In these spellbinding lectures, Ingeborg Bachmann opens our eyes to the endless possibilities of literatureIngeborg Bachmann, one of the greatest German-language writers of the last century, delivered these astonishing lectures on the questions of poetics at Frankfurt University in 1959 and 1960.In these lucid and dazzling lectures, Bachmann leads us to the essence of literature, which was, at least for her, the essence of everything. Almost like a curious ...

The Palace of the Republic, that once housed the East German parliament, is demolished. A grandmother's laughter passes from life into memory. Furniture that once made a home is taken to the tip. A friendship drops into silence. Old ways are erased by the new.In this fascinating collection of essays, most of them written for her column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jenny Erpenbeck meditates, with a sense of both deep melancholy and wry humour, on the disappearance...