This book examines the relationship between representations of the body and narrative strategies in the work of three contemporary women writers from the former Eastern Bloc countries: Herta Muller, an ethnic German from Romania; Libu%se Monikova, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to West Germany and chose to write in German; and Kerstin Hensel, from the GDR.
Marven shows how the content and form of their works are interlinked, and how these challenge the hegemonic discourses within repressive socialist regimes. The introduction contextualizes the writers' socially, culturally, and...

How to gauge the impact of cultural products is an old question, but bureaucratic agendas such as the one recently implemented in the UK to measure the impact of university research (including in German Studies) are new. Impact is seen as confirming a cultural product's value for society -- not least in the eyes of cultural funders. Yet its use as an evaluative category has been widely criticized by academics. Rather than rejecting the concept of impact, however, this volume employs it as a metaphor to reflect on issues of transmission, reception, and influence that have always underlain...

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 to attract attention. Between them they represent a range of literatures in German, from women's writing to minority writing (from Turkish...

Ulrike Draesner is a prize-winning writer of novels, short stories, critical essays and poetry, and one of the foremost authors in Germany today. While a number of volumes have been published in German on her work, the current Companion offers the first volume on Draesner in English, capitalising on the interest in her work in Germany and further afield.

Introducing Draesner's major novels and short stories, poetry collections and essays, as well as giving an overview of existing research focusing on migration, memory, science, gender and bodily experience, chapters by...