All for nothing
By: Walter Kempowski ; translated by Anthea Bell ; introduction by Jenny Erpenbeck
Contributors: Bell, Anthea, translator; Erpenbeck, Jenny, 1967- author of introduction
Series: nyrb classics; New York Review Books classics
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 343
ISBN-13: 9781681372051
Subjects: Social conditions; Families; World War, 1939-1945; Fiction
Work titles: Alles umsonst
Description: "The last novel by one of Germany's most important postwar writers, All for Nothing was published in Germany in 2006, just before Walter Kempowski's death. It describes with matter-of-fact clarity and acuity, and a roving point of view, the atmosphere in East Prussia during the winter of 1944-1945 as the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army approaches. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into a state of disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish twelve-yearold son, Peter. As the road beside the house fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof receives strange visitors--a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee--but life continues in the main as banal, wondrous, and complicit as ever for the main characters, until their caution, their hedged bets and provisions, their wondering, and their denial are answered by the wholly expected events they haven't allowed themselves to imagine"--
Notes: Translation from the German of: Alles umsonst.