Wohmann, Gabriele 1932- (Gabriele Guyot)
Wohmann, Gabriele 1932- (Gabriele Guyot)
PERSONAL:
Born May 21, 1932, in Darmstadt, Germany; daughter of Paul Daniel (a minister) and Luise Guyot; married Reiner Wohmann (a teacher), 1953. Education: Studied at University of Frankfurt, 1951-53.
ADDRESSES:
Home—Darmstadt, Germany.
CAREER:
Novelist and short-story writer. Teacher in Langeoog and Darmstadt, Germany, 1953-57.
MEMBER:
Berlin Akademie der Künste, Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung.
AWARDS, HONORS:
Bremen Literature Prize, 1971; Bundesverdienstkreuz (West German Order of Merit), first class, 1980; Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, 1981; Adenauerpreis, 1994; Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz, 1997; Verdienstmedaille des Landes-Baden-Württemberg, 2002; Silberne Verdienstplakette der Stadt Darmstadt, 2002.
WRITINGS:
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
(Under name Gabriele Guyot) Mit einem Messer (title means "With a Knife"), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1958.
Sieg über die Dämmerung (title means "Victory over the Twilight"), Piper (Munich, Germany), 1960.
Trinken ist das Herrlichste (title means "Drinking Is the Most Glorious Thing"), Roether (Darmstadt, Germany), 1963.
Im Auftrage des Volksbundes für Dichtung, edited by Reinhold Siegrist, Volksbund für Dichtung (Karlsruhe, Germany), 1964.
Eine Auswahl 1965-1966, Langewiesche-Brandt (Ebenhausen, Germany), 1966.
Ländliches Fest und andere Erzählungen (title means "A Village Celebration and Other Stories"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1968.
Sonntag bei den Kreisands, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1970.
Treibjagd, edited by Heinz Schöffler, Reclam (Stuttgart, Germany), 1970.
Selbstverteidigung: Prosa und anderes (title means "Self-Defense"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1971.
Übersinnlich, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1972.
Gegenangriff: Prosa, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1972.
Alles für die Galerie, Aufbau (Berlin, Germany), 1972, translation by Ingeborg McCoy published as "Everything for the Gallery and Other Stories," in the periodical Dimension, 1971).
Habgier (title means "Greed"), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1973.
Dorothea Wörth, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1975.
Ein Fall von Chemie, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1975.
Ein unwiderstehlicher Mann (title means "An Irresistible Man"), Rowohlt (Reinbek, Germany), 1976.
Alles zu seiner Zeit, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (Munich, Germany), 1976.
Böse Streiche und andere Erzählungen, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1977.
Das dicke Wilhelmchen, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1978.
Nachrichtensperre, Aufbau (Berlin, Germany), 1978.
Die Nächste, bitte! (title means "Next Woman, Please!"), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1978.
Streit, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1978.
Ausgewählte Erzählungen aus zwanzig Jahren, selected by Thomas Scheuffellen, two volumes, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1979.
Knoblauch am Kamin (title means "Garlic at the Fireplace"), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1979.
Paarlauf (title means "Running in Tandem"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1979.
Vor der Hochzeit, Rowohlt (Reinbeck, Germany), 1980.
Wir sind eine Familie, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1980.
Violas Vorbilder, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1980.
Stolze Zeiten (title means "Proud Times"), Claassen (Dusseldorf, Germany), 1981.
Ein günstiger Tag, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1981.
Komm donnerstags, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (Munich, Germany), 1981.
Einsamkeit, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1982.
Das Trugbild, Pongratz (Hauzenberg, Germany), 1982.
Der kürzeste Tag des Jahres (title means "The Shortest Day of the Year"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1983.
Verliebt, oder? (title means "In Love, Or?"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1983.
Goethe hilf! Neue Erzählungen (title means "Goethe, Help!"), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1983.
Gesammelte Erzählungen aus dreissig Jahren, three volumes, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1983.
Bucklicht Männlein, Aufbau (Berlin, Germany), 1984.
Der Kirschbaum, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1984, translation by Jeanne Willson published as The Cherry Tree, Dimension (Austin, TX), 1994.
Der Irrgast, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1985.
Ein russischer Sommer (title means "A Russian Summer"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1988.
Kassensturz, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1989.
Er saβ in dem Bus, der seine Frau überfuhr, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1991.
Das Salz, bitte! Ehegeschichten, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1992.
Alles an seinem Ort, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1992.
Ein Mann zu Besuch, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1993.
Wäre wunderbar, am liebsten sofort: Liebesgeschichten, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1994.
Die Schönste im ganzen Land: Frauengeschichten, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1995.
Vielleicht versteht er alles, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1997.
Bleibt doch über Weihnachten, Pendo (Zurich, Switzerland), 1998.
Schwestern, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1999.
Frauen machens am späten Nachmittag: Sommergeschicten, Pendo (Zurich, Switzerland), 2000.
Frauen schauen aufs Gesicht, List (Munich, Germany), 2000.
Abschied von der Schwester, Pendo (Zurich, Switzerland), 2001.
Goldene kniekehlen, [Hauzenberg, Germany], 2002.
(With Jürgen Brodwolf) Umwege: Mischtechniken, Erzählung, Edition Galerie im Radius-Verlag (Stuttgart, Germany), 2003.
Fahr ruhig mal 2. klasse: Geschichten von unterwegs, Pendo (Zurich, Switzerland), 2004.
Scherben hätten Glückgebracht: Erzählungen, Aufbau (Berlin, England), 2006.
NOVELS
Jetzt und nie (title means "Now and Never"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1958.
Abschied für länger (title means "Farewell for a Long Time"), Walter (Olten, Switzerland), 1965.
Die Bütows: Mini-Roman, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1967, revised edition, 1971.
Ernste Absicht (title means "Serious Intent"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1970.
Paulinchen war allein zu Haus (title means "Little Paula Was Home Alone"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1974.
Schönes Gehege (title means "Beautiful Enclosure"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1975.
Ausflug mit der Mutter (title means "Outing with My Mother"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1976.
Frühherbst in Badenweiler (title means "Early Fall in Badenweiler"), Luchterhand (Germany), 1978.
Ach wie gut, dass niemand weiss (title means "Oh How Good that No One Knows"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1980.
Das Glücksspiel (title means "Game of Chance"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1981.
Der Flötenton (title means "The Tone of the Recorder"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1987.
Bitte nicht sterben, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1993.
Aber das war noch nicht das Schlimmste, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1994.
Das Handicap, Piper (Munich, Germany), 1996.
Das Hallenbad, Piper (Munich, Germany), 2000.
Schön und gut, Piper (Munich, Germany), 2002.
Hol mich einfach ab, Piper (Munich, Germany), 2003.
OTHER
Theater von innen: Protokoll einer Inszenierung, Walter (Olten, Switzerland), 1966.
In Darmstadt leben die Künste: Feuilleton, Schlapp (Darmstadt, Germany), 1967.
Grosse Liebe: Fernsehstück (television play), Tsamas (Bad Homburg, Germany), 1971.
Die Gäste (radio play), Lenos-Presse (Basel, Switzerland), 1971.
Der Fall Rufus: Ein Elternabend (radio play), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1971.
Die Witwen oder eine vollkommene Lösung (television play), Reclam (Stuttgart, Germany), 1972.
So ist die Lage (poetry), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1974.
Entziehung: Materialien zu einem Fernsehfilm (television play; title means "Withdrawal"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1974.
Endlich allein—endlich zu zwein, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1976.
Heiratskandidaten (television and radio plays), Piper (Munich, Germany), 1978.
Grund zur Aufregung (poetry), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1978.
Der Nachtigall fällt auch nichts Neues ein: Ein Dialog, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1978, reprinted with two additional plays, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (Munich, Germany), 1979.
Feuer bitte!, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1978.
Wanda Lords Gespenster (radio play), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1979, adapted as Wanda Lords Gespenster: Drama, Stephanie Hunzinger Bühnenverlag (Bad Homburg, Germany), 1980.
Meine Lektüre: Aufsätze über Bücher (book reviews; title means "My Readings"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1980.
Ich weiβ das auch nicht besser (poetry), Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (Munich, Germany), 1980.
Guilty, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1980.
Komm lieber Mai (poetry; title means "Come Dear May"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1981.
Plötzlich in Limburg: Komödie in 4 Bildern, Hunzinger Bühnenverlag (Bad Homburg, Germany), 1981.
Nachkommenschaften (television play), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1981.
Hilfe kommt mir von den Bergen (radio play; title means "Help Comes to Me from the Mountains"), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1982.
Geschwister, photographs by John Harding, Fricke (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1982.
Gesammelte Gedichte: 1964-1982 (title means "Collected Poems"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1983.
Ich lese, ich schreibe: Autobiographische Essays, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1984.
Passau, Gleis 3 (poetry; title means "Passau, Track 3"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1984.
Hebräer 11, 1 (radio play), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1985.
(Editor) Anton Cechov, Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Cologne, Germany), 1985.
Darmstadt: Unterwegs gehöre ich nach Haus (television play), Eulenverlag (Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany), 1986.
Glücklicher Vorgang, Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1986.
Das konnte ich sein: Sechzig neue Gedichte (poetry), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1989.
Ein gehorsamer Diener (radio plays; title means "An Obedient Servant"), Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1990.
Schreiben mussen: Ein Arbeitstagebuch, Luchterhand (Darmstadt, Germany), 1991.
Der Kleine von meiner Partei (poetry), T. Pongratz (Hauzenberg, Germany), 1992.
Erzahlen Sie mir was vom Jenseits: Gedichte, Erzahlungen und Gedanken, Matthias-Grunewald (Mainz, Germany), 1994.
Treffpunkt Wahlverwandschaft (radio play; title means "Meeting Point: Elective Affinity"), Eremiten-Presse (Stierstadt, Germany), 1997.
"An Irresistible Man," translated by Jeanne R. Willson, appeared in Contemporary German Fiction, edited by A. Leslie Willson, Continuum (New York, NY), 1996. Contributor to the periodicals Akzente and Dimension.
SIDELIGHTS:
Gabriele Wohmann is one of Germany's most prolific writers. Considered the master of the short-story form, Wohmann became the subject of much academic scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s. Critics praised her work for the way in which the author coolly dissects interpersonal relationships wherein dysfunctional connections are adroitly revealed through dialogue or the interior monologues of her characters. Wohmann, wrote Mona Knapp in the Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, "has often stated her preference for the humdrum and seemingly trite details of everyday life as her major source of inspiration." Though she has appeared on German bestseller lists and has also penned a vast amount work in other forms—including several novels, radio plays, and verse—Wohmann's work is largely unknown in English translation.
Wohmann was the daughter of a minister, and though she grew up during the Nazi era, her deeply religious parents quietly opposed Hitler's regime and sheltered their daughter from the fascist, pro-German propaganda aimed at children during these years. As a young adult in the early 1950s, Wohmann spent six semesters at the University of Frankfurt, where she took courses in German philology and foreign literature. "Her university days may also have given rise to her occasional satirical treatment of professors," noted Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Guy Stern, "as in the story ‘Antrittsrede’ in the collection Habgier … in which she also takes aim at unrepentant Nazis."
Gabriele Guyot became Gabriele Wohmann in 1953 when she married a fellow student, Reiner Wohmann. For the next few years, the couple worked as teachers, but Wohmann had already started to write short stories. Her first success came in 1956, when an influential journal, Akzente, published "Ein unwiderstehlicher Mann," one of the few of her stories to be translated into English. In it, a French college professor living in America falls in love with Allan, the architect husband of a woman who befriends her. She never reveals her crush but is unexpectedly drawn further into the couple's lives when the wife becomes pregnant and Allan leaves her for a younger woman, who also becomes pregnant. He asks for the love-stricken narrator's advice in resolving the situation, and with dry humor she tells him that in France, the honorable resolution of such a dilemma would be for the man to commit suicide. In the end, the narrator thinks about how it is better to have had a fatal impact upon someone's life than none at all.
Wohmann had quit teaching by the time her first novel appeared in 1958. Jetzt und nie recounts one dramatic day in the life of a married salesman dissatisfied with his life and marriage. He stays at a seaside resort, falls in love, drinks too much, and dies of a heart attack. Nearly all of Wohmann's fiction follows this same pattern: individuals ruminate about their failure to achieve happiness or a satisfying bond with another human being. Her works gained a wide readership in Germany by the 1960s—in part, as Contemporary World Writers essayist Anthony Bushell noted, because her work seemed to resonate so well with life in West Germany in the years following World War II. Bushell described it as "a society which superficially offers a degree of economic freedom to the individual unmatched in Europe's history yet remains incapable of allowing its citizens to slip the fetters imposed by that society in order to find personal happiness."
During the 1960s and 1970s, collections of Wohmann's stories appeared frequently from German presses. In the title story of Ländliches Fest und andere Erzählungen, an account of a neighborhood party and its superficiality alternates with a doctor's autopsy report on a child who was abandoned by its mother. In another story from the volume, "a disconsolate child is delivered to a boarding school by his widowed father, who tries to cheer him up with a stream of platitudes," noted Stern about the tale, which the Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist said contains a lyrical style comparable to that of Ernest Hemingway. Wohmann's novel Ernste Absicht is composed entirely of the monologue of a hospitalized woman awaiting an operation she realizes will not save her life. Most of Wohmann's longer fiction from this period, observed Knapp in the Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, "deal with well-fed, solipsistic intellectuals whose reflections on their own happiness tend to eclipse all social and political issues."
Scholars of Wohmann's work have often commented upon the shift that emerged in her writing after the death of her father in 1975, when she began delving into wider themes of alienation and unease. The author's grief over the loss of her father found release in the novel Ausflug mit der Mutter. The two main characters are named only Mother and Daughter, and initially the work is presented as a woman's chronicle of her widowed mother's life after the loss of her husband of five decades. "All of the mother's virtues are in fact highlighted in order to throw into relief the shortcomings of the narrator," wrote Yvonne Holbeche in Seminar. "Kind, loving and selfless, with a naïve and almost childlike faith in other human beings, her frankness and truthfulness finding expression in her economic, unadorned speech, the mother is the embodiment of naturalness and spontaneity." The Daughter, however, suffers a crisis of sorts when she visits the city of Karlsruhe, which she finds she inexplicably detests. "The Karlsruhe episode points up a fundamental distinction between the mother and the daughter in their response to bereavement," continued Holbeche. "Whereas the mother's cheerful disposition allows her gradually to regain her joie de vivre, the daughter has not overcome her dependence on the father and appears to be rather more in need of help in coming to terms with his death."
The Karlsruhe episode in Ausflug mit der Mutter was emblematic of what Bushell cited in Contemporary World Writers as "the basic configurations within Wohmann's fiction; she concentrates on those points and stages in life where society, or habit, engulf and stifle individual aspirations: in marriage, at the work place or at that moment where childhood confronts the adult world." The unhappy marriage is also a favorite subject for Wohmann. Her novel Das Glücksspiel is exemplary of this construct. In it, "the gifted, high-strung young piano teacher Lily Siemer is driven into madness by her philandering husband, who has abandoned her; a friend who is a hyperactive feminist and devourer of people; an anally preoccupied older man who boards in Lily's home; Lily's brutal stepson; and finally by her insensitive and remote psychiatrist-lover," outlined Stern in the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
"Wohmann's texts are glimpses of the routine, uneventful moments of life together, seen through the eyes of one or both partners," noted Hanna Geldrich-Leffman in a German Review article. "They reveal the small horrors in human relationships, so universally familiar that they normally remain unmentioned." As one example, the collection Gesammelte Erzählungen aus dreissig Jahren contains the story "Hamster, Hamster!" which revolves around a married couple, Hilda and Sammy, and their pet hamster, Henry, who runs endlessly in his cage's wheel as Hilda talks endlessly to herself. Both Hilda and her spouse are trapped by their marital union and by the lies between them, for they have cheated her aging parents out of money. Sammy reads the paper and largely ignores his wife. "Even when the context indicates that an answer was given, that answer is not reported by Hilda's unreliable monologic voice, which stresses the isolation of the individual facing an unresponsive partner in a shared eternity of emptiness and guilt," commented Geldrich-Leffman.
Stern, writing for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, also commented upon Wohmann's intensely introspective style, terming her "unsurpassed in describing the tiny reflex motion of a hand and thereby uncovering repressed or subliminal feelings; bodily symptoms signal psychic malaises," Stern noted. "She can characterize the intricacies of a relationship through a table setting." Yet some critics have faulted Wohmann for the monotonous nature of her themes. Such "detractors," wrote Rita Terras in World Literature Today, "have suggested that she has been too prolific and hence inconsistent in the quality of her work. Even her admirers will agree that her tight-lipped approach to psychological problems does not necessarily make her work accessible to a wide readership."
Nevertheless, Wohmann gained increasing critical accolades throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Her novel Der Flötenton tracks the brief affair between two Germans visiting Portugal. It centers upon Anton, an architect, and Sandra, a married flute teacher, but takes the form of shifting scenes between Lisbon and their lives in Germany and the other people close to them. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which occurred in the spring of 1986, also looms large in all the characters' lives. For Wohmann and the large number of West Germans like herself who were environmentally conscious, the Chernobyl incident was a rallying cry to end the threat of nuclear power. In his article "Chernobyl and Beyond," published in Carleton Germanic Papers, Robert Atkins called Der Flötenton "a very accurate reflection of the public fears and uncertainties of the time." Anton's sister, for instance, grows increasingly anxious about her life after the incident and suffers a nervous breakdown.
Environmental issues began to find their voice in Wohmann's fiction after this point, serving to emphasize the sense of fruitless endeavor and foreboding that her characters often manifest. The short story collection Ein russischer Sommer contains the story "Die weibliche Komponente," wherein Xenia, a woman with a doctorate in biology, is unhappy with her job as a private-school teacher. She reminds her students about ecological issues such as global warming and pollution to the point of haranguing them. One student even describes her as "unweiblich," or unfeminine. Yet away from the school, Xenia lives in an emotionally unsatisfying relationship, and "her vehemence about the planet's crisis is at least in part an unconscious expression of the crisis in her own life and self-esteem," noted Atkins. Wes Blomster, in a review for World Literature Today, praised the work's twenty-five narrative sketches. "Each begins on a note of urgency, immediacy, and intensity that is sustained by the author down to the final phrase with an ease that is breathtaking," Blomster observed.
Wohmann has also written television scripts for movies and documentaries, as well as a number of radio plays. Even at the turn of the twenty-first century, state-run German radio regularly commissioned and produced such hörspiele and lavished upon them excellent production budgets. Wohmann's Treffpunkt Wahlverwandschaft aired on Sudwestfunk Baden-Baden radio in December of 1996. The radio play is the story of Manfred and Lona, who have "met" through a personal ad; both are nervous about their first face-to-face encounter ("treffpunkt"), however, and the drama unfolds through their telephone conversations with friends. "As the conversations change over the short time span of the play, they convey immediacy, realism, and an engaging intimacy," wrote Erlis Wickersham in World Literature Today. In the end, the pair meet but pretend to be friends sent by one another. The title of the work was a nod to a well-known work by Germany's famous and revered writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his 1819 novel Die Wahlverwandschaften. Wickersham drew several similarities between the works of Goethe and Wohmann, and praised the latter's radio play as "neither excessively harsh nor censorious, but wry, insightful, and amusing."
Wohmann has won several literary prizes in Germany, and her works have become popular in her reunified country since the 1990 dissolution of the formerly communist East Germany. Her husband retired from teaching in 1980 to become her literary manager, and the two live in an artists' colony in Darmstadt called Rosenhöhe. She writes daily, and, as Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Stern noted, "for the most part … commences writing without knowing the denouement and simply allows the narrative to take over."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
BOOKS
Contemporary World Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1993, pp. 569-572.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 75: Contemporary German Fiction Writers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988, pp. 249-257.
Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999, pp. 521-522.
Mayer, Sigrid, and Martha Hanscom, Critical Reception of the Short Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates and Gabriele Wohman, Camden House (Rochester, NY), 1998.
PERIODICALS
Carleton Germanic Papers, 1996 edition, Robert Atkins, "Chernobyl and Beyond," pp. 197-214.
Germanic Review, summer, 1994, Hanna Geldrich-Leffman, "Together Alone," p. 131.
German Quarterly, January, 1983, Helga W. Kraft and Barbara Kosta, "Mother-Daughter Relationships," pp. 74-88.
Michigan Academician, spring, 1977, Gisela G. Strand, "Gabriele Wohmann: A Thematic Approach to Alienation," pp. 383-395.
Seminar, September, 1984, Yvonne Holbeche, "Portrait and Self-Portrait," pp. 205-217.
Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, fall, 1980, Walter H. Sokel, "Quotation and Literary Echo as Structural Principles in Gabriele Wohmann's Frühherbst in Badenweiler," pp. 107-121.
Times Literary Supplement, January 12, 1990, Peter Graves, "Going Westwards," p. 41.
World Literature Today, winter, 1989, Rita Terras, review of Der Flötenton, p. 94; summer, 1989, Wes Blomster, review of Ein russischer Sommer, p. 471; autumn, 1990, Ursula Love, review of Kassensturz, p. 630; spring, 1991, Franz W. Haberl, review of Ein gehorsamer Diener, p. 295; summer, 1998, Erlis Wickersham, review of Treffpunkt Wahlverwandschaft, p. 608.