The two stories contained in this edition - "Love at First Sight: A Recollection" and "History of a Promise" - reveal Erich Hackl's unique and luminous perspective on the relationship between historical reality and literary representation. Drawing on historical documents and authentic individuals, Hackl portrays the inspiring lives of those who have suffered the terror and injustice of twentieth-century fascism. Recovering from a wound sustained as a result of his involvement with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, the Austrian Karl Sequens falls in love with Herminia Roudiere Perpina, a strong and scrupulous Spanish woman who cared for him in the hospital. The story of their brief but enduring love both for each other and for social justice is narrated through the memory of their daughter Rosa Maria in "Love at First Sight: A Recollection". In his touching portrait of the fate of these non-fictional individuals, Erich Hackl illuminates an alternate perspective on Austria's position in the frenzied social and political configurations that mark Europe from the 1920s to the 1990s.;In "History of a Promise," the mind of the septuagenarian protagonist Willi retraces a path from his poverty in the Vienna of the First Republic through his internment in the concentration camps to his entrepreneurial success in his chosen South American exile as he reveals for the first time a promise that he had made.

New translations of Schiller's literary prose works, accompanied by fresh critical essays. Friedrich Schiller was a dramatist and poet for the ages, an important aesthetic theorist, and among Germany's first historians. But he left few works of literary prose behind -- seven short tales and fragments, almost all from early in his career -- and although they include some of his most resonant in his own time, they are largely overlooked today. Several of the pieces -- which include The Ghost-Seer, A Magnanimous Act from Most Recent History, TheCriminal of Lost Honor: A True Story, A Curious Example of Female Vengeance, Duke Alba at Breakfast at Castle Rudolstadt, Play of Fate: A Fragment of a True Story, and Haoh-Kioeh-Tschuen -- have never before appeared inEnglish translation. But they are a seminal link in the evolution of the then-nascent German novella. They exhibit the anthropological curiosity and moral confusion that made Schiller's first drama, The Robbers, a sensation, demonstrating an original artistry that justifies consideration of scholars and students today, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of his birth. New translations of the seven works appear here together with introductory critical essays. Contributors: Jeffrey L. High, Nicholas Martin, Otto W. Johnston, Gail K. Hart, Dennis F. Mahoney; Translators: Francis Lamport, Ian Codding, Jeffrey L. High, Ellis Dye, Edward T. Larkin, Carrie Ann Collenberg Jeffrey L. High is Associate Professor at California State University Long Beach.