I had to read this book in a German Lit course in college about 10 years ago. I loved it. It is a must read for any fan of "Catcher in the Rye." I loaned it to all my friends, unfortunately, somewhere along the line I never got it back. I have been looking for the book for about 4 years now... that is how great of a story it is. Glad to see it finally available here...

Back in the 70s when all you had to do to fulfill teen requirements was smoke dope & be against the war, author Plenzdorf showed us it just wasn't that easy.

Plenzdorf's Edgar has electrocuted himself & is now caught in the ewige Wiederkehr of all the demons that drove him to suicide. His two saviors are Robinson Crusoe & what he calls "Salinger." (Convinced he can't read every book, he's chosen instead to re-read the same two forever.)

My German roommate in Hamburg, a 19-year-old recovering addict, had this book back in '73, so I got it too. Took me 3 years to read this & the German Der Faenger im Roggen. But Die neuen Leiden is mercifully short & fairly simple, & I can only hope it's on a handful of college German Dept. reading lists. At least it's a bit more humorous than CNS depressant Borchert.

Everyone in the world can be diffrent and it means they aren't mad.Edgar Wieau is one of the most young man who want to change the interests and the understand of the old generation. I'm a student from Bulgaria. I learn in the German language high school and I know very well what means to be diffrent. Edgar fell in love and the problem is that his loved woman has a boyfriend just like in the Goethe's book "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" and therefore he murder himself because he has no willingness to live. His life has no sense for him. That's why he interrupt his own vitality. In the Goethe's story about the afflicted Werther is just the same. Werther has an impossible love. He commited suicide with a view to wait Charlotte to come by him. Werther is one very desperated person just like Wiebau. He is very agressive and spontanous that's why he took one's own life. therefore my next titel can be: "There's no pale between the Life and the Death!"