Carole Angier
Post-Wall Angst
From Germany to Germany: Journal of the Year 1990
By Günter Grass (Translated by Krishna Winston)
Harvill Secker 288pp £15.99)
Roads to Berlin: Detours and Riddles in the Lands and History of Germany
By Cees Nooteboom (Translated by Laura Watkinson)
MacLehose Press 400pp £20
Günter Grass and Cees Nooteboom are grand old men of European literature, and we should be grateful to Harvill Secker and MacLehose Press for bringing us their responses to a key event in European history: the reunification of Germany. However, I warn you that I crawled out of Roads to Berlin, in particular, exhausted and only occasionally enlightened.
Grass is more engaging, because he is more engaged. This is not just because he is German, whereas Nooteboom is a Dutch observer passing through; it is to do with their natures as writers. Nooteboom dismisses his own early novels as escapism, implying that he has changed. He has, but
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk