Family Secrets and the Contemporary German Novel
Subtitle: Literary Explorations in the Aftermath of the Third Reich (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)
Publisher: Camden House
Published: August 15, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 187
ISBN-13: 9781571131850
Subjects: European history: postwar, from c 1945 -; Novels, other prose & writers: from c 1900 -; Postwar period, 1945 to c 2000; 20th Century Literature - History And Criticism; German Literature; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; German; Austria; Germany; European - German; Literary Criticism & Collections / German; Literature: History & Criticism; 20th century; Austrian fiction; Family in literature; German fiction; History and criticism
Description: "This book focuses on representations of familial conflict in German and Austrian prose of the last twenty-five years. Some of the most prominent German and Austrian writers examine the theme of familial conflict that cannot be explained by traditional explanations: psychic hostilities, economic deprivation, or repressed experience.

At the heart of these novels is the collision between the bonds of family and the events that form the decisive turning points of our age: National Socialism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. Elizabeth Snyder Hook examines five novels in detail; Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster, Thomas Bernhard's Ausloschung, Peter Schneider's Vati, Elfriede Jelinek's Die Ausgesperrten, and Elisabeth Reichart's Februarschatten.

Central to the discussions of each novel are questions of guilt, cultural identity, and atonement, and of the relocation of these ultimately unresolvable issues from the larger national and political arena to the realm of intimate relationships between parents and children."--BOOK JACKET.