Emily Jeremiah, Valerie Heffernan, Barbara Mennel, Heike Bartel, Kate Roy, Andrew Plowman, Sonja E.Klocke, Jamie Lee Searle, Katy Derbyshire.


Lyn Marven is a Lecturer in German at the University of Liverpool. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture, and Society at the University of Leeds.

Table of Content

Introduction: New German-Language Writing since the Turn of the Millennium – Lyn Marven

Ulrike Draesner, Mitgift: On Bodies and Beauty – Lyn Marven

Vladimir Vertlib, Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur: Performing Jewishness in the New Germany – Stuart Taberner

Terézia Mora, Alle Tage: Transnational Traumas – Anke S. Biendarra

Juli Zeh, Spieltrieb: Contemporary Nihilism – Stephen Brockmann

Daniel Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt: Measuring Celebrity through the Ages – Rebecca Braun

Clemens Meyer, Als wir träumten: Fighting ‘Like a Man’in Leipzig’s East – Frauke Matthes

Sasa Stanisic’, Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert: Reinscribing Bosnia, or: Sad Things, Positively – Brigid Haines

Ilija Trojanow, Der Weltensammler: Separate Bodies, or: An Account of Intercultural Failure – Julian Preece

Sibylle Berg, Die Fahrt: Literature, Germanness, and Globalization – Emily Jeremiah

Julia Franck, Die Mittagsfrau: Historia Matria and Matrilineal Narrative – Valerie Heffernan

Alina Bronsky, Scherbenpark: Global Ghetto Girl – Barbara Mennel

Karen Duve, Taxi: Of Alpha Males, Apes, Altenberg, and Driving in the City – Heike Bartel

Yadé Kara, Cafe Cyprus: New Territory? – Kate Roy

Sven Regener, Der kleine Bruder: Reinventing Kreuzberg – Andrew Plowman

Kathrin Schmidt, Du stirbst nicht: A Woman’s Quest for Agency – Sonja Klocke

Appendices: Samples of Contemporary German-Language Novels in Translation

Notes on the Contributors

Index

About the author

STUART TABERNER is Professor of German at the University of Leeds, UK.