guest-edited by
Andrew Duncan, Tony Frazer, Anna Gisbertz, and W. Martin

The recent "boom" in German-language literature that began in the 1990s has been marked by the resurgence of compelling narratives and well-told tales, the resuscitation of an experimental spirit in lyric poetry, and a widespread and profound engagement not only with the realities of contemporary life in the new Europe, but also with the variety of histories in which that contemporary life is grounded. With over fifty writers included particularly younger writers who have emerged since 1989 and older writers not well-represented in English translationthis 360-page anthology-issue of Chicago Review is the first attempt to make this extraordinary abundance of new writing available to English-language readers.

This issue is in very short supply, and costs $40. Please inquire to purchase this item.

From the introduction:

"Our points of departure were quite simple. We wanted to include as many interesting poets as we could find from the last fifteen years or so, along with several older, significant, and underrecognized 'big guns.' For prose fiction, a considerably broader and denser field, our approach has been diagnostic and investigative: to see who right now and in the past decade may be considered heirs of the 'grand signeurs' of postwar German literature."

Press responses:

Across the Pond An American Anthology of Contemporary German Literature
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6.25.2002

How do you translate "Schlappschwanzliteratur"the phrase Maxim Biller concocted to annoy his fellow writersinto English? Chicago Review's quite plausible suggestion is "wanker literature." The journal has just put out a double issue devoted to (mostly recent) contemporary German-language writing, titled "New Writing in German" (Chicago Review 48:2/3, Summer 2002). In their introduction, the publishers of this intelligently composed anthology take stock of concepts provided by recent German criticism ("Pop literature," "the new narrativity," "Das Fräuleinwunder," and "multicultural literature"), but fortunately they give preference to a laconically alphabetical ordering of the volume's contents, which, we were glad to see, are divided equally between the rubrics of poetry (from Jürgen Becker to Thomas Kling and Peter Waterhouse) and fiction (from Marcel Beyer to Ingo Schulze and Feridun Zaimoglu). Well-known translators, including Christopher Middleton and Rosmarie Waldrop, have made sure that many of the texts find a second home in America. The anthology—which leaves out Enzensberger and Grass, but for that includes Mayröcker and Pastior—is available in this country as well, at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Am Sandwerder 5, 14109 Berlin (www.lcb.de), for a paltry 15 Euro.

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New Writing: From German in English
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7.8.02

The literary journal Chicago Review has now brought out a volume titled "New Writing in German" representing poetry and prose by younger (as well as older) German authors in English translation. Now for the first time, interested readers have the opportunity to get to know the diversity of contemporary German literature, and not just more of the same.