A bilingual anthology of postwar German-language short fiction, presented in Penguin’s Parallel Text format with the original German facing its English translation.

Edited by Richard Newnham, the collection brings together eight writers associated with the extraordinary renewal of the German short story after 1945. The selection includes Heinrich Böll’s ‘Pale Anna’, Ilse Aichinger’s formally ingenious ‘Story in Reverse’, Hans Bender, Gertrud Fussenegger, Gerd Gaiser, Wolfdietrich Schnurre, Reinhard Lettau and Wolfgang Borchert.

The range is excellent: trauma and memory, estrangement, absurdity, private obsession, fractured chronology; all of it works equally well as a language-learning book and as a compact survey of mid-century German short fiction, with the parallel translation making visible not only meaning but the decisions, losses and odd little negotiations involved in moving between languages.

Translations by Christopher Middleton, Christopher Levenson, Roland Hill, Patrick Bridgwater, Dieter Pevsner, John Cowan, Marie Surridge and Paul Dinnage.

Penguin Books, London, first published 1964. Later printing. Paperback. Moderate rubbing, creasing and edge wear to covers, with several surface marks and small abrasions; internally clean and sound. Good condition.