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While the first decade after the fall of the Berlin wall was marked by the challenges of unification and the often difficult process of reconciling East and West German experiences, many Germans expected that the "new century" would achieve "normalization." The essays in this volume take a closer look at Germany's new normalcy and argue for a more nuanced picture that considers the ruptures as well as the continuities. Germany's new generation of writers is more diverse than ever before, and their texts often not only speak of a Germany that is multicultural but also take a more playful attitude toward notions of identity. Written with an eye toward similar and dissimilar developments and traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, this volume balances overviews of significant trends in present-day cultural life with illustrative analyses of individual writers and texts.

Katharina Gerstenberger is Professor of German and Head of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She earned her PhD from Cornell University in 1993. She is the author of Truth to Tell: German Women's Autobiographies and Turn-of-the-Century Culture (2000). She also publishes on contemporary literature and identity.

Patricia Herminghouse is the Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor emerita of German Studies at the University of Rochester. She has written widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German literature, the social contexts of women's writing, German identity, and German émigrés in nineteenth-century America.