Overview

"In Berlin, 1930, the name K sebier is on everyone's lips. A literal combination of the German words for ""cheese"" and ""beer,"" it's an unglamorous name for an unglamorous man-a small-time crooner who performs nightly on a shabby stage for laborers, secretaries, and shopkeepers. Until the press shows up. In the blink of an eye, this everyman is made a star- a star who can sing songs for a troubled time. Margot Weissmann, the arts patron, hosts champagne breakfasts for K sebier; Muschler the banker builds a theater in his honor; Willi Fr chter, a parvenu writer, makes a mint off K sebier-themed business ventures and books. All the while, the journalists who catapulted K sebier to fame watch the monstrous media machine churn in amazement-and are aghast at the demons they have unleashed. In K sebier Takes Berlin, the journalist Gabriele Tergit wrote a searing satire of the excesses and follies of the Weimar Republic. Chronicling a country on the brink of fascism and a press on the edge of collapse, Tergit's novel caused a sensation when it was published in 1931. As witty as Kurt Tucholsky and as trenchant as Karl Kraus, Tergit portrays a world too entranced by fireworks to notice its smoldering edges."

Full Product Details

9781681372723

Table of Contents

Reviews

Portraying a society declining into fascism, the novel resounds with hollow laughter and is crisp throughout, but the journalistic sections feel most alive. These tableaus, which blend absurdism and poignancy, match the comic invention of classics like Michael Frayn's Towards the End of the Morning and Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. --Publishers Weekly A star is born, Weimar-style, in this German novel originally published in 1931....Tergit's novel deserves a place alongside D blin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, Canetti's Auto-da-F , and other key works of the period. --Kirkus

A star is born, Weimar-style, in this German novel originally published in 1931....Tergit's novel deserves a place alongside D blin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, Canetti's Auto-da-F , and other key works of the period. --Kirkus

Portraying a society declining into fascism, the novel resounds with hollow laughter and is crisp throughout, but the journalistic sections feel most alive. These tableaus, which blend absurdism and poignancy, match the comic invention of classics like Michael Frayn's Towards the End of the Morning and Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. -Publishers Weekly A star is born, Weimar-style, in this German novel originally published in 1931....Tergit's novel deserves a place alongside Doeblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, Canetti's Auto-da-Fe, and other key works of the period. -Kirkus

Portraying a society declining into fascism, the novel resounds with hollow laughter and is crisp throughout, but the journalistic sections feel most alive. These tableaus, which blend absurdism and poignancy, match the comic invention of classics like Michael Frayn's Towards the End of the Morning and Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. --Publishers Weekly A star is born, Weimar-style, in this German novel originally published in 1931....Tergit's novel deserves a place alongside Doeblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, Canetti's Auto-da-Fe, and other key works of the period. --Kirkus

Author Information

Gabriele Tergit (1894-1982) was a novelist and journalist, known initially for her courtroom reporting. After gaining fame for her novel K sebier Takes Berlin, her writing career was cut off short when the SS threatened her safety in 1933. She immediately fled to Czechoslovakia, then Palestine, and finally London. After the war, her work was largely forgotten by the public, but she continued to work on behalf of other authors as the honorary secretary of the London PEN Center of expatriate German-speaking authors. Sophie Duvernoy has translated work by Sibylle Berg, Sabine Rennefanz, and Zora del Buono, and has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Thomson Reuters, and other publications. She is the winner of the 2015 Gutekunst Prize for young translators and is currently pursuing a PhD at Yale University.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available