Book Synopsis

A dual narrative of pastoral innocence and postapocalyptic survival, Arno Schmidt's monumental and fiercely inventive novel returns as a definitive edition.

The novel weaves together two unforgettable worlds: a quiet weekend in the German countryside in the 1950s, and a stark colony on the moon, where the last survivors of a nuclear war endure a tense, lingering Cold War. Through this inventive double story, Arno Schmidt crafts a biting satire of political divisions, a moving reflection on what we preserve when civilization crumbles, and an intimate portrait of a couple seeking a way forward.

A dazzling and demanding masterwork of linguistic play and formal innovation, B/Moondocks stands as the brilliant culmination of Schmidt's early period, a clear gateway to his late masterworks, and a powerful testament to his status as the essential, experimental titan of post-war German literature. B/Moondocks is an audacious work of science fiction, with its stark vision of ideological conflict and cultural survival, feels unnervingly prescient in our own politically fractured age.

About the Author

Arno Schmidt (1914-1979) published over two dozen books of fiction, criticism, and translation in his lifetime. Along with Heinrich Böll and Günter grass, he is considered one of the most important and influential writers of postwar Germany; his magnum opus, Bottom's Dream, is often likened to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Schmidt grew up in Hamburg and Silesia, where his experience of the Second World War made him a lifelong opponent of war. As penniless "refugees from the East," he and his wife Alice were relocated several times until, in 1958, they moved to the small village of Bargfeld in the Lüneburg Heath, where Schmidt finally found the peace he needed to work. He died of a stroke at the age of only 65.

John E. Woods won both the 1981 American Book Award and PEN award for his translation of Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold and has published a new translation of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks.