Two new books on contemporary German novels, co-edited by Professor Stuart Taberner, just released

The two companion volumes feature articles by Leeds Germanists Professor Frank Finlay, Professor Stuart Taberner, Helen Finch and Karina Berger

The Novel in German since 1990 , edited by Stuart Taberner, and Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century , edited by Lyn Marven and Stuart Taberner, are now available from Cambridge University Press and Camden House.

The Novel in German since 1990 presents the novel in German since 1990 through a set of close readings both of international bestsellers (including Daniel Kehlmann's Measuring the World and W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz) and of less familiar, but important texts (such as Yadé Kara's Selam Berlin). Each novel discussed in the volume has been chosen on account of its aesthetic quality, its impact and its representativeness; the authors featured, among them Nobel Prize winners Günter Grass, Elfriede Jelinek and Herta Müller demonstrate the energy and quality of contemporary writing in German.

Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century surveys fifteen new German-language novelists. Some, like Karen Duve, Daniel Kehlmann, and Sasa Stanisic, have achieved international recognition; some, like Julia Franck, have won major prizes; others, like Clemens Meyer, Alina Bronsky, and Ilja Trojanow, are truly "emerging authors" who have begun to attract attention. Between them they represent a range of literatures in German, from women's writing to minority writing (from Turkish immigrants and Eastern Europe), to "pop literature" and perspectives on the former GDR and on Germany's Nazi past. Translated excerpts from works by Vladimir Vertlib and Clemens Meyer round out the book.

Together, the two volumes provide a comprehensive overview of the vitality and importance of the novels published in German since re-unification, and should be of interest not only to academics and students of English and Comparative Literature in the UK, the US, and beyond, but also to the general reader, for whom titles of texts and quotations are translated.