he Contemporary German-Language Novel and a World without the Other

This review considers The German-language Novel of the Turn of the 21st Century: The Problem of the Other (2019), a new monograph by Galina Vasilyevna Kuchumova. The reviewer focuses on the methodological peculiarities of the book which, according to her, are conditioned by the researcher’s attention to the postmodern philosophy of the death of the subject. The reviewer maintains that the methodology proves effective when studying the peculiarities of the German-language novel of the past few decades, as its emergence was influenced by the postmodern thought. Additionally, the reviewer emphasises the original approach the author of the monograph employs to solve the theoretical problem of the Other as compared to the phenomenological tradition of its interpretation. In Kuchumova’s book, the Other is not only another person who the subject interacts with, but also the phenomena and events which form the personality and are formed by them in their turn, and include home, art, the past, war, death, disease, etc. Next, the reviewer considers the concept behind the composition of the work in question. It is established that the structure of the book determines the concept of the work which aims at describing the strategies of structuring the subject realised in the German-language novel of the new turn of the century. Also, the reviewer puts forward some discussion points concerning the genre nature of Neue Mitte by Jochen Schimmang. The reviewer concludes that Kuchumova’s work creates a comprehensive picture of the issues and themes considered by German-language prose.