East Germany, January 1990. Enrico Türmer, man of the theater, secret novelist, turns his back on art and signs on to work at a newly started newspaper. Freed from the compulsion to describe the world, he plunges into everyday life. Under the guidance of his Mephisto, the ever-present Clemens von Barrista, the former aesthete suddenly develops worldly ambitions even he didn’t know he had.This upheaval in our hero’s life, mirrored in the vaster upheaval gripping Germany itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the birth pangs of a reunified nation, is captured in the letters Enrico writes to the three people he loves most: his sister, Vera; his childhood friend Johann; and Nicoletta, the unattainable woman of his dreams. As he discovers capitalism and reports on his adventures as a businessman, he peels away the layers of his previous existence, in the process creating the thing he has dreamed of for so long—the novel of his own life, in whose facets contemporary history is captured. Thus Enrico comes to embody all the questionable aspects not only of life in the old Germany, but of life in the Germany just taking form.Once again Ingo Schulze proves himself a master storyteller, with an inimitable power to reconjure the complete insanity of this wildest time in postwar German history. As its comic chronicler, he unfurls a panorama of a world in transformation—and the birth of a new era.

New Lives

Literature & Fiction

Schulze, Ingo

Contemporary

KNOPF

“A literary event” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung): thirteen new stories from one of Germany’s finest writers. New Year’s Eve 1999, Berlin. At a party to kick off the twenty-first century, Frank Reichert meets Julia, his lost love. Since their separation in the fall of 1989, he’s drifted through life like an exile, remaining apathetic toward the copy-shop business he started even as it flourishes apace. Nothing has the power to move him now: his whole life lies under the shadow of Julia, of the idea that things could have worked out differently. But as night draws on to day, the promised end becomes an unexpected new beginning. Ingo Schulze introduces us to characters as they stray outside the confines of East Germany into other, newer lives—into Egypt, where the betrayal of a lover turns an innocent vacation into a nightmare; into Vienna, where life starts to mimic art; into Estonia, where we meet a retired circus bear in an absurd (and absurdly hilarious) dilemma—or as they simply stay put, struggling to maintain their sense of themselves as the world around them changes. Mixed in with these tragicomic tales are some of the most beautiful love stories ever to feature cell phones. And throughout, Schulze’s masterfully controlled style conceals an understated, but finally breathtaking, intricacy.

One More Story: Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

Genre Fiction

From one of Germany’s finest writers comes a wonderfully light and humorous novel set during the tumultuous events of 1989. A wobbling Hungary has just opened its borders to Austria enabling a flood of refugees to escape, the Berlin Wall is on the cusp of falling, and, yet, seemingly sheltered from this onrushing new world in their idyllic East German home are Adam, a tailor and dressmaker who enjoys a life of dressing (and undressing) his appreciative clientele, and Evelyn, Adam’s restless girlfriend. Having just unexpectedly quit her job as a waitress, Evelyn returns home one day to find Adam sleeping with one of his customers. Calmly, but quickly, Evelyn packs her belongings and runs off to Hungary on a vacation she had originally planned to take with Adam. Accompanying Evelyn on her journey is her friend Simone and Michael, Simone’s West German cousin. In hot pursuit, however, to everyone’s surprise or dismay, is Adam. Following the group in his family’s rickety 1961 Communist-made automobile, Adam chases after Evelyn, banishing himself from his Garden of Eden as she pursues her very own idea of heaven. As Adam and Evelyn are swept out on a Western tide of new freedoms—helping refugees and helping themselves to impetuous trysts with others along the way—they find themselves forced to adjust to life in a world forever changed. Paradise regained? Perhaps not. Upending our expectations from the start, Adam and Evelyn is a deceptively simple love story that will enthrall longtime readers and those new to the delights of Ingo Schulze’s stories alike.

Adam and Evelyn

Literary

In his long-awaited new novel, renowned German author Ingo Schulze provides a rich and nuanced panorama of a world in transition. East Germany, January 1990. Enrico Türmer–man of the theater, aspiring novelist–has turned his back on the art world and joined a startup newspaper. Before long, the former aesthete and rebel becomes obsessed with personal gain, and in a series of letters to his sister, a friend, and a would-be lover, Enrico vividly muses on his capitalist ventures and latent worldly ambitions. As Schulze peels away the layers of Enrico’s previous existence, his antihero’s reinvention comes to embody all the questionable aspects not only of life in the old Germany, but of life in the Germany just taking form.

New Lives (Vintage International)

Vintage

33 Moments of Happiness

PAN BOOKS LTD (ENGLAND)

An enchanting, fabulously bizarre and intriguing book of short stories by a prizewinning new German writer. Each episode in this dazzling debut collection captures the spark in some tiny detail of everyday life in contemporary St. Petersburg and fans it into a story that flares with comedy, surreal passion, heartbreaking indifference and mad Russian excess. There's a Mafia shoot-out in a disco, as told by a gun-toting Walter Mitty simultaneously thrilled and horrified by the carnage he is creating. There's a returning exiled writer so desperate to keep his reputation alive, now that he is no longer a professional dissident, that he will do anything to hold the interest of his retinue of reporters and cameras. There are three devils who appear for an evening at the steam bath, their revelries ending in cannibalism—or is the watching manager just mad? St. Nicholas comes back as a rich American. There is a gallery opening that gives new meaning to the term "installation." And on and on... These are sad, whimsical, macabre, bleakly funny stories, all told in a playful and voluptuous prose that is itself an homage to the great Russian masters whom Schulze is honoring—from Gogol to Pasternak, from Chekhov to Nabokov.

33 Moments of Happiness: St. Petersburg Stories

From the author of 33 Moments of Happiness ("Ingo Schulze is our new epic storyteller" --Günter Grass), a heartbreaking and funny first novel about the people in a deadbeat little town in East Germany that makes us understand, as nothing else, what life has been like since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Altenburg in Thuringia, a provincial flyspeck on the map of the new Germany, is Schulze's Winesburg, Ohio. With laconic wit and a tenderness immune to sentimentality, he starts to tell us "simple stories" (much of the book is carried in pitch-perfect dialogue) about seemingly unconnected people. At first, there appears to be nothing so unusual about what happens to Renate and Martin, Barbara and Frank, Raffael and Jenny, as they look for love, for jobs, for some means, honest or devious, of understanding or forgetting the past. And yet, what is gradually revealed in the minutiae of their everyday experiences is the collapse of an entire world and the dramatic fault line that has run through so many East German lives since 1990. As each episode in this remarkable tapestry sparks with connections to stories we've already heard, we begin to realize that these people are inexorably intermeshed and that Schulze is moving back and forth through the town, crosscutting events and lives cinematically and allowing their elements to reassemble. By the time the last story ends, we know we have been listening to a novel in glittering fragments spun by a master -- a complete tragicomedy of ordinary people in Nowheresville caught up in the last great historical cataclysm of our century.

Simple Stories

An intriguing, fabulously bizarre debut collection of short stories by prize-winning German writer Ingo Schulze, author of Simple Stories. These thirty-three macabre, often comical short pieces revolve around moments of odd bliss–moments seized by characters who have found ways to conquer the bleakness of everyday life in the chaotic world of post-communist Russia. Peopled by Mafia gunmen, desperate young prostitutes, bewildered foreign businessmen, and even a trio of hungry devils, the stories are by turns tragic and bleakly funny. From a sly retelling of the legend of St. Nicholas featuring a rich American named Nick, to a lavish gourmet feast in which the young female cook ends up as the main dish, these stories are above all playful and even surreal–and many of them are masterful tributes to Russian writers from Gogol to Nabokov. Translated by John E. Woods.

Dramas & Plays

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Prize-winning German writer Ingo Schulze's first novel, Simple Stories, is a marvel of storytelling and craft. Set in the East German town of Altenburg after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it deftly leaps among an array of confused characters caught in the crossroads of their country’s history: a lovelorn waitress who falls for a visiting West German investor; an art historian turned traveling salesman; a former Communist official plagued by his past; an unsuccessful writer who asks his neighbor to break his leg so that he can continue to live on welfare. Schulze skillfully intercuts an assortment of moving and comic vignettes about seemingly unconnected people, gradually linking them into an exhilarating whole of tidal unity and emotional force, until we see that all the time we have been reading a novel in glittering fragments, spun by a master. With a piercing eye for detail and a magical ear for dialogue, Schulze portrays the tragi-comedy of ordinary people caught up in the last great historical upheaval of the century.

Short Stories & Anthologies

Picador USA

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

Books by Schulze, Ingo

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

New Lives

One More Story: Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

Adam and Evelyn

New Lives (Vintage International)

33 Moments of Happiness

33 Moments of Happiness: St. Petersburg Stories

Simple Stories

33 Moments of Happiness: St. Petersburg Stories

Simple Stories

33 Moments of Happiness