‘the scope of this Companion is vast’, Modern Language Review

This new edition of Henry and Mary Garland's classic Oxford Companion to German Literature substantially revises and extends its coverage. Designed to be a reliable source of information on the whole sweep of literature from German‐speaking countries from the eighth century onwards, the Companion now comes right up to the mid–1990s, including recent works such as Günter Grass's controversial novel about the unification of East and West Germany, Ein weites Feld (1995). The entries cover authors and their major works, as well as historical, intellectual, and cultural backgrounds. Subjects include Kafka and Kleist, Werther and Christa Wolf, Nietzsche and the Nibelungenlied, Jung and Jelinek, Rilke and Die Reformation. For this new edition much of the original material has been reworked in the light of recent scholarship, and many completely new entries have been added, for example those on Rose Ausländer, Günter de Bruyn, and Yiddish.

This is an indispensable reference book for everyone with an interest in the literature and literary culture of the German‐speaking world.