I too have been urged by friends to write a book about my youth. In 1981, at the age of 18, I decided to reunite with my father and immigrated from the USA to the DDR. I was later expelled in 1986 for political reasons and lived elsewhere in Europe until my return in 1991 following the Fall of The Berlin Wall. I remained there until April of 2000 at which time I returned to the USA.
This book brought back some memories despite the difference in time. (The Author went to the DDR in 1948 at the age of 8. I went to the DDR in 1981 at the age of 18) I had no idea that there had been any other Americans that shared an even remotely similar story and Joel Agee does a great job of telling his story with far more emotion and prose than I ever could.
The book is a wonderful insight into life in a country that no longer exists...from the view point of an American child/young adult. I especially recommend it to anyone who has grown-up or lived in a country where they felt they did not belong. In my opinion, Agee entered the DDR in its infancy and left just as its darkest period began. I entered The DDR at the height of the Reagan Era and witnessed its collapse from within. Two historic phases. I only wish that both of us could have witnessed more.

I read Joel Agee's book "Twelve Years. An American Boyhood in East Germany" in German and in English and tried very hard to get a used copy of his first american edition - without any success. Finally, he is back again with a new edition, and allthough my english is not as good as it should be, I just want to write down some words abaout this book. For me who always lived in Western Germany it is one of the most interesting books about the communist part of Germany, the GDR (in german it's DDR). It was not meant to be a political book, but it has become one anyhow. The reader is not only enabled to follow a very private story of growing up as a boy (including all the problems most man - since they have been boys - know and prefer not to talk about it), but to understand how culture and everyday life had been transformed by the communist ideology in a way that could be critizised only by children: some simply laughed about it and learned, that even only to laugh could have negative consequences. And getting some idea of how adults did discuss the political penetration of everyday life makes you feel glad to be grown up in a non communist state - but still you can understand that this adults they had their living like others had, and that they were fathers and mothers having everyday problems like others had. This book indeed touched and pleased me. It is a marvellous written autobiographical kind of literature. If you'll read it, it will take a part of your heart and your intellect to. You'll have to love it.

I'm delighted to see that Joel Agee's memoir is now available again, and I look forward, with pleasure, to re-reading it. In beautiful prose, Agee not only reveals the pains and pleasures of his growing up (it could be anywhere), but gives us a portrait, from an unusual angle, of life in the newly formed German Democratic Republic, i.e.,communist East Germany, during the period 1948-1960. The historian will find the book of particular interest, but so will anyone else who enjoys entering the unsual world of a sensitive young man with a terrific eye for detail, and who is frank about his inner life.

Agee returned to the U.S. just as the amazing 60s were about to roll their thunder, and I can't wait to read his follow-up memoir, his "American Manhood" in another world far removed from the East Berlin of his youth.

This was just a great book. No books that I've read on this subject have been quite so compelling!

The author mesmerizes you with the simplicity and eloquence of her writing. She moves you with her childhood, her courage in the camps and the power of her spirit in returning to choose life again.

Readers who seek a comprehensive collection of Robert Musil's work - exclusive of his opus, "The Man Without Qualities" - will be well-served by this edition. It contains most of his short stories, some of his non-fiction writings, and most importantly, his first novel, "Young Torless" - an early look at Musil's craft which also introduces us to the themes contained in his later works. The bare plot of "Torless" reads deceptively like one of those bad teen dramas on the WB network: it is the tale of secrets and betrayals among schoolboys, here in the turn-of-the-century Austro-Hungarian Empire. But in Musil's hands, as always, it is a work of deep philosophical ideas; he uses the relationships among the boys to explore the nature of power - how it is gained, how it corrupts, how it destroys. We are required to confront the problem of truth and the fallacy of objective morality. The disillusionment that Young Torless feels when his teacher is unable to explain the theory of imaginary numbers - telling his pupil that he must merely "accept" that they exist - is the same skepticism which Musil and the other modernist writers felt for all ideas, whether science, history, politics or faith. It was through literature that Musil believed that he might bring order to the world, that he might re-create ideas. For any reader who wishes an introduction to the variety of Robert Musil's work, this is a good start.

Friedrich Durrenmatt, The Pledge (Berkeley, 1957)

While Durrenmatt is a well-known and well-respected author, it took making a film of one of his books to get most people in the States actually reading him. This new film tie-in translation of The Pledge is a great way to start, and will hopefully lead a lot more Americans to a lot more Durrenmatt.

The Pledge is the tale of Matthai, a Swiss police inspector who becomes convinced during the investigation of a child's murder that the cops have got the wrong man. He promises the victim's mother that he will find the killer, and that promise eventually leads to complete and total obsession. The novel, told by Matthai's former superior over a long auto journey and dinner, leads exactly where you think it will, and then throws in a twist so nasty it's almost painful to read. Agee's translation was completed with an eye firmly on the readability factor, and this one goes relatively quickly (especially for a modern European novel); the payoff is well worth the time spent on the setup. Absolutely fantastic, and will cause me to have to revise my Best-of-2001 list. Very highly recommended. **** 1/2

I was looking for a book on a recent business trip and stumbled across this short novel. In between all the normal books that populate airport bookstores, I found this little gem. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the tale of obsession. I can definitely see why they would want to make a movie from this.

Stunning novel of obsession set in Switzerland from the 1940's to the 1950's. The character of Matthias was so well drawn I felt like he was someone I knew. Forget everything you ever knew about crime novels. This is a book that many of today's top criminal thriller novelists could learn from. I read it in 2 days, even getting to work late one day for having stayed up so late reading it. I couldn't put it down.

The film is equally dark and chilling, with only a handful of changes to the plot mechanisms that made the story more cinematic.

This book gives one a glimpse of a painters genius as seen through the eyes of a poet. Rilke possesses the poetic sensitivity to shed some light on Cezannes paintings. This along with Delacroixs Journal and Van Goghs Letters to Theo really afford one a literary appreciation of the great European artists.

The encounter with the work of Cezanne was one of the milestones in the life of the poet Rilke. The letters which are collected here show why. Rilke, like Cezanne, was a man who was religious in an unconventional way. He was not interested in any particular concept of God, but in the process of discerning the divine in the sheer existence of things as they are: "All talk is misunderstanding. Insight is just in work." What he admired most in Cezanne's work was his "devout objectivity", the ability to let objects speak for themselves without the intellectual interference by the artist and without preconceived notions. Rilke felt that when Cezanne painted the mountain Sainte Victoire, for example, he wanted to show the essence of the mountain, the mountain pure and simple, nothing more, nothing less.

The German edition of the Letters on Cezanne contains an excellent afterword which quotes the philosopher Martin Heidegger who wrote, "we come too late for the Gods, and too early for being," meaning we do not live in the safety of believing in the Gods any more, and we do not trust in simply being yet. Rilke was acutely aware of this state of suspension, and the collection of his letters on Cezanne gives us an idea of how Rilke as an artist intended to make sense of this life in suspension.

This is an extraordinary book, one that can be read again and again just as a painting can be looked at again and again.

It seems to me that most literary works on painters miss by miles, and rarely help the viewer see what the painting has to communicate. They're always about things that can be expressed in words-- ideas. They're not about looking, not about seeing, but interpreting in literary terms, too often ignoring the qualities unique to visual images. Rilke on the contrary looked hard at Cezanne, and reflects sensitively and thoughtfully on what he saw. Somehow, and the process is remarkable, his reflections enable one to see the painter's work as clearly as Cezanne hoped his viewers would.

Cezanne struggled to build images of what he alone saw, putting his vision into paint--whether he looked at a mountain, a skull, an apple or a glade dappled with sun, shade and swimmers. The result is moving in a way that eludes literary analysis. This most original or artists has enhanced the spiritual vision of all who've come after him. The world he shows us becomes a different place for painters and everyone with open eyes. Rilke pays Cezanne the greatest homage he can by simply looking. A treasure of a book!