A study of the "patchwork imaginary" that is postwall Berlin
fiction and its significance for the new Germany. The 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 Duckers and Ingo Schramm, German-Turkish authors
Zafer Senocak and Yade Kara, and the Austrians Kathrin Roeggla 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. Katharina Gerstenberger is
Professor of German at the University of Cincinnati.
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