Maxim Biller’s first collection of stories made a splash because he described the reality of Jewish life in Germany in a heretofore unseen manner: with biting sarcasm yet full of affection and with a keen sense for the comic tragedy of an everyday life that can never be ordinary. Maxim Biller’s characters are the survivors of the Holocaust and their children and grandchildren: lonely elderly people, paranoid and megalomaniac cultural cosmopolites or businessmen. Especially the younger generation is torn between feelings of guilt and protest against their parents, torn between the fight against honest anti-Semites and hypocritical philo-Semites, always looking for a Jewish identity. With their unsolemn tone these stories stand in the tradition of American writers like Philip Roth – but above all these are stories that aim directly at our heart.
