Summerhouse, Later - by Judith Hermann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In nine luminous stories of love and loss, loneliness and hope, Judith Hermann's stunning debut collection paints a vivid and poignant picture of a generation ready and anxious to turn their back on the past, to risk uncertainty in search of a fresh, if fragile, equilibrium.

An international bestseller that has been translated into twelve languages, Summerhouse, Later heralds the arrival of one of Germany's most arresting new literary talents.

A restless man hopes to find permanence in the purchase of a summerhouse outside Berlin. A young girl, trapped in a paralyzing web of family stories and secrets, finally manages to break free. A granddaughter struggles to lay her grandmother's ghosts to rest. A successful and simplistic artist becomes inexplicably obsessed with an elusive and strangely sinister young girl.

Against the backdrop of contemporary Berlin, possibly Europe's most vibrant and exhilarating city, Hermann's characters are as kaleidoscopic and extraordinary as their metropolis, united mostly in a furious and dogged pursuit of the elusive specter of "living in the moment." They're people who, in one way or another, constantly challenge the madness of the modern world and whose dreams of transcending the ordinary for that "narrow strip of sky over the rooftops" are deeply felt and perfectly rendered.

Review Quotes

"Hermann's writing, which is spare and literal . . . achieves a fullness that seems almost magically spun out of the dead air of her settings; she's a master at capturing what teems beneath placid surfaces--what Wallace Stevens once referred to as 'the nothing that is.'"
--Melanie Rehak, The New York Times

"Hermann is a fascinating writer who, in the short story, has found the perfect form."
--Michael Arditti, The Independent

About the Author

Judith Hermann was born in Berlin in 1970. She is the author of several novels and story collections, including Alice, which was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; Where Love Begins; and Summerhouse, Later, which won the Kleist Prize. Her novel Daheim (Home) was a Der Spiegel bestseller, won the Rheingau and the Bremen Literature Prizes, and was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. Her work has been translated into thirty-five languages, and a number of her short stories have been adapted for film. She lives and works in Berlin.

Margot Bettauer Dembo (1928-2019) was the translator of works by Judith Hermann, Robert Gernhardt, Joachim Fest, Ödön von Horváth, and Feridun Zaimoglu, among others. She was awarded the Goethe-Institut/Berlin Translator's Prize in 1994 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2003. Dembo also worked as a translator for two feature documentary films: The Restless Conscience, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and The Burning Wall.