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Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat - SAVE 50%!

Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat - SAVE 50%!

by Grete Weil
Translated By John S. Barrett

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Product Details

Verba Mundi

Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-56792-031-4
Pages: 176
Size: 6" x 9"
Published: December 1997
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From the author of The Bride Price (a New York Times Notable Book of 1992) comes a dark and haunting story of memory, guilt, and the meaning of responsibility.

Andreas, a once-promising poet, lives with his bride, Susanne, in postwar Germany. Aalthough surrounded by the trappings of comfort and success, Andreas is obsessed by the memory of Susanne's younger brother, Daniel, whom he had sheltered in Amsterdam, but who was eventually deported by the Gestapo. The war over, Andreas rebuilds his life in the "new" Germany, trying to recapture Daniel through marriage to his sister. But he is unable to write or to find peace, unable to forget his torture over Daniel or the harrowing days and nights of the Occupation.

Finally, he returns to Amsterdam to confront his memories of the war — it was there that Andreas first recognized the horror inflicted by his own people, as every night he witnessed the round-up of the city's Jews beneath his window. And it was there that he came to the realizations about himself, his past, and his heritage that give this story its profound resonance.

Told in a distinctly urgent voice and with a gaze at once acerbic and compassionate, Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat, like The Bride Price, is a "thoughtful, beautifully written exposition on love and fear" (ALA Booklist) by one of Germany's most respected contemporary novelists.

Praise for Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat

Riveting, extraordinary, valuable, unusual. —Kirkus Reviews

 

Grete Weil
Grete Weil was born in Munich in 1906, the daughter of a Jewish lawyer. When the Nazis came to power, she emigrated to Holland with her husband, the playwright and director Erich Weil. In 1941, Erich was arrested; he later died in a concentration camp. Grete went into hiding, and it was then that she began to write, first theater pieces, then fiction. After the war, she returned to Germany, and eventually settled near her native Munich, where she lived from 1947 until her death, at age 93, in 1996. She was the author of five novels, a memoir, and several collections of short fiction. The German original of Aftershocks was first published in Zurich in 1992.

John S. Barrett worked for many years as a cardiologist before turning to translation with Greta Weil's The Bride Price, which was named an Outstanding Translation of the Year by the American Literary Translators Association. He lives in New Hampshire.