The Short Story in German in the Twenty-First Century

Since the 1990s, the short story has re-emerged in the German-speaking world as a vibrant literary genre, serving as a medium for both literary experimentation and popular forms. Authors like Judith Hermann and Peter Stamm have had a significant impact on German-language literary culture and, in translation, on literary culture in the UK and USA. This volume analyzes German-language short-story writing in the twenty-first century, aiming to establish a framework for further research into individual authors as well as key themes and formal concerns. An introduction discusses theories of the short-story form and literary-aesthetic questions before surveying broad trends in the twenty-first-century German-language short-story. Six thematic chapters follow, offering an overview of key developments in the genre particular to the contemporary German-language context, examining performance and performativity,Berlin and crime stories, and engagement with earlier forms such as fairy tales, modernist short prose, and the novella. Seven author-focused chapters then represent the rich field of short-story writing in Germany, Austria, andSwitzerland, and offer a variety of theoretical approaches to individual stories and collections. The volume concludes with two original translations exemplifying the breadth of contemporary German-language short-story writing.BR> LYN MARVEN and ANDREW PLOWMAN are both Senior Lecturers in German at the University of Liverpool. KATE ROY is Adjunct Professor in Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Franklin University Switzerland.