Prefatory Note
Introduction: A Brief Discourse (Mostly) on Method
1. On a Difficult Book to Write, Literary Facts, and Grünbein's America
2. The Greatest American Poet of the German Language
3. Coming of Age as an American Poet in Germany
4. "Jews, Real Jews"
5. Writing America as a German Poet
6. The German Grünbein's German America
7. The End of the Affair
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

"A work of literary and cultural criticism, this books enhances our understanding of present-day Germany through the prism of one of its most acclaimed cultural figures: Dresden native Durs Grèunbein (1962-) - the most widely translated and globally honored contemporary German poet, and the only one to have been hailed as the Berlin Republic's "national poet." More specifically, this book traces the persisting inability of German high culture (not to mention its 'popular' and fringe avatars), as epitomized by Grèunbein, to purge itself of ideological toxins that leach into the mainstream from centuries-old prejudices and antagonisms revolving around Germany's love-hate bond with America as well as its ostensibly enduring suspicion and antipathy toward Jews"--

Michael Eskin has taught at University of Cambridge, UK and Columbia University, USA. He is a critic, translator, philosopher and publisher, and his books include Ethics and Dialogue in the Works of Levinas, Bakhtin, Mandel'shtam, and Celan (2000), Poetic Affairs: Celan, Grünbein, Brodsky (2008), The DNA of Prejudice: On the One and the Many (2010), Descartes der Metapher: Neun Tauchgänge ins Dichterdasein Durs Grünbeins (2022), and Childhood: An Essay on the Human Condition (2024).