San Antonio College Library

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.

The novella, one of the most sophisticated genres of narrative literature, owes its development primarily to German belles letters. In the present collection, Mr. Steinhauer has assembled a representative sampling that ranges from the Enlightenment to the postwar periods and reveals the scope and flexibility of this art form. Included are Wieland's Love and Friendship Tested, Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas, Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl, Hoffmann's Mademoiselle...

A German soldier returns home at the end of World War II. The novel follows him through the ruins of Cologne, searching for the widow of a man who died in his place. This was the Nobel Prize winner's first novel, only now translated into English.

Goethe/The Sorrows of Young Werther; Schiller/The sport of destiny; Kleist/The earthquake in Chile; Brentano/The story of th ejust Casper and Fair Annie; Hoffmann/The Cremona violin; Droste-Huelshoff/The Jews' beech tree; Heine/Gods in exile; Storm/Immensee; Keller/The naughty Saint Vitalis; Meyer/Plautus in the convent; Hauptmann/Flagman Thiel; Schnitzler/A farewell; Rilke/How old Timofei died singing; Wedekind/The burning of Egliswyl; Heinrich Mann/Three...

German doctor escapes the Nazis and is reduced to practicing criminal medicine.

Steppenwolf is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet his novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books...

"Hailed as a remarkable literary discovery, a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany. Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had...