Gert Hofmann Books

The narrator and his wife, whose marriage is shaky, are stranded in a desolate Sicilian village and are taken, by a menacing guide, on a tour of poverty, misery, grotesquery, and morbidity.

A collection of short stories. The cast of characters include Balzac, Casanova and Tolstoy.

A child's-eye view of a family in decline, Gert Hofmann's Luck mixes humour and suspense with a heartbreaking pathos. This is the story of a nuclear family: father, mother, daughter and son. But all is not as it seems, for the mother is in love with Herr Herkenrath, and now father and son will have to leave home. schovat popis

Set in late 1930s Germany, the narrative follows the elderly professor Herr Veilchenfeld, who faces humiliation and violence from a group of drunks, with police indifference marking the event as trivial. The story is narrated through the innocent perspective of a young boy, son of the attending doctor, who is unaware of the deeper implications of the events unfolding around him. This poignant tale explores the far-reaching consequences of persecution, affecting both individuals and their communities, and is a significant work newly translated into English.

Inspired by Parabel der Blinden (1568), a painting by Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel, the novel tells the story of the work's creation from the point of view of the six blind men depicted in the painting. The story is recounted in the present tense, first person plural. The "we" that comprises the six blind men often seems to consist of one entity; however, most of the men have separate names and identities and will sometimes say or do things that distinguish them from the group.

The essays in this volume discuss postwar poetics in terms of new poetological directions and territory rather than merely destruction of traditions. Embedded in the discourse triggered by Adorno, the volume's foci include the work of Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn, and Ingeborg Bachmann. Other German writers discussed are Ilse Aichinger, Rose Ausländer, Charlotte Beradt, Thomas Kling, Heiner Müller, and Nelly Sachs; concrete poetry is also treated. The final section offers comparative views of the poetics of European literary figures such as Jean Paul Sartre, André Malraux, and Danilo Kis and a consideration of the aesthetics of Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah. Contributors: Chris Bezzel, Manuel Bragança, Gisela Dischner, Rüdiger Görner, Stefan Hajduk, Gert Hofmann, Aniela Knoblich, Rachel MagShamhráin, Marton Marko, Elaine Martin, Barry Murnane, Marko Pajevic, Tatjana Petzer, Renata Plaice, Annette Runte, Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, Michael Shields, Peter Tame. Gert Hofmann is a Lecturer in German, Comparative Literature, Drama, and Film and Rachel MagShamhráin is a Lecturer in German, Film, and Comparative Literature, both at University College Cork; Marko Pajevic is a Lecturer in German at Queen's University Belfast; Michael Shields is a Lecturer in German at the National University of Ireland, Galway

The main objective of this book is to search for such figures of law in literature and media representation, which represent human weakness and futility on one hand, but mirror on the other hand certain aesthetic and rhetoric qualities of the law phenomenon; these figures of law often appear to have fallen outside the Law’s conventional reach, while at the same time in a defiant way appealing to it. Privileged by their de-centred perspective they manifest and Measure the complexities, capacities and limitations of the human case of law. The 'law of the Law” (Derrida), it seems, has an essentially poetic quality. Figures of Law seeks to open the literary discourse on the human condition of law. It investigates literary ways to mirror and articulate the question of law split between sovereign power and human futility, between violence, force, and trauma.