Martin Walser Books

"Appearing for the first time in English, this masterful novel by one of the foremost figures of postwar German literature is an indelible portrait of Nazism slowly overtaking and poisoning a small town. Semi-autobiographical, it is also a remarkably vivid account of a childhood fraught with troubles, yet full of remembered love and touched by miracle. In a provincial town on Lake Constance, Johann basks in the affection of the colorful staff and regulars at the Station Restaurant. Though his parents struggle to make ends meet, around him the world is rich in mystery: the attraction of girls; the power of words and his gift for music; his rivalry with his best friend, Adolf, son of the local Brownshirt leader; a circus that comes to town bringing Anita, whose love he and Adolf compete to win. But in these hard times, with businesses failing all around them and life savings gone in an instant, people whisper that only Hitler can save them. As the Nazis gradually infiltrate the churches, the school, the youth organizations-even the restaurant-and come to power, we see through Johann's eyes how the voices of dissent are silenced one by one, until war begins the body count that will include his beloved older brother"--

English and European novels set in American university communities have become something of a tradition in recent decades as itinerant novelists sojourn here as visiting professors and later go home to tell all. Notable German writer Walser has entered the lists with a feeling, clear-eyed novel of manners, a trenchant commentary on both academia and a contemporary, self-indulgent lifestyle. Helmut Halm, a German scholar in his 50s and a man of wide, general culture is teaching for a semester at a Bay Area university and is greatly taken with the inevitable coed blonde, Porsche-driving, milk-drinking Fran. As much as with Fran, Halm falls in love with California: the eternal sun, the coast and sea, the mellow, laid-back existence. So infatuated is he with its rituals that this repressed Teuton decks himself out in trendy clothes and even undertakes the ordeal of jogging... But eventually even here grim realities intrude. Two shocking deaths restore Halm's psychological equilibrium and end the novel on a sobering note. --Publishers Weekly.

For readers of Colm Toibin’s The Master and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, a witty, moving, tender novel of impossible love and the mysterious ways of art. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is so famous his servant auctions off snippets of his hair and children and adults recite from his many works by memory. When he was a young poet, his first novel, a story of love and romantic fervor ending in suicide, was an international blockbuster that set off a wave of self-inflicted deaths across Europe. Now seventy-three, sought after and busy with scientific pursuits and responsibilities to the Grand Duke, he has fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old, Ulrike von Levetzov. Infatuated, at the spa in Marienbad, he seeks her out. They exchange glances, witty words. In the social swirl, they find each other. On the promenade, they parade together arm in arm. Time spent away from her is sleepless, and when they kiss, it is in the “Goethian” way, from his books: a matter of souls, not mouths or lips. And yet, his years fail him. At an afternoon tea party, a younger man tries to seduce her. At a costume ball, he collapses. When he proposes nonetheless, Ulrike and her mother are already preparing to leave. Caught in a storm of emotion and torn between despair and unwillingness to give up hope, he begins an elegy in his coach as he pursues her: “The Marienbad Elegy,” one of his last great works.

The accidental reunion of two men, former schoolmates, and their wives in a lakeside resort leads to a comparison of memories, an awkward intimacy, and a moment of terrible, yet exhilarating liberation