Product Description
The ritual of granting awards is an important instrument of power in the cultural industry. The book focuses on the most significant award for German-language literature: the Georg-Büchner Award. It describes, for example, the interaction between the history and the respective societal function of the Büchner Award and German history during the period from the Weimar Republic to the Berlin Republic. Thus, the result is not only a multifaceted portrait of an important impetus in German literary life, but also a sociogram of the cultural industry in general. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Witty & Nostalgic Murdery Mystery
The novel was set in Austria, mainly at a living facility for the elderly, so everyone was called either Herr or Frau instead of Mr. or Mrs.The language did not hinder the telling of this story.Instead, the language gave an authenticity to the story that it wouldn't have had otherwise.

The characters were quite wonderful and well-rounded.Even the characters a reader would find unsavory had a realness about them.

I loved this book and would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys a murder mystery with a bit of wit, humor, nostolgia and sadness.I cannot wait until Frau James publishes the second book in this new series.

A full review will be posted on my blog, Literary R&R, later today.You can visit it at [...]

A fresh look at an aging population, and a mystery to boot!
This murder mystery takes place in an assisted living facility, where an increasing number of the elderly live out their days. In some ways, the horror of murder and death itself was muted as most of the "inmates", as James calls them, expect to die under the roof of the Haus im Wald (House in the Woods). In essence, death wasn't unusual; murder was. One act of violence throws a suspicious hue to all of the "natural deaths" and illnesses that follow, tempering the reader's interpretation of the events that unfold.

The sense of despair, late romances, and attempts to live and retain some sort of control reminded me greatly of Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, though these characteristics of the aging were intensified and expanded upon in A Place to Die. Due to their isolation, they often forget about the outside world even as they themselves are forgotten, and this novel captures all of the emotions and struggles that come with that and the difficulty in retaining one's independence as age, infirmity, and strong-willed caretakers attempt to stay one's hand. At certain points, my frustration with the matrons of the facility was almost unbearable, perhaps because such highhanded figures do actually exist.

As the book shifts between three points of view, and about a dozen suspects are introduced, my initial fear was that of mass chaos as I attempt to remember who everyone is. Many of them begin as caricatures of themselves, stereotypes of the youthful old man, the crotchety gentleman, the nagging fishwife, and the long-suffering husband. What happens as the novel progresses is that we see depth and human emotions that give each a distinct persona in the mind's eye, thus making it much easier to keep track of the many goings-on over the course of a mere four days.

As a murder mystery, the novel succeeds in keeping the reader terribly confused. There were many points in the story where I pointed a finger at one potential murderer or another, especially as certain truths are brought to light, but then something else would occur to direct the blame elsewhere for another chapter or two. The final reveal was almost anticlimactic, but everything was explained in such a way that I still found it satisfying.

With little to no background in German, it took a while to get used to the insertion of certain phrases and the use of German titles ("Frau" and "Herr"). That in itself was fine. There were a handful of sentences in the book that are a bit awkwardly worded, and the same verbs for speech are often repeated, but as a whole, the text flows comfortably and allows the reader to become engrossed in the story without frequent verbal tics getting in the way. For instance, the overuse of the word "said" only came to my attention when I started deliberately looking for it.

With a background in pharmacy, my senses perked up with the mention of various prescription medications, and I was thankful that the doses were believable, and the risks discussed are accurate. My one bone of contention is that the names of generic products were capitalized. I imagine that something like that wouldn't really bother those outside of healthcare, however, and so I'm letting it go.

This novel does what a good murder mystery should: it keeps your head turning from one direction to another as you try to piece together the real story, only to fail. What sets it apart is that it also achieves what many murder mysteries don't: solid characterizations that humanize the various players and bring them to life.

Stimulated Outlet Book Reviews

Fun Read!
A Place to Die is a fun read with intriguing characters, humor, and an unusual setting. I read this in one sitting. It was really quite refreshing to read a murder mystery that takes place in an assisted living home, with characters of middle age and older. I really enjoyed the way Ms. James developed her characters, their relationships, and their different outlooks on life.

I am looking forward to her second Inspector Georg Buchner mystery.

Awonderfully witty, lyrical and literary whodunit
A Place to Die is the wonderful debut volume in a new series of literary detective novels, introducing the sweetly charming Viennese detective, Inspector George Buchner, the cheerful Eleanor Fabian (a would-be English/American Miss Marple), and her irritable and irritated husband Franz. It's a page-tuner, yes, but you wouldn't want to turn the pages of this book TOO quickly: the prose is too lovely, the psychological insights too interesting, and the comic scenes are too funny to want to rush through it. Among other pleasures of the book are the all-too-real, half-funny, half-sad interactions between Eleanor and Franz, whose marriage has reached a point of mutual stale annoyance, yielding moments of laugh-out-loud amusement for the reader. Each chapter starts with a lyrical meditation on the nature of life, death, and that perilous progression we all have to take from one to the other, one way or another. A wonderful book: I am very much looking forward to the sequel, which promises to include scenes in Berlin as well as Vienna. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Woyzeck and Other Writings
Buchner did not succeed in completing Woyzeck before the onset of his fatal illness. Four drafts of the play have survived, containing groups of scenes and scene fragments, some apparently written in such haste that numerous passages are nearly illegible. The final draft is clearly a revision of earlier attempts, and it therefore must take precedence over them when one attemptd to reconstruct the play without seriously violating the author's intentions....The third draft consists of two scenes, and we do not know where Buchner intended to place them in his final version. Instead of incorporating them arbitrarily into the reconstruction, as numerous editors have done, I offer them as "Additional Scenes'" because they are simply too good to leave out entirely....The well-known "Early Draft of Scene 9" (Draft 2, Scene 7)has also been included for dramatic value....Buchner's orthography has been modernized, but the colloquial tone of Woyzeck's modified Hessian dialect is preserved. I have omitted several passages that seem hopelessly unclear.
--- from book's "A Note on the Text"

Booklet includes:
Woyseck,
Buchner on Society and Politics,
Excepts from Buchner's Letters,
Excerpts from Der Hessische Landbote
Buchner on Aesthetics,
Except for Buchner's Lenz
plus a Vocabulary section. ... Read more