Smalltownnovella / Ronald M. Schernikau ; translated from the German by Lucy Jones, with and afterword by Ben Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schernikau, Ronald M., 1960-1991, author.

Contributor:

Ugly Duckling Presse, publisher.

BookMobile (Firm), printer.

Jones, Lucy Renner, translator.

Miller, Ben (Historian), writer of afterword.

Series:

Lost literature series ; 36.

Lost Literature series ; 36

Standardized Title:

Kleinstadtnovelle. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

German fiction--20th century.

German fiction.

German fiction--Translations into English.

Gay men--Fiction.

Gay men.

Gay men--Germany--Fiction.

Schernikau, Ronald M., 1960-1991--Translations into English.

Schernikau, Ronald M.

Schernikau, Ronald M., 1960-1991.

Germany.

Genre:

chapbooks.

Chapbooks.

Fiction.

Translations.

Physical Description:

102 pages, 9 unnumbered pages ; 19 cm

Edition:

First edition, first printing.

Manufacture:

Minneapolis, Minnesota : BookMobile.

Place of Publication:

Brooklyn, New York : Ugly Duckling Presse, 2025.

Language Note:

In English translation from the original German .

Biography/History:

"Ronald M. Schernikau was born in 1960 in Magdeburg, East Germany and grew up in Hanover, West Germany. After completing his Abitur in 1980, he moved to West Berlin and studied German literature, philosophy, and psychology. In 1986, he started studying at the Institut f|r Literatur Johannes R. Becher (German Institute for Literature) in Leipzig, GDR. In 1989 he obtained GDR citizenship and relocated to Berlin. He worked as a dramaturge, and in radio and TV until his death in 1991. His publications include Kleinstadtnovelle (Small-Town Novella, 1980); Die Tage in L. (The Days in L., 1989); Legende (Legends, 1999); K̲nigin im Dreck (Queen in the Dirt, 2009); and Irene Binz. Die Befragung (Irene Binz. The Interview, 2010)."--Supplied by publisher.

"Lucy Jones is a British translator and writer based in Berlin. She is the translator of Brigitte Reimann's Siblings, (Penguin Modern Classics), Anke Stelling's Higher Ground (Scribe) and Annemarie Schwarzenbach's Lyric Novella (Seagull Books), among others. Her translations and book reviews have appeared in Asymptote, Words Without Borders and CulturMag. She is the runner-up for the Society of Author's Schlegel-Tieck Prize in 2023."--Supplied by publisher.

"Ben Miller is a writer & historian living in Berlin. In 2024, he completed a PhD in Global Intellectual History summa cum laude at the Freie Universit̃t. His dissertation, forthcoming as an academic monograph, is a history race and primitivism in the rise of gay liberation. With Huw Lemmey, he hosts Bad Gays, a podcast about evil and complicated queers in history, which has been downloaded nearly two million times; a book based on the show and passionately arguing for a more complex and political queer public history, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, was published by Verso in 2022. His next book, a biography of the fashion designer Rudi Gernreich that doubles as a history of how the politics of liberation traveled from the European interwar avant-garde to 1960s California, is currently under contract with W. W. Norton."--Supplied by publisher.

Summary:

"A previously-untranslated classic of the queer canon, SMALLTOWNNOVELLA follows b, a teenaged, working-class communist who falls in love with leif, a popular jock. When leif becomes fearful of the consequences of their affair, he instigates a community-wide assault. Written in a brilliant, all-lowercase, stream-of-consciousness, Schernikau's 1980 novella is a radical reimagining of the German Bildungsroman."--Supplied by publisher.

"Schernikau's literary protagonist b. is a queer teenager in high school with a crush on another boy, leif. During a class trip, leif is up for sex, but b. is looking for love. This causes leif to panic and he tells his parents that b. seduced him. What follows is a smear campaign by leif's parents in an attempt to have b. expelled. The situation escalates, and the school council convenes, ultimately deciding that b. can carry on to do his leaving exams. But b., who has his mother's unwavering support, decides he does not want to stay in a place that is supposed to educate him but only stifles passion and tolerance with its small-town mentality"--Supplied by publisher.

Notes:

Translation of Kleinstadtnovelle (Berlin : Rotbuch Verlag, 1980).

ISBN:

9781946604415

1946604410

OCLC:

1570483788

Publisher Number:

90104845045