20th century
A01=Reinhard Jirgl
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Reinhard Jirgl
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B06=Iain Galbraith
berlin
Category1=Fiction
Category=FA
Category=FB
conflict
COP=United Kingdom
czech republic
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
european literature
familial connections
family
farm laborers
fear
generational trauma
generations
german writers
germany
homeland
komotau
Language_English
life stories
literary works
lost
nazi control
nazis
new surroundings
PA=Available
persecution
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
reunion
reunited
revenge lynching
separated
separation
SN=German List
softlaunch
struggles
sudeten germans
translated work
translation
united
wild expulsions
Product details
- ISBN 9780857427359
- Weight: 626g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 27 Oct 2020
- Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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A profound novel detailing the brutal legacy of Nazism on four generations of a family in Germany.
Komotau, the Czech Republic, late summer, 1945. Four women—seventy-year-old Johanna, her two daughters Hanna and Maria, and Hanna’s daughter Anna—are ordered by the new Czech authorities to leave their homes and assemble with other Germans at the local train station. They are given thirty minutes—the “wild expulsions” of Sudeten Germans have begun. But where is Anna?
Witnessing the revenge lynching of SS and suspected collaborators on her walk home, she arrives in Komotau to find her family gone. The trek takes the older women via Munich, then Dresden and Magdeburg, to an outpost in the far northwest of the Soviet zone where they settle as farm laborers. Once united again, their hope of one day returning to the heimat—homeland—is both a source of strength and a burden, choking attachments to new surroundings and neighbors. This conflict will prove to be the story of their lives, as well as both the joy and ruin of Anna’s son.
A tale of four generations told in Reinhard Jirgl’s unique and subversively expressive idiom, The Unfinished plays out between the ruins of Nazi Germany and the rise and fall of communist East Germany, the birth of the Berlin Republic, and the shadow of a new millennium.
Komotau, the Czech Republic, late summer, 1945. Four women—seventy-year-old Johanna, her two daughters Hanna and Maria, and Hanna’s daughter Anna—are ordered by the new Czech authorities to leave their homes and assemble with other Germans at the local train station. They are given thirty minutes—the “wild expulsions” of Sudeten Germans have begun. But where is Anna?
Witnessing the revenge lynching of SS and suspected collaborators on her walk home, she arrives in Komotau to find her family gone. The trek takes the older women via Munich, then Dresden and Magdeburg, to an outpost in the far northwest of the Soviet zone where they settle as farm laborers. Once united again, their hope of one day returning to the heimat—homeland—is both a source of strength and a burden, choking attachments to new surroundings and neighbors. This conflict will prove to be the story of their lives, as well as both the joy and ruin of Anna’s son.
A tale of four generations told in Reinhard Jirgl’s unique and subversively expressive idiom, The Unfinished plays out between the ruins of Nazi Germany and the rise and fall of communist East Germany, the birth of the Berlin Republic, and the shadow of a new millennium.
Reinhard Jirgl was born in Berlin in 1953. While his writing was subject to restriction in the GDR, six completed manuscripts were ready for publication when the border between East and West Germany opened. Iain Galbraith is a Scottish poet and translator who lives in Germany.
