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XIII. Intermediate Literary Reader Honigmann, Barbara. Eine Liebe aus nichts: A German Reader. 1991. Ed. Marion Gehlker and Birte Christ. Contemporary German Texts and Contexts, 1. New Haven: Yale UR 2010. Paper, xi + 255 pp. $35.00. «www.yalepress.yale.edu»
The goal of the Contemporary German Texts and Contexts series is to help intermediate students read contemporary texts of moderate difficulty and discuss their historical and cultural contexts via supplemental information, vocabulary lists, language-in-context exercises, guiding questions, and activities for close reading, literary analysis, and authentic communication. Eine Liebe aus nichts narrates a daughter's return to Germany to attend her father's funeral and the attendant coming-to-terms with the father-daughter relationship. It treats themes of familial love and alienation, Jews in German society, Heimat and Heimatlosigkeit, emigration, and exile. With this reader, the editors have made a valuable contribution to the teaching of German language and culture via an authentic text.
Honigmann's novella has been rendered accessible to learners by dividing it into six approximately equal parts, which comprise the front half of the book. The text appears on odd-numbered pages, and vocabulary glosses and historical, cultural, and geographical annotations (Info-Ecken) appear opposite the relevant text on the even-numbered pages. The...