The Short End of the Sonnenallee

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Thomas Brussigs classic German satire, translated into English for the first time and introduced by Jonathan Franzen, is a comedic, moving account of life in East Berlin before the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Thomas Brussig's slim novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a satire set, literally, on the Sonnenallee, the famed "boulevard of the sun" in East Berlin.

Within this boulevard lives Michael, an adolescent who faces daily ridicule whenever he steps out of his apartment building and comes into view of the observation platform on the West side. "Look, a real Zonie. Can we take your picture" Hopelessly in love with the most beautiful girl on the street, Michael is batted away in favour of the Western boys who are free to cross the border. What chance does Michael have, and how much trouble will he get into by pursuing her

Laugh-out-loud funny and unabashedly silly, Brussig's novel follows the bizarre, grotesque quotidian details of life in the German Democratic Republic. As this new translation shows, the ideas at its heart freedom, democracy and lifes fundamental hilarity hold great relevance for today.

Reviews

One of the most brilliant satirical novels about life in East Berlin, in the shadow of the wall New York Times

Gentle comedy The fullness of Eastern lives, and their human ordinariness despite the emptiness and abnormality of the background against which they were lived is the subject of Brussigs funny, rueful book Telegraph

The slim episodic novel The Short End of the Sonnenallee, which was set around the mid-1980s among East Berlin adolescents and evokes their world of feelings and experiences right down to the unfussy syntax, is the purest, brightest, most tender poetry of resistance Die Zeit

Author Bio

Thomas Brussig is the author of nine novels, including Wasserfarben and Helden wie wir. He also wrote the screenplays for two film adaptations of his novels Helden wie wir and Sonnenallee. Born in East Berlin, Brussig now divides his time between Berlin and Mecklenburg. Jonathan Franzen's work includes four novels (The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How To Be Alone), a memoir (The Discomfort Zone), and, most recently, The Kraus Project. He is recognised as one of the best American writers of our age and has won many awards. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California. Jenny Watson is an associate professor of German at Marquette University. Since receiving her PhD in German and Scandinavian literature, Watson has published many books and articles, including German Milwaukee, "Selma Lagerlof: Surface and Depth," and Scandinavia and Germany: Cross-Cultural Currents. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.