English world rights (NYRB), France (Klincksieck/Les Belles Lettres), Netherlands (Atlas Contact)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Editorial Las cuarenta), Italy (Marietti), Japan (Serika Shobo), Slovenia (Mladinska knjiga)And then comes the call-up....
And then comes the call-up. Ginster is shipped out, and far from the front lines, he learns to set up a bed with military precision, to shoot, and to “peel potatoes against the enemy”. And gradually, he starts to think that all these exercises do not serve the war effort, but that the entire war is actually a pretence for these exercises.
The novel is set in Frankfurt during the First World War, and was instrumental in establishing Kracauer’s literary reputation. It provides a fascinating portrait of a man whose stance on the world and its contradictions has often been compared to that of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
A true modern classic by one of the most diverse writers of the 20th century.
»In its exploration of unmoored subjectivity ... the novel ... joins the great modernist attempts to craft new figures from the ravages of the early twentieth century, from Franz Kafka’s K. to Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities to the New Women of Irmgard Keun's late Weimar novels.« Johannes von Moltke, New York Review of Books
»Kracauer’s mordant satire has the caustic power of Celine but is less coarse and choleric. Sharp criticisms of patriotism, cronyism, and the war itself are tempered by the fanciful observations of a character who has the eye of a visual artist...The result is a tour de force of language enriched by gallows humor.« Publishers Weekly
»Like Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Ginster appeared in time to mark the tenth anniversary of the armistice. If Remarque’s novel seemed to the playwright Carl Zuckmayer to capture with unparalleled immediacy the experience of a generation, Kracauer’s novel challenges the very premise of Zuckmayer’s enthusiasm. Which generation? Whose experience? [. . .] Ginster does not offer the moral security of All Quiet on the Western Front. The protagonist lives through a 'historic time' with an ironic awareness of the inadequacy of the vocabularies with which people understand their own time.« Benjamin Morgan, TLS
»Ginster’s name belongs with modern literature’s antiwar activists from the Good Soldier Švejk to Yossarian.« Kirkus Reviews
»Ginster is a scathing portrait, light on the plot, of German civilian life [during] World War I . . . [A] drop-dead hilarious anti-war satire.« Artun Ak, Reading in Translation
»... This novel now is valuable, beyond its considerable historical and aesthetic virtues, because it makes pertinent points about today’s world, bedeviled by war, misery, poverty, and the enticing lure of despotism as an answer to democracy’s shortcomings.« Thomas Filbin, The Arts Fuse
»In its exploration of unmoored subjectivity ... the novel ... joins the great modernist attempts to craft new figures from the ravages of the early twentieth century, from Franz Kafka’s K. to Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities to the New Women of Irmgard Keun's late Weimar novels.« Johannes von Moltke, New York Review of Books
»Kracauer’s mordant...
Persons
Siegfried Kracauer
Siegfried Kracauer, born in Frankfurt/Main on February 8, 1889, was an architect, sociologist, cultural critic and film theorist. He is considered one of the most important feature writers of the Weimar Republic and was the leading feuilleton editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1930 to 1933. With Die Angestellten (1930), Kracauer published the first empirical sociological study in Germany. He is also considered one of the founders of the sociology of film. In 1933, Kracauer and his wife fled to Paris and then, after the start of the war, to New York in 1941, where he died from pneumonia on November 26, 1966. Apart from Die Angestellten, Kracauer's most important works include Theorie des Films (1960), the collection of essays Von Caligari...
Siegfried Kracauer, born in Frankfurt/Main on February 8, 1889, was an architect, sociologist, cultural critic and film theorist. He is considered...
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Adorno–Kracauer Correspondence 1923–1966
The resonance of a passionate friendship which connected both parties...
English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Cuarenta), France (Bord De L'Eau)
Theory of Film
Ukraine (Osnovy)
The Detective Novel
Spanish World rights (El Paseo), Chinese simplex (Peking University Press), France (Les Belles Lettres), Korea (Ghil), Poland (PIW), Bulgaria (Agata-A), Turkey (Metis)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Editorial Paidós), Brazilian Portuguese (Cosac & Naify), Greece (Scripta)
The Mass Ornament
English world rights (Harvard UP), Russia (Ad Marginem), France (Les Belles Lettres / Klincksieck), Italy (Cue Press), Norway (Bokvennen), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Hosei University Press), Slovenia (*cf.), Turkey (Metis), Ukraine (Osnovy)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Gedisa), Brazilian Portuguese (Cosac & Naify), France (Éditions La Découverte), Czech Republic (Academia Nakladatelství), Romania (Editura TACT)
From Caligari to Hitler
»First published in 1947, From Caligari to Hitler remains an undisputed landmark study of the rich cinematic history of the Weimar Republic. Prominent film critic Siegfried Kracauer...
English world rights (Princeton UP), Spanish world rights (Paidós), Russia (Ad Marginem), France (Klincksieck), Korea (Saemulgyul), Czech Republic (Academia), Bulgaria (Funtasy)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Century), Poland (Slowo), Turkey (Basim Yayim)
The Salaried Masses
Kracauer‘s The Salaried Masses is a classic of...
Spanish world rights (Gedisa), France (Les Belles Lettres), Italy (Meltemi), Korea (Ghil), Bulgaria (Agata)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Peking UP), Russia (Kabinetnyj yčenyj), Portuguese rights (Antigona), Romania (Tact), Croatia (Sandorf & Mizantrop), Slovenia (CF)
English edition available from Verso