Novels
- Death in Rome (1956)
- Pigeons on the Grass (1988)
- The Hothouse (2001)
- A Sad Affair (2003)
Novels Book Covers
Wolfgang Koeppen Books Overview
Death in Rome
A prophetic novel that ranks with The Tin Drum and W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants as one of the essential works of contemporary European fiction. Wolfgang Koeppen’s Death in Rome, in the words of translator Michael Hofmann, ‘is a comprehensive and brilliant provocation of an entire nation.’ First published in 1954 to great controversy, it is only now being recognized as a classic. A tragic portrait of Germany after World War II, Death in Rome completes the trilogy that earned Koeppen praise from G nter Grass in his lifetime as ‘the greatest living German writer.’ Mirroring the social and political upheaval following the fall of Na*zism, Koeppen here offers the story of four members of a Germany family a former SS officer, a young man preparing for the priesthood, a composer, and a government administrator reunited by chance in the decaying beauty of postwar Rome. Koeppen re creates the soul of a nation at a significant juncture of history in this devastating work of literary genius.
Pigeons on the Grass
Here is an English translation of a post war German classic. The events of the novel take place during the course of a single day in an unnamed city in occupied Germany where the endless drone of allied planes overhead increases the already heightened tension. Throughout this powerful narrative, the characters’ experiences ultimately reveal how and at what cost Germans in the 1950s, by failing to confront their recent past, blinded themselves to its after effects.
The Hothouse
‘A recovered masterpiece…
. Remarkable as a sidelong, searing appraisal of the legacy of the Na*zi years.’ Publishers Weekly, starred reviewA masterpiece by a writer long neglected in America, The Hothouse created a literary stir when it appeared in hardcover. Evoking comparisons to works by James Joyce and Malcolm Lowry, it traces the final two days in the life of a minor German politician, Keetenheuve, a man disillusioned by the corruption of post World War II German politics and grieving after the sudden death of his wife. With a passionate, despairing voice, Wolfgang Koeppen 1906 1996, whom Gunter Grass once called the ‘greatest living German writer,’ creates a portrait of idealism crushed by political and personal compromise.
A Sad Affair
A romantic roman clef that tells the story of Sibylle, one of the greatest literary femmes fatales since Salom . Banned by the Na*zis in 1936 for its frank sexual themes, Wolfgang Koeppen’s first novel is at last appearing in English. A romance that anticipated Beat literature by nearly twenty years through its dizzying language and exploration of casual love, this is Koeppen’s most hilarious work, one that evokes Mann’s Tonio Kruger. Set during the heady, pre World War II days of cabaret era Germany, the novel centers around Sibylle a stunning seductress who balances her love affairs with five men at once and Friedrich, the callow, melancholic youth who obsessively pursues her. In a stranger than fiction turn, Sibylle Scholoss, on whom the character of Sibylle is very loosely based, is now in her nineties and living in Manhattan. This publication enables us to celebrate not only the extraordinary renaissance of one of Germany’s greatest twentieth century writers but also the meteoric stage career of a German actress whose career was thwarted in its prime. 2 b/w photographs.