Peter Kurzeck
And Where My House

The Old Century 8
fiction, new

240 pp.

• About the Author

>> For the first time, the great narrator describes his time with the US Army in the young Federal Republic of Germany.

>> Finally: The 8th volume in the series »The Old Century«

>> Edited by the estate of Kurzeck connoisseur Rudi Deuble

Frankfurt’s main train station, platforms, tracks, the train to Gießen. As always in Peter’s Kurzeck’s fluid memoirs, the sight of trains inspires mental images. In this work, Kur-zeck takes us on train rides with his mother through the ruins of Gießen, before the cur-rency reform. The five-year-old goes from village to village, always a refugee. Gießen is the very image of postwar ruin and the black market—frightening and exciting at once. At home, his sister learns to write, his father reads Faust, and his mother sews and sews. The family is always just barely tolerated and dependent upon the goodwill of the land-lord; Bohemian songs play in their heads. Later, the narrator joins Eastern Europeans in performing absurd tasks for the United States army and a completely new life begins.
Conceived as volume 8 of The Old Century and published by Rudi Deuble, with original notes from his estate, Peter Kurzeck creates an exciting, witty portrait of postwar Gießen and Displaced Persons in the US army.

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Reviews

»Kurzeck is the preserver of the dwindling.«
Ulrich Rüdenauer, taz

»The very beginning of this novel is a linguistically sparkling masterpiece.«
Björn Gauges, Gießener Anzeiger

»Like all Kurzeck-books, a little gem.«
Christoph Schreiner, Saarbrücker Zeitung


»Once you have read Kurzeck, it is impossible to imagine a world without him. The world takes on its authentic tone.«
Andreas Maier

»What Kurzeck achieves here in terms of memory work is once again grandiose, [...] all in his famously short-breathed prose sound with its many elliptical sentences.«
Gerrit Bartels, Der Tagesspiegel

»The [first] hundred pages contain everything that makes Kurzeck special in German literary history: his inimitable flow of thoughts and associations [...] and a [...] ruthless [...] self-analysis.«
Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»In this volume, too, [there is] that gentle melancholy that is peculiar to the rememberer. Kurzeck thus becomes a preserver of the fading, a chronicler.«
Ulrich Rüdenauer, Deutschlandfunk Büchermarkt

» [...] and it must be said that this fragment is one of the most beautiful texts Peter Kurzeck has ever written [...].«
Christoph Schröder, ZEIT online

»Of the survivors, of deplacement: Peter Kurzeck's novel fragment And where my House? is poignant and very topical.«
Claus-Jürgen Göpfert, Frankfurter Rundschau

»The volume should become compulsory reading in schools; here one learns more about the lifeworld of displaced persons than can ever be conveyed in the classroom.«
Dagmar Klein, Gießener Allgemeine

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