Air Raid

Alexander Kluge’s account The Air Raid on Halberstadt on 8 April 1945 first appeared in 1977. Exactly twenty years later, it became one of the most important points of reference in that discussion which freed the air war on German cities and the civilian population from being anathema. Such a literary depiction of the air raids and their effects were not entirely without precedent, but Kluge was the first to give a cool, analytical presentation of the work of destruction and from the bowels of the inferno probe that remainder of autonomy and rationality which allowed the connections of the catastrophe as well as potential ways out to appear.

»Already contained within Kluge’s detailed description of the social organisation of misfortune is the conjecture that a proper understanding of those catastrophes we continuously stage presents the first condition for the social organisation of fortune.« W. G. Sebald

From a distance of 30 years, Alexander Kluge re-examines his 1977 story with the addition of a few more recent texts. Sebald’s appreciation of the original has been included in the new edition.

»Without the portrayal of the air raid or the history of Stalingrad, I wouldn’t have been able to tell a lot of other, smaller stories.«

»An extraordinary book by an extraordinary artist, Air Raid might be seen less as a reckoning with the second world war as a manual for grappling with manufactured realities and media-filtered landscapes in the age of the drone.« Financial Times

»The book is part fiction and part reportage, but Kluge makes no effort to say which is which […] It’s an affecting puzzle about the destabilized narratives of war. The reader has to construct some semblance of a story from the rubble.« The Paris Review

»A small masterpiece of exploratory fiction.« Verso Books

»An accomplished filmmaker as well as a novelist, Kluge was trained as a lawyer and studied cultural theory with Theodor Adorno. An attorney’s reserve and gravitas are evident throughout his work. The harnessed energy is incorporated in various forms […] In Air Raid, one voice is followed by another – the testimonies of survivors, observations of reporters, explanations by American officers.« On the Seawall

»Excellently and integrally translated […] Exquisite […] This multimedia work was ahead of its time, and it’s still effective; as long as aerial militarism continues to rain misery on millions, Air Raid remains timely.« Rain Taxi