Theodor Fontane, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Gunther Grass, and Patrick SÜ skind are among the writers examined in this comprehensive introduction to the development of the German novel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Including a chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion conveys the vitality and complexity of the modern German novel, and the debates surrounding it.

Chronology; Preface; A note concerning translations and bibliographical data; 1. The German novel in the long twentieth century Graham Bartram; 2. Contexts of the novel: society, politics and culture in German-speaking Europe, 1870 to the present Lynn Abrams; 3. The novel in Wilhelmine Germany: from realism to satire Alan Bance; 4. Gender anxiety and the shaping of the self in some modernist writers (Musil, Hesse, Hofmannsthal, Jahnn) Ritchie Robertson; 5. Franz Kafka: the radical modernist Stanley Corngold; 6. Modernism and the Bildungsroman: Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain Russell A. Berman; 7. Apocalypse and utopia in the Austrian novel of the 1930s: Hermann Broch and Robert Musil Graham Bartram and Philip Payne; 8. Images of the city Burton Pike; 9. Women writers in the Weimar era Elizabeth Boa; 10. The First World War and its aftermath in the German novel Michael Minden; 11. The German novel during the Third Reich Ronald Speirs; 12. History, memory, fiction after the Second World War Dagmar Barnouw; 13. Aesthetics and resistance: Böll, Grass, Weiss J. H. Reid; 14. The kleiner Mann and modern times - from Fallada to Walser Anthony Waine; 15. The 'critical' novel in the GDR Patricia Herminghouse; 16. Identity and authenticity in Swiss and Austrian novels of the postwar era: Max Frisch and Peter Handke Michael Butler; 17. Subjectivity and women's writing of the 1970s and early 1980s Allyson Fiddler; 18. The German postmodern novel Paul Michael Lützeler.