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All for nothing / Walter Kempowski ; translated from the German by Anthea Bell ; introduction by Jenny Erpenbeck.
Athenaeum of Philadelphia - Fiction Kempowski All
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Kempowski, Walter, author.
- Erpenbeck, Jenny, 1967- author of introduction.
- Series:
- New York Review Books classics
- New York Review Books Classics
- Standardized Title:
- Alles umsonst. English
- Language:
- English
- German
- Subjects (All):
- Germany--Social conditions--1933-1945--Fiction.
- Germany.
- World War (1939-1945).
- World War, 1939-1945--Germany--Fiction.
- World War, 1939-1945.
- Families--Germany--Fiction.
- Families.
- German literature--Translations into English.
- German literature.
- Genre:
- War stories.
- Domestic fiction.
- Physical Description:
- xiv, 343 pages ; 21 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- New York : New York Review Books, [2018]
- Summary:
- "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 inEast 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"-- Provided by publisher.
- "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-year old 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"-- Provided by publisher.
- Notes:
- 2015 English PEN Award
- Local Notes:
- Athenaeum copy: Green fund bookplate.
- Other Format:
- Online version:
- Kempowski, Walter. All for nothing
- Online version: Kempowski, Walter author. All for nothing.
- ISBN:
- 9781681372051
- 1681372053
- OCLC:
- 987429963
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