Enchanted and intrigued by Budapest, the author sketches it with words: its bridges, people, language, literature, history and food. At the turning point in his life he reflects upon a past in which he embraced both fascism and communism. Throughout this meditation, he writes poetry, he writes about poetry and he writes about the purpose of art. The author wrote poetry, essays, novellas, stories, fairy tales and children's books and poetry translations. His play "Fallen Angel" appeared at the Bush Theatre in London in 1991.

Twenty Two Days Or Half a Lifetime

Fühmann, Franz

Cape, Jonathan

Originally published in 1962, Franz Fühmann’s autobiographical story cycle The Jew Car is a classic of German short fiction and an unparalleled examination of the psychology of National Socialism. Each story presents a snapshot of a personal and historical turning point in the life of the narrator, beginning with childhood anti-Semitism and moving to a youthful embrace—and then an ultimate rejection—of Nazi ideology. With scathing irony and hallucinatory intensity, reflections on the nature of memory, and the individual experience of history, the cycle acquires the weight of a novel."Fühmann’s work, beginning with The Jew Car, can be read as a great literary self-analysis in the spirit of Freud. Through his work, he not only became conscious of his own thinking as it was seduced by totalitarianism, he also became capable of describing the mechanisms of a fascist upbringing with striking poetic power, transcending all theory." —Die Welt, on the German edition

The Jew Car: Fourteen Days from Two Decades (The German List)

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Seagull Books

At the Burning Abyss is Franz Fühmann’s magnum opus—a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry. Picking up where his last book, The Jew Car, left off, Fühmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology’s seductions—Nazism, then socialism—and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl’s enigmatic verses. He confronts Trakl’s “unlivable life,” as his poetry transcends the panaceas of black-and-white ideology, ultimately bringing a painful, necessary understanding of “the whole human being: in victories and triumphs as in distress and defeat, in temptation and obsession, in splendor and in ordure.” In 1982, the German edition of At the Burning Abyss won the West German Scholl Siblings Prize, celebrating its “courage to resist inhumanity.” At a time of political extremism and polarization, has lost none of its urgency. 

At the Burning Abyss: Experiencing the Georg Trakl Poem (The German List)

History & Criticism

<div>When a young reader once asked Franz Fühmann if he considered his work to be science fiction, he was quick to deny it: he wanted nothing to do with the genre. As he began writing the stories that make up this volume, however, he found himself coming around to the idea of a hybrid genre--what he calls in German Saiäns-Fiktschen, 'science fiktion' with a k. &nbsp; In seven interlocking stories, Science Fiktion offers a steampunk takedown of the logic of the Cold War. In this imagined future, two nations compete for global dominance: Uniterr, an exaggeration of the Eastern Bloc, in which personal freedom is curtailed and life regulated with cartoonish strictness; and Libroterr, in which the decadence of the West has been pushed beyond all reason. The stories follow three young citizens of Uniterr: Jirro, a young neutrinologist whose life is forever changed by a year spent abroad in Libroterr; Janno, a causologist condemned to a life of mediocrity in Uniterr's bureacracy for the briefest of impure thoughts; and Pavlo, an inventor and a drunkard, whose mind pushes against the limits of what his world allows. Through these three lives, Fühmann gradually unfolds the contours of their bizarre world in a master class of understated world making. &nbsp; As the reader is swept up in the madness of Libroterr's predator ads (which grab you on the street) and Uniterr's mandatory mind readings, Fühmann's dark comedy from the last century comes to seem all the more prescient in ours. A German twist on an Anglophone tradition, Science Fiktion provides a disturbing vision of the future from the other side of the Berlin Wall. &nbsp;</div>

Science Fiktion (The German List)

Four classical Greek myths retold with unexpected twists by an East German dissident.&nbsp; Franz Fühmann's subversive retellings of four Greek legends were first published in East Germany in 1980. In them, Fühmann plumbs the ancient tales' depths and makes them his own. Attuned to conflict and paradox, he sheds light on the complexities of sex and love, art and beauty, politics and power. In the title story, the love of the goddess Eos for the mortal Tithonos reveals the blessing and curse of transience, while "Hera and Zeus" probes the divine couple's tumultuous relationship and its devastating consequences for a world embroiled in war. Fühmann's unflinching account of Marsyas' flaying by Apollo has been widely read as a dissident political statement that has lost none of its incisive force. At times charged with sensuality, and at others honed to a keen analytical edge, Fühmann's shimmering prose is matched by Sunandini Banerjee's exquisite collages.

The Beloved of the Dawn (The German List)

At the Burning Abyss: Experiencing the Georg Trakl Poem (The Seagull Library of German Literature)

Science Fiktion (The Seagull Library of German Literature)

Vor Feuerschlünden - Erfahrung mit Georg Trakls Gedicht. Anhang Georg Trakl - Dichtungen und Briefe.

Hinstorff

Die dampfenden Hälse der Pferde im Turm von Babel

Hinstorff Verlag GmbH

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fühmann, Franz. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Fühmann, Franz

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fühmann, Franz. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Twenty Two Days Or Half a Lifetime

The Jew Car: Fourteen Days from Two Decades (The German List)

At the Burning Abyss: Experiencing the Georg Trakl Poem (The German List)

Science Fiktion (The German List)

The Jew Car: Fourteen Days from Two Decades (The German List)

The Beloved of the Dawn (The German List)

At the Burning Abyss: Experiencing the Georg Trakl Poem (The Seagull Library of German Literature)

Science Fiktion (The Seagull Library of German Literature)

Vor Feuerschlünden - Erfahrung mit Georg Trakls Gedicht. Anhang Georg Trakl - Dichtungen und Briefe.

Die dampfenden Hälse der Pferde im Turm von Babel