Most of the chapters in this volume were delivered as papers at a conference on the same theme held at the University of Kent in April 2002. The essays collected here, by scholars from the UK, Ireland, Germany, and the US, address a topic of fundamental concern across all the disciplines engaged with the study of contemporary Germany: the evolving relationship between urban and rural space, the metropolitan centre and the provincial Heimat. The volume identifies and investigates a number of recent trends: the emergence of 'eco-literature', the renaissance of writing - in prose and verse - inspired by the new Berlin, the realignment of regional sensibilities, which is complicated by the troubled tradition of Heimat in all its literary manifestations, and the continuing disjunctions between East and West. Individual essays engage with the work of established writers (Günter de Bruyn, Hubert Fichte, Peter Handke, WG Sebald, Siegfried Lenz, Martin Walser, and Elfriede Jelinek) and emerging talents (Georg Klein, Christof Hamann, Ludwig Laher, and Arnold Stadler).

This book traces shifting attitudes towards science and technology, nature and the environment in Twentieth-century Germany. It approaches them through discussion of a range of literary texts and explores the philosophical influences on them and their political contexts, and asks what part novels and plays have played in environmental debate.

Twenty-five essays by scholars from the UK, Ireland, Germany and Australia explore two aspects of new German-language literature. The first dozen studies focus on the variety and depth of the 'dialogue' - in the sense of reciprocal influences - between literature, photography, film, painting, architecture, and music. The remaining essays alight on 'Life-Writing' in most of its forms (diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, and autobiographical fiction) and examine its centrality in recent years in German literature, not least because of the shadow which World War Two continues to cast over national life.

This book investigates the crucial question of ‘restitution’ in the work of W. G. Sebald. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplines, with a foreword by his English translator Anthea Bell, the essays collected in this volume place Sebald’s oeuvre within the broader context of European culture in order to better understand his engagement with the ethics of aesthetics. Whilst opening up his work to a range of under-explored areas including dissident surrealism, Anglo-Irish relations, contemporary performance practices and the writings of H. G. Adler, the volume notably returns to the original German texts. The recurring themes identified in the essays – from Sebald’s carefully calibrated syntax to his self-consciousness about ‘genre’, from his interest in liminal spaces to his literal and metaphorical preoccupation with blindness and vision – all suggest that the ‘attempt at restitution’ constitutes the very essence of Sebald’s understanding of literature.

Pushing at Boundaries presents approaches to women writers who have recently had a big impact in shaping the contemporary literary field in Germany. The opening chapters offer the first extensive consideration of Karen Duve’s work, including an excerpt from her latest novel, the romance parody Die entführte Prinzessin, a fascinating commentary by her translator Anthea Bell, and essays on her acclaimed novel Regenroman, her subversive take on West German youth culture in the 1980s in Dies ist kein Liebeslied, and explorations of the witty echoes of fairy tales and myths in all her novels and stories. Other writers compared with Duve or discussed independently include Anne Duden, Jenny Erpenbeck, Julia Franck, Michael Fritz, Kerstin Hensel, Julia Schoch, Malin Schwerdtfeger, and Maike Wetzel. A final essay explores Berlin, as capital city and urban jungle, in recent novels by Sibylle Berg, Tanja Dückers, Alexa Hennig von Lange, Judith Hermann, Unda Hörner, Inka Parei, Kathrin Röggla, Antje Stelling, and Antje Rávic Strubel. Readers will find many cross-connections and contrasts reflecting the heterogeneous and often conflict-ridden culture in Germany today. Topics include the subversion of gender stereotypes; the merging of 'high' and 'low' culture; the invasion of cultivated spheres by 'wild' nature; post-Wende border crossings between East and West; and the highly charged relationship between lust and disgust.

Uses the problem of modernity to explore various themes in Sebald's work.

The German novelist, poet and critic W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) has in recent years attracted a phenomenal international following for his evocative prose works such as Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants), Die Ringe des Saturn (The Rings of Saturn) and Austerlitz, spellbinding elegiac narratives which, through their deliberate blurring of genre boundaries and provocative use of photography, explore questions of Heimat and exile, memory and loss, history and natural history, art and nature. Saturn's Moons: a W. G. Sebald Handbook brings together in one volume a wealth of new critical and visual material on Sebald's life and works, covering the many facets and phases of his literary and academic careers -- as teacher, as scholar and critic, as colleague and as collaborator on translation. Lavishly illustrated, the Handbook also contains a number of rediscovered short pieces by W. G. Sebald, hitherto unpublished interviews, a catalogue of his library, and selected poems and tributes, as well as extensive primary and secondary bibliographies, details of audiovisual material and interviews, and a chronology of life and works. Drawing on a range of original sources from Sebald's Nachlass - the most important part of which is now held in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach - Saturn's Moons6g will be an invaluable sourcebook for future Sebald studies in English and German alike, complementing and augmenting recent critical works on subjects such as history, memory, modernity, reader response and the visual. The contributors include Mark Anderson, Anthea Bell, Ulrich von Buelow, Jo Catling, Michael Hulse, Florian Radvan, Uwe Schuette, Clive Scott, Richard Sheppard, Gordon Turner, Stephen Watts and Luke Williams. Jo Catling teaches in the School of Literature at the University of East Anglia and Richard Hibbitt in the Department of French at the University of Leeds.