This 1977 book was the first full-length of East German fiction to appear in English. It takes as its subject the political division of Germany into two increasingly incompatible states, and it concentrates on East German fiction for the simple reason that West German writers are ignorant of one of the most significant events of modern history. After dealing with various historical, bibliographical and cultural problems, Dr Hutchinson isolates three narrative devices of particular value to East German writers: creating a discriminating East German visitor to the West who reinforces the...

There is a large pool of German novelists in whose oeuvre we may look for works of landmark signi?cance, and at certain periods of its history German ?ction is particularly rich. Yet although the novel begins to assert itself in the seventeenth century, we have to wait until the late eighteenth, and Goethe s ?rst major prose work, Werther, to see it truly rise to the level of other genres. The thirteen novels featured in this collection have all proved milestones in the development of the form, and there is heavy prominence given to works by Goethe himself and by Thomas Mann. Through...

Franz Kafka is one of the most important figures in twentieth-century culture. The fascination of his work has long since reached international proportions, and the concept 'Kafkaesque' has entered the English Language as an everyday part of speech.
This new edition of Kafka's famous story contains a critical introduction and notes which help to explain how the author achieves his particular effects. The editors are concerned less with what the story means then with how it blocks and baffles its reader, provoking them into an interpretation through its combination of clues and...