As revelatory as it is disconcerting, and grounded in an encyclopedic knowledge, this book offers an eye-opening analysis of a major contemporary poet, Durs Grünbein, and of the cultural discourses of the Berlin Republic. Eskin uncovers an anti-Americanism and related antisemitism hiding in plain sight in Grünbeins oeuvre, and trenchantly asks how and why this aspect of the work of a poet so prominent in current German letters could be overlooked. Timely, cogent, uncomfortable yet compelling, this is a book that everyone must read to better understand our current troubled times. * Benjamin Morgan, Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Fellow and Tutor in German, Worcester College, University of Oxford, UK * With empathy, a fine eye for structural correlations, and sorrow, Michael Eskin brings out the fraught historical analogies, moral equivalences, and sedimented prejudices that mar the work of a great contemporary German poet. Durs Grünbeins most effective English-language advocate is also his most stringent critic. And thats as it should be. * Haun Saussy, University Professor, University of Chicago, USA; author of Are We Comparing Yet? * This timely book, which chronicles the encounter between a critic and a poet, is as much a memoir as it is a book of criticism and should be read as a meditation on German culture today. It is a reminder that despite the efforts put into reckoning with the past, ideologies long declared dead can reappear in unexpected places. * Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA; author of The Language of Thieves: My Familys Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate *
