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How German Is It
''How German Is It (Wie Deutsch ist es)'' is a novel by Walter Abish, published in 1980. It received PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981. It is most often classified as a postmodern work of fiction. The novel revolves around the Hargenau brothers, Ulrich and Helmut, and their lives in and around the fictional German town of Wurtenburg. Plot The Hargenaus were once a noble and revered family. Now the two remaining brothers, the writer Ulrich and the architect Helmut (in suhrkamp 1986: Helmuth), must reconcile their private pasts with that of their history as a whole. They are getting spied upon, bombs go off in buildings designed by Helmut, and through all this, the reality of what really went on during World War II is slowly uncovered. Narrative structure The book's narrative structure features internal monologues and different authorial viewpoints by many of the characters. Thus, different issues are addressed from different perspectives. The main protagonist is Ulrich, who is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Abish
Walter Abish (December 24, 1931 – May 28, 2022) was an Austrian-born American author of experimental novels and short stories. He was conferred the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981 and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship six years later. Early life Abish was born in Vienna on December 24, 1931. His family was Jewish. His father, Adolph, worked as a perfumer; his mother was Friedl (Rubin). At a young age, he fled with his family from the Nazis, traveling first to Italy and Nice before living in Shanghai from 1940 to 1949. In 1949, they relocated to Israel, where Abish served in the army and developed an interest in writing. He settled in the United States in 1957 and became an American citizen three years later. Career Abish published his first novel, ''Alphabetical Africa'', in 1974. The book, whose first and last chapters employ only words starting with the letter "A", was characterized by Richard Howard in ''The New York Times Book Review'' as "something more than a st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postmodern Literature
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narrator, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge Authority, authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s.Linda Hutcheon (1988) ''A Poetics of Postmodernism.'' London: Routledge, pp. 202-203. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to. Precursors to postmodern literature include Miguel de Cervantes’ ''Don Quixote'' (1605–1615), Laurence S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Finalists read from their works at the presentation ceremony in the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The organization claims it to be "the largest peer-juried award in the country." The award was first given in 1981. The PEN/Faulkner Foundation is an outgrowth of William Faulkner's use of his 1949 Nobel Prize winnings to create the William Faulkner Foundation; among the charitable goals of the foundation was "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers." The foundation's first award for a "notable first novel," called the William Faulkner Foundation Award, was granted to John Knowles's '' A Separate Peace'' in 1961. The foundation was dissolved after 1970. Mary Lee Settle was one of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1980 American Novels
__NOTOC__ Year 198 (CXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Gallus (or, less frequently, year 951 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 198 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire *January 28 **Publius Septimius Geta, son of Septimius Severus, receives the title of Caesar. **Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, is given the title of Augustus. China *Winter – Battle of Xiapi: The allied armies led by Cao Cao and Liu Bei defeat Lü Bu; afterward Cao Cao has him executed. By topic Religion * Marcus I succeeds Olympianus as Patriarch of Constantinople (until 211). Births * Lu Kai (or Jingfeng), Chinese official and general (d. 269) * Quan Cong, Chinese general and advisor (d. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postmodern Novels
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modernism, opposition to epistemic certainty or stability of meaning, and emphasis on ideology as a means of maintaining political power. Claims to objective fact are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization. Initially emerging from a mode of literary criticism, postmodernism developed in the mid-twentieth century as a rejection of modernism and has been observed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
