This lecture series looks closely at three prominent German-language writers of the 21st century: Daniel Kehlmann, Jenny Erpenbeck and Sasa Stanisic. The sessions move from Kehlmann's playful, ironic portrait of Enlightenment science in Measuring the World, to Erpenbeck's intense story of love and political decline in the final years of the GDR in Kairos, and on to Stanisic's vivid account of migration, memory and belonging in Herkunft-era Europe.
Working from these three novels, the lectures explore how modern German literature thinks about and narrates Germany's and Europe's recent history, and how it engages with questions of knowledge, history, identity and memory.
