German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects.
Paul Celan, born Paul Antschel, was a Romanian-born French poet, Holocaust survivor, and literary translator. Celan is regarded as one of the most important figures in German-language literature of the post-World War II era and a poet whose verse has gained an immortal place in the literary pantheon. Celan’s poetry, with its many radical poetic and linguistic innovations, is characterized by a complicated and cryptic style that deviates from poetic conventions.
Yōko Tawada is a Japanese writer currently living in Berlin, Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German. Tawada has won numerous literary awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Noma Literary Prize, the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature, the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the Goethe Medal, the Kleist Prize, and a National Book Award.
Robert Walser was a German language Swiss writer. He additionally worked as a copyist, an inventor's assistant, a butler, and in various other low-paying trades. Despite marginal early success in his literary career, the popularity of his work gradually diminished over the second and third decades of the 20th century, making it increasingly difficult for him to support himself through writing. He eventually had a nervous breakdown and spent the remainder of his life in sanatoriums.
The International Booker Prize is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize, as the Booker Prize was then known, was announced in June 2004. Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation. It rewarded one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage", and was a recognition of the writer's body of work rather than any one title.
New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin (1914–1997) and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City.
Ralph Frederick Manheim was a Jewish-American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian. He was one of the most acclaimed translators of the 20th century, and likened translation to acting, the role being "to impersonate his author".
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (1990–2015) was a British literary award. It was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support of Arts Council England. Beginning in 2011 the administration of the prize was taken over by BookTrust, but retaining the "Independent" in the name. In 2015, the award was disbanded in a "reconfiguration" in which it was merged with the Man Booker International Prize.
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English".
Mark Harman is an Irish-American translator, most notably of Franz Kafka's work, and professor emeritus at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, United States, where he served as Professor of German & English and College Professor of International Studies.
Heather McHugh is an American poet. She is notable for Dangers, To the Quick and Eyeshot. McHugh was awarded the MacArthur Fellows Program and Griffin Poetry Prize.
The Best Translated Book Award was an American literary award that recognized the previous year's best original translation into English, one book of poetry and one of fiction. It was inaugurated in 2008 and was conferred by Three Percent, the online literary magazine of Open Letter Books, which is the book translation press of the University of Rochester. A long list and short list were announced each year leading up to the award.
Jenny Erpenbeck is a German writer and opera director. She won the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The End of Days and the 2024 International Booker Prize for Kairos.
Joachim Neugroschel was a multilingual literary translator of French, German, Italian, Russian, and Yiddish. He was also an art critic, editor, and publisher.
The Calw Hermann Hesse Prize is a literary prize awarded since 1990. It is named after the German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter Hermann Hesse. Alternating every year since 2017, the International Hermann Hesse Prize of the Foundation and the Hermann Hesse Prize of the International Hermann Hesse Society are awarded in Calw. The first prize is awarded for "a literary achievement of international standing in connection with its translation". The latter is intended to promote the examination of the work of the poet, who was born in Calw in 1877. In 2017, the first recipient was Adolf Muschg.
John Felstiner, Professor Emeritus of English at Stanford University, was an American literary critic, translator, and poet. His interests included poetry in various languages, environmental and ecologic poems, literary translation, Vietnam era poetry and Holocaust studies. John Felstiner died in February 2017 at the age of 80. He had been suffering from the effects of progressive aphasia at his time of death, at a hospice near Stanford.
Leila Vennewitz was a Canadian-English translator of German literature. She was born Leila Croot in Hampshire, England and grew up in Portsmouth. Her brother was the surgeon Sir John Croot.
The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation award given by the Society of Authors in London. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000, while the runner-up now receives £1,000. The prize is named for August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, who translated Shakespeare to German in the 19th century.
Damion Searls is an American writer and translator. He grew up in New York and studied at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. He translates literary works from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch. Among the authors he has translated are Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann, Hermann Hesse, Kurt Schwitters, Peter Handke, Jon Fosse, Heike B. Görtemaker, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Weber, and Nescio. He has received numerous grants and fellowships for his translations.
Exophony is the practice of writing in a language that is not one's mother tongue. While the practice is age-old, the term is relatively new: French linguists such as Louis-Jean Calvet discussed "littérature exophone" since 1979, while the German equivalent, Exophonie, was used within the field of literary and cultural studies by Susan Arndt, Dirk Naguschewski and Robert Stockhammer in 2007. In English, Chantal Wright proposed its more widespread use in 2008, wrote a paper on it in 2010, and went on to teach a course at the University of Warwick in 2016/7.
