{"product_id":"star-111-isbn-9781681378534","title":"Star 111","description":"\u003cb\u003eA New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2024!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA panoramic and picaresque novel of the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall is told through the experiences of a young man making his way in a time of constant change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA bestseller in Germany and winner of the prestigous Leipzig Prize.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eStar 111\u003c\/i\u003e (the name of a popular East German transistor radio) begins with the world turned upside down. It is the fall of 1989. The communist government of the GDR is losing its grip on power. Carl Bischoff, a very young man, trained as a bricklayer, now a college student, is abruptly recalled by his parents to the small town in the middle of nowhere where he grew up. His hardworking unprotesting parents inform him, that with the border open, they intend to leave the country and check into a West German refugee camp. Will Carl to look after the house and take in the mail? They promise at some point to be in touch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeserted by his parents, Carl has no idea what to do. Then he packs the family car and heads to Berlin, where he joins a group of squatters led by a shepherd with a goat. Carl participates in the anarchic life of an anarchist commune, and keeps his distance too. He has all sorts of things to learn about himself and others. He is hungry for sex and love and sometimes simply hungry. He worries about his parents. He wants to be a poet. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eStar 111\u003c\/i\u003e is a story about unforeseen ends and new beginnings, about different kinds of families, biological and improvised, and one innocent young aspiring poet in pursuit of experience at a moment in history when everything is about to change and nobody knows how. A tender, entrancing, and comic tale of youth and adventure, it is a book that looks back on the history of our time to ask the most fundamental of question: what does it mean to lead a good life?\u003ci\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003eA rich, vivid tale about new beginnings and fractured utopias.\" —Ángel Gurría-Quintana, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times \u003c\/i\u003e\"A Best Book of 2023, Fiction in Translation (UK Edition)\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003eThe fragmentary style of \u003ci\u003eStar 111\u003c\/i\u003e recalls much of the later work of Grass [...] The great ingenuity of Seiler’s narrative lies in the displacement that it effects between Carl’s exploits and those of his distant parents, from whom he receives regular letters written in a floridly formal style.\" —Stuart Walton, \u003ci\u003eThe Hong Kong Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003eThe author’s shimmering, ironic and musical prose—impeccably translated by Tess Lewis—captures a moment both archaic and profoundly real. Utopian and matter-of-fact, it is both timeless and obsessed with the minutiae of its time.\" —Karen Leeder, \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Seiler's dry wit and command of language, which can itself be musical, keep the pages humming.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There aren’t many books that can be cited as the missing link between Uwe Johnson’s \u003ci\u003eAnniversaries\u003c\/i\u003e and Roberto Bolaño’s \u003ci\u003eThe Savage Detectives,\u003c\/i\u003e and still fewer that could live up to the comparison, but Lutz Seiler (with impeccable assistance from Tess Lewis) makes it look easy. \u003ci\u003eStar 111\u003c\/i\u003e is a brilliant, immersive, sometimes funny, slyly moving book with a main character who walks through the new reality he finds himself in like an astronaut exploring alone beneath a strange, harsh, beautiful sun. A stellar achievement.\"  —Will Ashon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeiler crafts a fascinating intergenerational exploration of German reunification, as Carl comes to see his parents as people with wants and dreams like him, “as if they’d only just begun to exist.” It’s an exceptional story of fresh starts. —Publisher's Weekly \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"These days, it’s hard to envision what Seiler’s translator, Tess Lewis, calls “the heady atmosphere of hope and disorientation” that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Luckily, Seiler’s STAR 111 brings it all vividly back.\" — Alida Becker, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Books Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305450066149,"sku":"NP9781681378534","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681378534.jpg?v=1767737173","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/star-111-isbn-9781681378534","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}