University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

When I was a German minor in college, I ended up having to read a lot of German literature that was—to be perfectly honest—boring and impossible to understand. Luckily, when I moved to Austria after I graduated, many of my friends and colleagues there took me under their wing and thrust books into my hands from German and Austrian authors I’d never heard of, but many of whom I came to love. I have Hemma Lexner and her daughter, Linda, to thank as the first people to point me in the direction of Wolf Haas. As far as I’m concerned, the world could always benefit from a little bit of Austrian German and some of Detective Brenner’s Schmäh.

So to whoever happens upon this book, may you discover—as I have—that just because it’s written in German, it doesn’t mean it has to be boring!