“So war es ein Versehen. Küsse, Bisse,Das reimt sich, und wer recht von Herzen liebt,Kann schon das eine für das andre greifen.”— Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea Penthesilea by […]
German literature
The Marquise of O
“She was a good woman, and she had a good heart.” Chapter 1 The Marquise of O—, a virtuous widow, finds herself inexplicably pregnant despite having no memory […]
German literature
Michael Kohlhaas
“The Kohlhaas affair is one of the strangest in the annals of law.” Part One: The Injustice Michael Kohlhaas, a respected horse trader in 16th-century Brandenburg, is wronged […]
German literature
Before the Storm
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — Theodor Fontane Chapter 1: The Setting The novel opens in the winter of 1812-1813 in rural Brandenburg, Prussia. […]
German literature
Irrungen, Wirrungen
“Man muß nehmen, wie’s kommt, und wenn’s nicht kommt, muß man’s gehen lassen.”— Theodor Fontane, Irrungen, Wirrungen Chapter 1: A Summer Afternoon in Berlin The novel opens in […]
German literature
Effi Briest
“A great, wide field, silent and deserted; where is the man who could walk here without feeling that he is alone with his God?” Chapters 1–10: Marriage and […]
German literature
Vertigo
“Memory, the insidious gnawing of memory, which so often seems to destroy what it seeks to preserve.” Beyle, or Love is a Madness The book opens with an […]
German literature
The Emigrants
“Memory, the insistent revenant, like the dog that always finds its way back to its vomit.” — W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants Dr. Henry Selwyn The first section […]
German literature
The Rings of Saturn
“And since the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man is to tell him he is at the end of his nature, Browne scrutinizes that which […]
German literature
Austerlitz
“And so they are ever returning to us, the dead.” Part One The narrator recounts his encounters with Jacques Austerlitz, a man he first meets in the 1960s […]