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Edgar Hilsenrath Germany
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Edgar Hilsenrath is a survivor of the Jewish holocaust.
Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1926, he was later taken to Romania by his family
to escape Nazi persecution, but he was then deported to the Ukraine and sent to
a concentration camp. After liberation he went to Palestine on one of the first
refugee trains. Hilsenrath subsequently lived in France and the United States
and now lives in Berlin.
His work – translated in almost thirty countries – has
been recognized through the most distinguished literary awards, amongst them
the Lion-Feuchtwanger Prize of the Academy
of the Arts in Berlin. In 2009 he has been honoured with the Prix
Mémorables awarded by the Association of Independent Booksellers in France, for
his novel Fuck America.
Hilsenrath
became internationally known with his novel Der Nazi und der Friseur
(“The Nazi and the Barber”) which tells the story about a member of the SS and
mass murderer, who slips into the role of his victim Itzig Finkelstein and
becomes a respected citizen as well as the owner of a barbershop in Tel Aviv.
There is hardly a comparable book which so masterly exposes the banality of
fascism and the scantiness of the people involved who become victims of their
own sad ridiculousness.
In the emigrants' café on the corner of Broadway
and 86th Street in New York, the German Jew Jakob Bronsky sits writing his
autobiographical novel The Wanker night after night. He makes a living
waiting tables, washing dishes, and doing other odd jobs, his everyday life
consisting of a permanent struggle for hot meals, a roof over his head, a bus
ticket. His 'confession' beginning with the motto Fuck America is a wicked satire on the false promises of a
hypocritical society and a bitter résumé of the Jewish fate. A shocking
confessional and a fascinating document of contemporary history, this is
Hilsenrath's requital of 1950s America. His novel's hero, the semi-fictitious
and semi-autobiographical Jewish immigrant Jakob Bronsky, experiences the land
of opportunity from the perspective of a hobo. Bronsky's search for a woman
leads to traumatic obsessions and macabre rushes of fantasies: poetic elements,
blunt realism, obscenity and wicked humour come together in a deeply moving
collage. Reading the book today, it is immediately associatied with the current
situation of emigrants all over the world.
With his
humour and his literature, Hilsenrath managed to save himself. In Fuck Amerika, he recreates with sarcasm
his emigration and his experiences in the New York of the fifties.
EL PAIS
With
the tale of Jossel Wassermann, who recalls his home and his compatriots
in Bukovina as the spectre of World War II looms, Edgar Hilsenrath pays tribute
to the destroyed Jewish culture of Eastern Europe. In Das Märchen vom letzten Gedanken ("The Story of the last
Thought"), an epos about the 1915 Armenian genocide in Turkey, Hilsenrath
tells this crime as a lament for the victims of all genocides. This sad story
reads like an Oriental fairy-tale.
It
is a truly great novel. A piece of work that belongs to a range of works which
don’t appear very often, it is a story of the highest class.
Alexander von Bormann, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Please find further information about “The Story of the last Thought” at the following site:
en.wikipedia.org/The_Story_of_the_Last_Thought
Press on Edgar Hilsenrath:
The romancier Edgar Hilsenrath succeeds in
doing the seemingly impossible - he writes a satire about jews and the SS. A
masterly game of vexation about guilt and atonement - the murderer and the
murder become identical; there is no solution.
Der Spiegel
Many critics have compared Hilsenrath to
Günter Grass. That is flattering but unnecessary and incorrect. The
individuality of Hilsenrath’s thought and sentiment, his artistic use of
language, make him a great writer cast in a mold entirely his own.
AUFBAU, New York
In Hilsenrath's work, he visualizes two ways to escape
horror and death: humour and sex.
EL MUNDO
For
further information please visit the author’s website:
Hilsenrath’s complete work is now being published by Dittrich Verlag,
Berlin and dtv, Munich.
Novels:
Nacht, 1964
France: Attila ● Italy: Beit ● Netherlands: Boekeriy N.V.
1966/ Uigeverij Izer 2008 ● Poland: Wyd.Literackie 1994 ● Sweden: Alba 1981 ● Serbia & Montenegro: August Cesarek 1982 ● UK: W.H. Allan 1967 ● US: Doubleday 1966, Manor Books 1974
● Yugoslawia: Zaloszba Obzorja 1983
Der Nazi & der Friseur, 1977
Argentina: Sudamericana 2002 ●
China: Yilin ●
Czech Republic: Nakladatelství
Hynek 1997 ● Denmark: Schonberg Forl. 1980 ● France: Fayard 1974, Attila ● Hungary: Hatter Kiado 1998 ● Israel: Ofir Publ. House 1994 ●
Italy: Mondadori 1973, Marcos y
Marcos 2006 ●
Netherlands: De Kern 1978,
Ambo/Anthos 2008 ●
Norway: Det Norske Samlaget
1987 ●
Slovakia: Slovart ●
Slowenia: Maribor 1981 ● Spain: Maeva 2004 ● Sweden: Alba 1979 ● Turkey: Ithaki 2007 ●
UK: W.H. Allan
1975, Guhl 1978, Scribners 1990 ● Yugoslavia: Maribor 1981
Moskauer Orgasmus (Gib acht, Genosse Mandelbaum,
1979)
France: Attila ● Latvia: Vaga
Ltd. 1994 ● Lithuania: Lietus 1994
Bronskys Geständnis (Fuck America), 1980
Czech Republic: Albatros ● France: Attila 2009 ● Italy: Baldini Castoldi Dalai ● Serbia & Montenegro:
August Cesarek 1988 (new title: “Fuck America”) ● Spain: Errata 2010 ● Yugoslawia: August Cesarek 1981,
1988
Zibulsky oder Antenne im Bau, 1983
France:
Attila
Das Märchen vom letzten Gedanken, 1989
Armenia: Nairi
Verlag 1993 ● Czech Republic: Host 2005● France: Albin Michel 1992, pb Livre de Poche 2007● Greece: Exandas 1992 ● Italy: Rizzoli 1991, Marcos y Marcos 2006 ● Lithuania: Leidykla Amzius
1995● Netherlands: Amber-De
Boekerig 1991● Poland: Ksiaznica Sp./ S. Fischer Stiftung 2005 ● Romania: Ararat 2007 ● Russia: Text 2000 ●Turkey: Gökkusagi Basin Yayin 1999
● UK: Scribners
1990, pb Abacus 1994
Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr, 1993
France: Albin
Michel 1995, pb Livre de Poche 2008, Attila ● Italy: Marsilio 1995, Baldini Castoldi Dalai ● Netherlands: Bodoni/De
Kern 1995, Ambo/Anthos 2009
Die Abenteuer des Ruben Jablonsky, 1997
France:
Attila
Berlin… Endstation,2006
France:
Attila
Sie trommelten mit
den Fäusten den Takt (Erzählungen), Dittrich 2008
About Hilsenrath:
Helmut Braun: Verliebt in die deutsche Sprache. Die Odyssee des Edgar Hilsenrath
Cologne: Dittrich Verlag 2005,
232 p.