{"product_id":"writing-the-new-berlin-9781571135131","title":"Writing the New Berlin","description":"\u003cb\u003eA study of the \"patchwork imaginary\" that is postwall Berlin fiction and its significance for the new Germany.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe wall was still coming down when critics began to call for the great Berlin novel that could explain what was happening to Germany and the Germans. Such a novel never appeared. Instead, writers have created a patchwork imaginary -- in the form of about 300 works of fiction set in Berlin -- of a city and a nation whose identity collapsed virtually overnight. Contributors to this literary collage include established writers like Peter Schneider and Christa Wolf, young authors like Tanja Dückers and Ingo Schramm, German-Turkish authors Zafer Senocak and Yadé Kara, and the Austrians Kathrin Röggla and Marlene Streeruwitz. The non-arrival of the great Berlin novel marks the reorientation in German culture and literature that is the focus of this study: the experience of unification was too diverse, too postmodern, too influenced by global developments to be captured by one novel. Berlin literature of the postunification decade is marked by ambiguity: change is linked to questions of historical continuity; postmodern simulation finds its counterpart in a quest for authenticity; and the assimilation of Germanness into European and global contexts is both liberation and loss. This book pursues a nuanced understanding of the search for new ways to tell the story of Germany's past and of its importance for the formation of a new German identity. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  Katharina Gerstenberger is Professor of German at the University of Cincinnati.","brand":"Katharina Gerstenberger","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48280374739195,"sku":"9781571135131","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/3917\/9771\/files\/9781571135131_6ed18d64-593f-4a96-b2e3-bf0daea0e2c2.jpg?v=1772484900","url":"https:\/\/indiepubs.com\/products\/writing-the-new-berlin-9781571135131","provider":"IndiePubs","version":"1.0","type":"link"}