»If You Knew What I Know«
The Author of My Life
An homage to Uwe Johnson and a declaration of love to reading
»If You Knew What I Know« / »Wenn du wüsstest, was ich weiß ...«
The Author of My Life
An homage to Uwe Johnson and a declaration of love to reading
When Charly Hübner left home at the age of 19 to work in the theatre, he took a book that would go on to shape his life like no other. Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries told him stories of hardship, happiness, and politics, of the forces that determine the private lives of individuals. Now, in a fictional conversation with his idol, Hübner tells Johnson what has happened in the world since his untimely death. And how much we can learn about the here and now from his...
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When Charly Hübner left home at the age of 19 to work in the theatre, he took a book that would go on to shape his life like no other. Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries told him stories of hardship, happiness, and politics, of the forces that determine the private lives of individuals. Now, in a fictional conversation with his idol, Hübner tells Johnson what has happened in the world since his untimely death. And how much we can learn about the here and now from his Anniversaries.
World literature from the provincial backwaters of Mecklenburg? For the teenager Charly Hübner, that idea was completely new, at once implausible and explosive. Was the region south of the Baltic coast able to provide the backdrop to a truly great story? He decided it was. Because Anniversaries had Hübner rapt from the first second. The exuberance with which Johnson turned his life and those of his friends into a universal, literary life, but with a hand that was at turns calm, tough, tender and wise, produced a massive pull, leading Hübner to place Johnson among those great authors who could make entire epochs out of anecdotes, and who stay contemporary forever.
World literature from the provincial backwaters of Mecklenburg? For the teenager Charly Hübner, that idea was completely new, at once implausible and explosive. Was the region south of the Baltic coast able to provide the backdrop to a truly great story? He decided it was. Because Anniversaries had Hübner rapt from the first second. The exuberance with which Johnson turned his life and those of his friends into a universal, literary life, but with a hand that was at turns calm, tough, tender and wise, produced a massive pull, leading Hübner to place Johnson among those great authors who could make entire epochs out of anecdotes, and who stay contemporary forever.
2024, 125 pages
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Year of Publication: 2018
Max Frisch, Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2018
Sketches of an Accident/Sketches of an Accident Victim
In his Sketchbook, 1966–1971, Max Frisch published fragments of a story under the title »Sketches of an Accident«. In these fragments, the doctor Viktor travels with his lover, Marlies, a specialist in Romance studies, to Provence. An accident occurs, and the woman dies. Viktor is never again involved in an accident, but the rest of his life is influenced by his...
Year of Publication: 2016
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2016
Sketch of an Accident Victim
Johnson wrote this work as a 70th birthday present for Max Frisch, the “biographer”, the depicter of the irreconcilability of identity and the official image of an individual....
Rights sold to:
Sweden (Faethon)
Year of Publication: 2010
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2010
I Didn’t Want to Leave Any Questions Unasked
In Concomitants, Johnson's account of his experiences as a writer in both East and West, Uwe Johnson describes the failure of a book he had set out to write in 1963 and in which he wanted to document the work of Fluchthelfer (»escape helpers«), who aided people in fleeing the GDR. For that purpose, he conducted interviews about the Why and How of their work with members of...
Year of Publication: 2009
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 2009
»for means of brutal communication«
In 1959, just after Uwe Johnson’s relocation to West berlin and the publication of his debut novel Speculations About Jakob, the correspondence and friendship between Johnson and Hans Magnus Enzensberger commences. Over the course of eight years they communicate about the situation of literature and politics and discuss the scopes of political activism. At the same time,...
Year of Publication: 1992
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1992
Speculations About Jakob
When Speculations About Jakob went to the presses in June 1959, its author moved from the GDR to West-Berlin. He was aware that this book, which contradicted the official...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), France (Gallimard), Chinese simplex rights (The Writers‘ Publishing House), Korea (Golden Bough), Bulgaria (Agata-A), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Mladinska knjiga)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Iter), Portuguese rights (Arcadia), Italy (Feltrinelli), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Japan (Hakusuisha), Poland (Czytelnik), Hungary (Horizont)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)
Year of Publication: 1983
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1983
Anniversaries
In Anniversaries, Uwe Johnson develops a unique panorama of German history in the 20th century – a »literary world trip« (Reinhard Baumgart) that starts with the story of a German...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (New York Review of Books Classics), Chinese simplex rights (The Writers‘ Publishing House), France (Gallimard), Italy (L'Orma), Netherlands (Van Oorschot), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Serbia (Laguna)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)
Year of Publication: 1975
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1975
Berlin Things
Berlin Things, published in 1975, is Uwe Johnson’s first volume of essays for which he compiled texts written between 1961 and 1971 that had largely been published elsewhere previously. Most of the texts were written on issues of day-to-day politics and they show Johnson as an alert intellectual who intervenes in politics with his journalistic research. Johnson...
Year of Publication: 1965
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1965
Two Views
Two Views is set in the divided city of Berlin in 1961. Alternating between the two perspectives of East and West, the story is told through the eyes of West German photographer B. and East...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), UK (Jonathan Cape), Spanish world rights (Errata Naturae), France (Gallimard), Italy (Feltrinelli), Netherlands (De Bezige Bij), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Cappelen), Korea (Jeoungum-sha), Japan (Shuei Sha), Serbia (Prosveta), Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad)
Year of Publication: 1964
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1964
Karsch and Other Prose
It is time to revaluate Uwe Johnson's five prose texts contained in this volume, which were first published in 1964. Many readers and critics believed it to be a compilation of stories –...
Rights sold to:
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Tiempo Contemporaneo), Sweden (Svenska Bokförlaget, Bonniers)
Year of Publication: 1961
Uwe JohnsonYear of Publication: 1961
The Third Book about Achim
In 1961, shortly before the construction of the wall that cut East and West Berlin off from each other and turned the border through Germany into a militarily guarded one, Uwe Johnson published...
Rights sold to:
Croatia (Ljevak)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), UK (Jonathan Cape), Spanish world rights (Plaza & Janès), Portuguese rights (Arcadia), France (Gallimard), Italy (Feltrinelli), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Gyldendal), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Tammi), Japan (Shuei Sha), Slovenia (Cankarjeva Zalozba), Greece (Indiktos)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV)