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Selected Poems by Johannes Bobrowski and Horst Bienek. Baltimore. 1971. Penguin Books. Translated from the German by Ruth and Matthew Mead. Penguin Modern European Poets series. 128 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Both the poets included in this volume were born in East Germany and have experienced the desolation of exile. Bobrowski, whose international reputation was established by 1965 when he died, describes the essence of his homeland in language that is controlled, precise and stark. Bienek, the younger poet, is at present living in West Germany. His poetry, not previously published in England, probes the wounds inflicted by four years in a Russian prison camp.

    The Penguin Modern European Poets offer a series of collections designed to present, in verse translations, the work of significant poets of the 20th century for readers unfamiliar with the original languages. The series includes: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Rainer Maria Rilke, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jacques Prevert, Quasmodo, Greek poets -Cavafy, Elytis, Gatsos, and Seferis, Miroslav Holub, Zbigniew Herbert, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Gunter Grass, Vasko Popa, Sandor Weores, Ferenc Juhasz, Johannes Bobrowski, Horst Bienek, Eugenio Montale, Vladimir Holan, Anna Akhmatova, Gunnar Ekelof, Paul Celan, Amichai, Kovner, Sachs, Cesare Pavese, the Czech poets, Nezval, Bartusek, and Hanzlik, Ungaretti, Fernando Pessoa, and even Joseph Brodsky.

JOHANNES BOBROWSKI was born in 1917 in Tilsit, East Prussia, the son of a German railwayman. He was studying art history in Berlin when he was conscripted at the outbreak of war in 1939. He began to write poetry on the Eastern Front in 1941, and was a prisoner of war in Russia from then until 1949, when he returned to Germany. He lived in East Berlin and worked as a reader for the publishing house Union Verlag until his death in 1965. Bobrowski’s publications — several of them posthumous — include four collections of poetry and one of satirical verse, two novels and three collections of stories. His first novel, LEVIN’S MILL, and a selection of stories entitled I TASTE BITTERNESS have been published in English translation.

HORST BIENEK (May 7, 1930, Gleiwitz - December 7, 1990, Munich) was a German novelist. Born in Gleiwitz, Germany (today Gliwice, Poland), Bienek was forced to leave there in 1945, when Germans were expelled from Silesia. He resettled in the eastern part of Germany. For a time, he was a student of Bertolt Brecht. In 1951, he was arrested by NKVD and sentenced to 25 years of labour in Vorkuta, a gulag. When he was released as the result of an amnesty in 1955, he settled in West Germany. Bienek was the winner of numerous prizes, including the Nelly Sachs Prize in 1981. His best known work is the four-volume series of novels dealing with the prelude to World War II and the war itself, Gleiwitz, Eine oberschlesische Chronik in vier Romanen.

RUTH AND MATTHEW MEAD have translated the work of several German poets including Horst Bienek — who shared a Penguin Modern European Poets selection with Bobrowski in 1971 — and Heinz Winfried Sabais (THE PEOPLE AND THE STONES, Anvil, 1983.) Matthew Mead’s collections of poetry are IDENTITIES (1967), THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS (1970) and THE MIDDAY MUSE (1979), the last two also published by Anvil.

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Johannes Bobrowski

Horst Bienek

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Darkness and a Little Light by Johannes Bobrowski. New York. 1994. New Directions. Translated From The German by Leila Vennewitz. 111 pages. Jacket watercolor, Owl in Flight Before a Full Moon, by Caspar David Friedrich; design by Semadar Megged. 0811212599. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - DARKNESS AND A LITTLE LIGHT presents a dozen gorgeous stories by the great Johannes Bobrowski, widely regarded as 'the most distinctive poet to have emerged from East Germany' A P. O. W. in Russia after WWII, Bobrowski returned to his forever-changed native province, former East Prussia, in 1949. His lost homeland--which he called by the region's ancient name of Sarmartia--haunts all his work. Full of longing and an astonishing poetic beauty, his stories are visionary elegies to vanished ways of life. Some of the stories, set in the nineteenth century or in the darkness of WWII, are directly elegiac. But tales relating the dreary, oversynthesized reality of East German life in the '50s and '60s are also shot through with piercing traces of an older, more richly atmospheric world of nature and memory. Complex, melancholic, and dreamlike, the stories of DARKNESS AND A LITTLE LIGHT have never before been available in English. In the hands of distinguished translator Leila Vennewitz they attain their full measure' of beauty and mystery. 'I admire these brief stories or prose poems of Bobrowski very much. They stay marvelously in the world of the senses and yet the other world, the world of `darkness and little light' is always near. In their forgiveness of life, they have the gentleness of Tomas Transtromer, and in their clarity, some of the harshness of Brecht. What a pleasure to welcome Johannes Bobrowski to American readers.' - Robert Bly.

JOHANNES BOBROWSKI was born in 1917 in Tilsit, East Prussia, the son of a German railwayman. He was studying art history in Berlin when he was conscripted at the outbreak of war in 1939. He began to write poetry on the Eastern Front in 1941, and was a prisoner of war in Russia from then until 1949, when he returned to Germany. He lived in East Berlin and worked as a reader for the publishing house Union Verlag until his death in 1965. Bobrowski’s publications — several of them posthumous — include four collections of poetry and one of satirical verse, two novels and three collections of stories. His first novel, LEVIN’S MILL, and a selection of stories entitled I TASTE BITTERNESS have been published in English translation.

Probably most famous for her translations of the works of Heinrich Boll, Leila Vennewitz has won several prestigious awards for her work, including the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, the Goethe House-P. E. N. Prize, and the German Literary Prize from the American Translators Association. She has recently translated novels by Alfred Andersch and Uwe Timm for New Directions.

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Shadow Lands: Selected Poems by Johannes Bobrowski. London. 1984. Anvil Press Poetry. Translated from the German by Ruth & Matthew Mead. Introduction by Michael Hamburger. 206 pages. Cover photograph by David Taylor. 0856461172. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - In the four years between the appearance of his first collection of poems in 1961 and his death at the age of forty-eight, Johannes Bobrowski gained lasting international recognition as the outstanding East German poet of his time. He received major literary awards for his poetry and fiction in Austria, Switzerland, East and West Germany. The first selection of his poems in English translation — SHADOW LAND, 1966 — was greeted with enthusiasm by critics and readers alike, and was rapidly reprinted. A second selection, FROM THE RIVERS, appeared in 1975. SHADOW LANDS demonstrates the range of Bobrowski’s poetic achievement by bringing together all the poems which Ruth and Matthew Mead have been able to translate. It revises and consolidates their earlier selections, adding some fifty new poems. Michael Hamburger discusses the background and special qualities of Bobrowski’s work in his introductory essay. ‘It is the beautiful poems of Bobrowski which establish the Meads as outstanding translators. Without ever straining for effect, he fills his landscape with pointers to its history — the rivers, the hawks, the sky itself hang in his words with exquisite tension. Bobrowski is unlike anyone’s idea of a German poet and the Meads’ translations are wonderfully sympathetic.’ (Peter Porter in The Guardian, reviewing the Penguin Selected Poems, 1971).

JOHANNES BOBROWSKI was born in 1917 in Tilsit, East Prussia, the son of a German railwayman. He was studying art history in Berlin when he was conscripted at the outbreak of war in 1939. He began to write poetry on the Eastern Front in 1941, and was a prisoner of war in Russia from then until 1949, when he returned to Germany. He lived in East Berlin and worked as a reader for the publishing house Union Verlag until his death in 1965. Bobrowski’s publications — several of them posthumous — include four collections of poetry and one of satirical verse, two novels and three collections of stories. His first novel, LEVIN’S MILL, and a selection of stories entitled I TASTE BITTERNESS have been published in English translation.

RUTH AND MATTHEW MEAD have translated the work of several German poets including Horst Bienek — who shared a Penguin Modern European Poets selection with Bobrowski in 1971 — and Heinz Winfried Sabais (THE PEOPLE AND THE STONES, Anvil, 1983.) Matthew Mead’s collections of poetry are IDENTITIES (1967), THE ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS (1970) and THE MIDDAY MUSE (1979), the last two also published by Anvil.

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The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn: A Lakota History by Joseph M. Marshall III. New York. 2007. Viking Press. 262 pages. 9780670038534. May 2007. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The 1876 battle of the Little Bighorn, or 'Custer's Last Stand,' as it is also known, captured the American imagination. In the press coverage of the time and even in today's history books, the telling and retelling have emphasized that Custer and his gallant troop of soldiers went down valiantly in a final blaze of glory when they battled Lakota fighters. News of Custer's defeat came just as the United States was celebrating its centennial. 'MASSACRE!' screamed the headlines of newspapers around the country. And with that, history has remembered Native American fighters in this battle as heartless savages impeding the progress of white soldiers who simply wanted to settle uncharted territory. Only now is this story being rewritten. In THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED AT LITTLE BIGHORN, award-winning Lakota historian Joseph M. Marshall III reveals a view of the battle that has been available only in the Lakota oral tradition. Marshall explores the nuances and complexities that led up to and followed the battle. He examines the customs and community of the Lakota and the importance of honor and bravery in the culture. He explores the significance of the battle, illuminating why and how the Lakota fought so fiercely, even as they acknowledged the inevitability of change. And finally he considers the consequences of the battle as part of a tragic fight that changed the scope of both America and the American landscape.

 Joseph M. Marshall III is a historian, writer, teacher, craftsman, administrator, actor, and public speaker. He was a founding board member in 1971 of Sinte Gleska University, the tribal college at the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

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Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg. New York. 1993. Farrar Straus Giroux. Translated From The Danish By Tiina Nunnally. 453 pages. Jacket design by Honi Werner. 0374266441.

An inventive thriller with an unlikely but refreshingly believable heroine.

DESCRIPTION - SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW presents one of the toughest heroines in modern fiction. Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen is part Inuit, but she lives in Copenhagen. She is thirty-seven, single, childless, moody, and she refuses to fit in. Smilla's six-year-old Inuit neighbor, Isaiah, manages only with a stubbornness that matches her own to befriend her. When Isaiah falls off a roof and is killed, Smilla doesn't believe it's an accident. She has seen his tracks in the snow, and she knows about snow. She decides to investigate and discovers that even the police don't want her to get involved. But opposition appeals to Smilla. As all of Copenhagen settles down for a quiet Christmas, Smilla's investigation takes her from a fervently religious accountant to a tough-talking pathologist and an alcoholic shipping magnate and into the secret files of the Danish company responsible for extracting most of Greenland's mineral wealth - and finally onto a ship with an international cast of villains bound for a mysterious mission on an uninhabitable island off Greenland. To read SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is to be taken on a magical, nerve-shattering journey - from the snow-covered streets of Copenhagen to the awesome beauty of the Arctic ice caps. A mystery, a love story, and an elegy for a vanishing way of life, SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is a breathtaking achievement, an exceptional feat of storytelling.

 Peter Høeg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Before becoming a writer, he worked variously as a sailor, ballet dancer, and actor. He published his first novel, A HISTORY OF DANISH DREAMS (1988), to positive reviews. However, it was SMILLA’S SENSE OF SNOW (1992), a million-copy bestseller, that earned Høeg immediate and international literary celebrity. His books have been published in more than thirty countries.

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The Quiet Girl by Peter Høeg. New York. 2007. Farrar Straus Giroux. Translated From The Danish By Nadia Christensen. 408 pages. Jacket design & photograph by Kwasi Osei. 0374263698. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Set in Denmark in the here and now, THE QUIET GIRL centers around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities in return for his help safeguarding a group of children with mystical abilities-abilities that Krone also shares. When one of the children goes missing, Krone sets off to find the young girl and bring her back, making a shocking series of discoveries along the way about her identity and the true intentions of his young wards. The result is a fast-paced, philosophical thriller blending social realism with the literary fantastic and pitting art and spirituality against corporate interests and nothing less than the will to war by the industrialized world. THE QUIET GIRL is a masterful, inventive novel that marks the triumphal return of one of the great writers of the international literary world.

Peter Høeg, born in 1957 in Denmark, followed various callings-dancer, actor, sailor, fencer, and mountaineer-before turning seriously to writing. His work has been published in thirty-three countries. THE QUIET GIRL is his fifth novel.

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The History of Danish Dreams by Peter Høeg. New York. 1995. Farrar Straus Giroux. Translated From The Danish By Barbara Haveland. 356 pages. Jacket art 'One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle', by Christen Kobke. 0374171386.

DESCRIPTION - In a Danish feudal castle, 1520, a count believes he has pinpointed the center of the universe--a patch of land on his estate. But when his discovery is met with disbelief, he walls off his mansion and has all of the clocks stopped. Four centuries pass instantaneously, and the count's young secretary, Carl, emerges from isolation to find a world bursting with war, innovation, love, sexuality, danger, and all the values of the sixteenth century turned upside down as though by supernatural forces--namely, the force of history. From one of our most gifted international writers comes a dazzling epic fairy tale, a tough fable about the gifts and iniquities of progress.

Peter Høeg, born in 1957 in Denmark, followed various callings-dancer, actor, sailor, fencer, and mountaineer-before turning seriously to writing. His work has been published in thirty-three countries. THE QUIET GIRL is his fifth novel.

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Tales of the Night by Peter Høeg. New York. 1998. Farrar Straus Giroux. 278 pages. hardcover. 0374272549. Translated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland. 

DESCRIPTION - In his second book and only collection of stories, the author of 'Smilla's Sense of Snow' proves himself to be a storyteller in the tradition of Karen Blixen and Joseph Conrad. Moving from a railroad car in the Congo to a sailboat in Lisbon's harbor, these eight classic tales deal with love, the classic arts and sciences, and the confrontation of Western and non-Western cultures. 

Peter Høeg, born in 1957 in Denmark, followed various callings-dancer, actor, sailor, fencer, and mountaineer-before turning seriously to writing. His work has been published in thirty-three countries. 

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The Woman and the Ape by Peter Høeg. New York. 1996. Farrar Straus Giroux. 261 pages. hardcover. 0374292035. Translated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The Woman and the Ape is the story of a unique and unforgettable couple--Madelene and Erasmus. Madelene is the wife of Adam Burden, a distinguished behavioral scientist. Erasmus--the unlikely prince--is a 300-pound ape. Brought to the Burdens' London home after escaping from animal smugglers, Erasmus is discovered to be a highly intelligent anthropoid ape, the closest thing yet to a human being. Madelene decides to save Erasmus, and between them blossoms a profound affection as deep as any human relationship. A fable for our time, The Woman and the Ape poses searching questions about the nature of love, freedom, and humanity.

Peter Høeg, born in 1957 in Denmark, followed various callings-dancer, actor, sailor, fencer, and mountaineer-before turning seriously to writing. His work has been published in thirty-three countries. 

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Nietzsche's Political Skepticism by Tamsin Shaw. Princeton. 2007. Princeton University Press. 9780691133225. 192 pages. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION - Political theorists have long been frustrated by Nietzsche's work. Although he develops profound critiques of morality, culture, and religion, it is very difficult to spell out the precise political implications of his insights. He himself never did so in any systematic way. In this book, Tamsin Shaw claims that there is a reason for this: Nietzsche's insights entail a distinctive form of political skepticism. Shaw argues that the modern political predicament, for Nietzsche, is shaped by two important historical phenomena. The first is secularization, or the erosion of religious belief, and the fragmentation of moral life that it entails. The second is the unparalleled ideological power of the modern state. The promotion of Nietzsche's own values, Shaw insists, requires resistance to state ideology. But Nietzsche cannot envisage how these values might themselves provide a stable basis for political authority; this is because secular societies, lacking recognized normative expertise, also lack a reliable mechanism for making moral insight politically effective. In grappling with this predicament, Shaw claims, Nietzsche raises profound questions about political legitimacy and political authority in the modern world. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Tamsin Shaw is assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.

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