Martin Mosebach s novelWhat Was Beforeopens with a young couple enjoying a moment of carefree intimacy. Then the young woman, turning slightly more serious, asks her lover that fateful question, one that sounds so innocent but carries toxic seeds of jealousy: What was your life like before you met me? The answer grows into an entire book, an elaborate house of cards, filled with intrigue, sex, betrayal, exotic birds, and far-flung locations.
Set against the backdrop of Frankfurt s affluent suburbs, this elliptical tale of coincidence and necessity unfolds through a series of...

The work of poet Georg Trakl, a leading Austrian-German expressionist, has been praised by many, including his contemporaries Rainer Maria Rilke and Else Lasker-Schuler, as well as his patron Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein famously wrote that while he did not truly "understand" Trakl s poems, they had the tone of a truly ingenious person, which pleased him. This difficulty in understanding Trakl s poems is not unique. Since the first publication of his work in 1913, there has been endless discussion about how the verses should be understood, leading to controversies over the most accurate...

Werner Braunig was once regarded as the great hope of East German literature until an extract from "Rummelplatz" was read before the East German censorship authorities in 1965, and fierce opposition summarily sealed its fate. The novel s sin? It painted an all too accurate picture of East German society.
"Rummelplatz," translated here by Samuel P. Willcocks, focuses on a notorious East German uranium mine, run by the Soviets and supplying the brotherland s nuclear program. Veterans, fortune seekers, and outsiders with tenuous family ties like narrator Peter Loose flock to the well-paying...