Rewriting Germany from the Margins: "Other" German Literature of the 1980s and 1990s

Petra Fachinger. Rewriting Germany from the Margins: "Other" German Literature of the 1980s and 1990s. Montreal: McGill-Queens UP, 2001. viii +159.

Petra Fachinger's account of "marginal" writing in contemporary Germany expands on recent works on alterity by Leslie Adelson, Sander Gilman, and Jeffrey Peck, providing an important new addition to the growing body of scholarship dealing with minority discourse and literature in the German speaking context. In contrast to previous contributions, Fachinger's book examines literary texts by writers of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, including German-Jewish, German-Turkish, and East German authors. All of these different writers, Fachinger argues, "endeavour to resist marginalization while simultaneously experiencing or even celebrating the margin as site of 'empowerment'" (18). In this comparative approach lies the provocative potential of Fachinger's book.

Fachinger pays close attention to the particular sociohistorical context of each minority culture and its distinct reaction against German culture. Instead of attempting...