Georg Büchner Prize Winner to Read from New Book, 5/6

Winner of the Georg Büchner Prize, Germany's most important literature prize, author Martin Mosebach is described as one of "contemporary literature's most humorous and background-rich depicters of humanity" and one of "its most illustrious stylists." He will read from and discuss his novel What Was Before, hailed by World Literature Today as "social satire at its best."

In it, a couple has only been together for a short time when the woman asks a dangerous question which sounds quite innocent but carries the seed of jealousy: what was your life like before we met? His answer turns into a whole novel, a web of truth and fiction, a veritable palace of lies built on the solid foundations of reality. Mosebach, one of Germany's most important essayists and critics, employs his great narrative skill and a detective-like attention to detail to stage a masterful game of love, chance, painful truth and philanthropic illusion.

What Was Before investigates themes of mining the past for core values applicable to the present, one of the prevailing threads in Mosebach's works. His particular writing aesthetic has an analogy with his fascination for the form and beauty of the Roman liturgy, as expressed in his prominent work Häresie der Formlosigkeit. Die römische Liturgie und ihr Feind (2002; rev. ed., 2007; The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy, 2006).

Introduced by Wilfried Eckstein, Director, Goethe-Institut Washington

Moderated by David Morris, German Area Specialist in the European Division, Library of Congress

In cooperation with the European Division of the Library of Congress.