Max Weber famously described politics as "a strong, slow drilling through hard boards with both passion and judgment". Taking this as his inspiration, Alexander Kluge brings readers yet another literary masterpiece. "Drilling through Hard Boards" is...

Almost twenty years after the fall of the wall, the Kreuzberg district of Berlin has become unbearably trendy and deeply unappealing to Alina and Wolf. They move to Muggelsee, at the city's bucolic border, where the differences between East and West...

In a publishing world that is all too full of realist novels written in undistinguished prose, discernible only by their covers, "The Flying Mountain" stands out – if for no other reason than that it consists entirely of blank verse. And that form is...

This collection of four stories by the writer George Steiner called "one of the masters of European fiction" is, as longtime fans of Thomas Bernhard would expect, bleakly comic and inspiringly rancorous. The subject of his stories vary: in one, Goeth...

Originally published in 1962, Franz Fuhmann's autobiographical story cycle "The Jew Car" is a classic of German short fiction and an unparalleled examination of the psychology of National Socialism. Each story presents a snapshot of a personal and hi...

When Keith Stapperpfennig and his family give their grandfather the trip of a lifetime – an all expenses paid holiday to any destination in the world – the eccentric old man arbitrarily chooses China, and he asks Keith to accompany him. But when Keit...

The day is Friday, May 22, 2032. On this day, the day after his ninety-fourth birthday, a man is sitting in a beautiful garden. It is a paradise where he often played during his childhood, and it is here that he is recording the story of his adventur...

Western culture has been marked by deep divisions between action and contemplation, intervention and passivity, and decisiveness and withdrawal. Conceived as radical opposites, these terms structure the history of religion, philosophy, and political...

"Rubble Flora" is a selection of poems from the distinguished, half-century-long career of German poet Volker Braun. Born in the former East Germany, Braun is a humane, witty, brave, and disappointed poet. In the East, his poetry upheld the voice of...

Friedrich Durrenmatt was one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century, a talent on par with Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Bertolt Brecht. A prolific writer of letters, poems, novels, and shorter fictions,...