The perfect book for paranoid times, “I” introduces us to W, a mere hanger-on in East Berlin’s postmodern underground literary scene. All is not as it appears, though, as W is actually a Stasi informant who reports to the mercurial David Bowie lookalike, Major Feuerbach. But are political secrets all that W is seeking in the underground labyrinth of Berlin? In fact, what W really desires are his own lost memories, the self undone by surveillance: his ‘I.’ First published in Germany in 1993 and hailed as an instant classic, “I” is a black comedy about state power and the seductions of surveillance. Its penetrating vision seems especially relevant today in our world of cameras on every train, bus, and corner. This is an engrossing read, available now for the first time in English. “[Hilbig writes as] Edgar Allan Poe could have written if he had been born in Communist East Germany.”—LA Review of Books

Already acclaimed for providing unique insight into some of history’s greatest wrongs—and today’s issues of mass surveillance, neofascism, and the individual’s role in society—what does Wolfgang Hilbig have to add to contemporary questions about gender? A lot, it turns out. Acclaimed as one of Hilbig’s major works, The Females finds the lauded and legendarily irascible author focusing his labyrinthine, mercurial mind on how unequal societies can pervert sexuality and destroy a healthy, productive understanding of gender. It begins with a factory laborer who ogles women in secret on the job. When those same women mysteriously vanish from their small town, the worker sets out on a uniquely Hilbiggian, hallucinatory journey to find them. Powerful and at times disturbing, The Females leaves us with some of the most challenging, radical, and enduring insights of any novel from the GDR

Doppelgängers, a murderer’s guilt, pulp noir, fanatical police, and impossible romances — these are the pieces from which German master Wolfgang Hilbig builds a divided nation battling its demons. Delving deep into the psyches of both East and West Germany, The Sleep of the Righteous reveals a powerful, apocalyptic account of the century-defining nation’s trajectory from 1945 to 1989. From a youth in a war-scarred industrial town to wearying labor as a factory stoker, surreal confrontations with the Stasi, and, finally, a conflicted escape to the West, Hilbig creates a cipher that is at once himself and so many of his fellow Germans. Evoking the eerie bleakness of films like Tarkovsky’s Stalker and The Lives of Others, this titan of German letters combines the Romanticism of Poe with the absurdity of Kafka to create a visionary, somber statement on the ravages of history and the promises of the future

Ця книжка не повідомить читачеві нічого нового ні про звірів, ні про птахів, бо вона не про них. Вона про Поворот 1989/90 і наступне Об'єднання Німеччини, про труднощі суспільних трансформацій та соціально ангажовану літературу цієї доби в спектрі від фейлетону до нео-авангарду. Про собак Павлова та політичних вертиголовів, прикордонних псів, космонавтів і, звісно, про мову

Герой известного романа Вольфганга Хильбига «Временное пристанище», подобно героям Кафки, постоянно чувствует присутствие неведомой силы в своей жизни. Эта сила зорко следит за ним и направляет его действия. Запертый в некоем промежуточном пространстве, промежуточном состоянии, герой мечется между двумя городами, двумя возлюбленными, пока окончательно не перестает понимать, кто или что движет им…