This picaresque tale of a sexually voracious bed salesman whose life is dominated by his adventures with women opens in l962 as thirty-year-old Heinrich Hampel crosses the Berlin Wall leaving the West for East. This is not a political gesture but a desperate attempt to escape debt and the sexual mayhem caused by his bold selling techniques. Charming his way into the hearts and beds of his female customers (in Bavaria in the l950s), Heinrich doubles his turnover, but when an expensive mistress appears, his long-suffering wife Rosa has cause to worry. Despite the postwar economic miracle, Heinrich's debts build until he is forced to flee across the border and take up his old ways in the East. From this audacious and outlandish opening, the novel builds up a mosaic of Hampel's life. As fresh as it is provocative, Michael Kumpfmüller's first novel was a bestselling literary sensation in Germany.

This much-needed guide to translated literature offers readers the opportunity to hear from, learn about, and perhaps better understand our shrinking world from the perspective of insiders from many cultures and traditions. In a globalized world, knowledge about non-North American societies and cultures is a must. Contemporary World Fiction: A Guide to Literature in Translation provides an overview of the tremendous range and scope of translated world fiction available in English. In so doing, it will help readers get a sense of the vast world beyond North America that is conveyed by fiction titles from dozens of countries and language traditions. Within the guide, approximately 1,000 contemporary non-English-language fiction titles are fully annotated and thousands of others are listed. Organization is primarily by language, as language often reflects cultural cohesion better than national borders or geographies, but also by country and culture. In addition to contemporary titles, each chapter features a brief overview of earlier translated fiction from the group. The guide also provides in-depth bibliographic essays for each chapter that will enable librarians and library users to further explore the literature of numerous languages and cultural traditions.

The profound political and social changes Germany has undergone since 1989 have been reflected in an extraordinarily rich range of contemporary writing. Contemporary German Fiction focuses on the debates that have shaped the politics and culture of the new Germany that has emerged from the second half of the 1990s onwards and offers the first comprehensive account of key developments in German literary fiction within their social and historical context. Each chapter begins with an overview of a central theme, such as East German writing, West German writing, writing on the Nazi past, writing by women and writing by ethnic minorities. The authors discussed include Günter Grass, Ingo Schulze, Judith Hermann, Christa Wolf, Christian Kracht and Zafer Senocak. These informative and accessible readings build up a clear picture of the central themes and stylistic concerns of the best writers working in Germany today.

Bill Daugherty has been collecting and telling jokes and humorous stories for many years. He does this, not for profit, but for the sheer enjoyment he receives from making people laugh. With stories such as these, he has entertained his Rotary Club, local and National Audubon Societies, literary group meetings, humorous roast, and members of his weekly bridge games. Bills occupation has not been entertainment. Rather, he has post graduate degrees in Physics and Education, and before retiring, was an Aerospace Engineering Manager at Hughes Aircraft Company, Space Technology Laboratories, and TRW Systems. He has written two WWII novels about the air war in the South Pacific, Black Cats, and Nightmares. He published a monolog on education, Public School Education Destroyed by Educators, and an engineering text he co authored, Mechanical Engineering for Electrical Engineers. His OP-ED pieces have appeared in major newspapers. Bill firmly believes that laughter is sorely missing in our world, and jokes about mature subjects are especially entertaining. To find out of this Not our typical joke book youll have to read it.

For those of us who are afraid we don't have what it takes to face our fears on our own, this story reminds us we have the skills and power to do so no matter how big and scary the problem, or monster, is. Most people think martial arts are for self-defense. While this is true, the art of Jiu-Jitsu also teaches us to have respect for ourselves and others. With this mutual respect, we can, through our actions, learn from one another. In this story, a child remembers how to use Jiu-Jitsu she knows to face her bedtime fear of monsters being under the bed. In so doing she remembers the real reason she learned this martial art, gains new friends through earning their respect, and teaches them the right way to go to sleep.