The August 2016 issue opens with the selection “Modern German Short Stories.” The first is “The Best Years” by the writer, literary critic and journalist Elke Heidenreich. In the extremely cool relationship between an eighty-year-old mother and a fully mature daughter, during a short joint trip to Italy, an unexpected thaw appears, and it turns out that mother and daughter share a common love experience. Translation by Elena Leenson. “Winter Fish” by Gregor Zander (1968). It doesn’t hurt that successful fishing brings three lonely men together. Translation by Anatoly Egorshev. Lutz Seiler (1963) - “The Call”. Passing on aesthetics and answering the question “Beautiful,” the hero falls into a kind of trance and turns into himself as a small child, who once called for his twin girlfriends and with this call at the same time seemed to sing “his native village, my world, his loneliness and his own voice.” Translation by Anatoly Egorshev. Story by Christa Wolf (1929–2011) “August” translated by Nina Fedorova. An elderly widower, a tourist bus driver, recalls while driving an orphan's post-war childhood in a tuberculosis hospital. “On Rollerblades” by writer and director Torsten Schulz (1959). On the sudden whim of a paralyzed mother, her son takes her across Germany to celebrate the birthday of his father, who left for another woman half a century ago. But, as it turned out upon arrival at the place, time did not spare either the father or the other woman... Translation by Daria Andreeva.

Foreign Literature, 2016 No. 08