Join Jo Lendle and Tess Lewis for a discussion of Lendle's book
All the Land (Seagull, 2019), in a translation by Katy Derbyshire.
How, in 1930, did Alfred Wegener, the son of minister from Berlin, find himself in the most isolated spot on earth, attempting to survive an unthinkably cold winter in the middle of Greenland? In
All the Land, Jo Lendle sets out to chronicle Wegener’s extraordinary journey from his childhood in Germany to the most unforgiving corner of the planet, giving us the story of this great adventurer, of the experiences that shaped him, resulting in a tale that is both thrilling and tender.
Jo Lendle is a German author and, since early 2014, the head of Hanser Verlag, Munich. Before Hanser, Lendle worked as a lecturer of German literature at the DuMont literature program (1997), as a program manager for German literature (2006) and, from 2010 to 2013, he was the publishing director of DuMont Buchverlag. He is the editor of the literary magazine
Akzente and member of the board of the Munich Literature House and the Publishers Committee of the Association of German Publishers and Booksellers.
Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Klaus Merz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Christine Angot, Pascal Bruckner and Jean-Luc Benoziglio. She has been awarded grants from PEN USA, PEN UK, and the NEA, a Max Geilinger Translation Grant for her translation of Philippe Jaccottet, the ACFNY Translation Prize and the 2017 PEN Translation Prize for her translation of the novel
Angel of Oblivion by the Austrian writer Maja Haderlap, and most recently a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She is Co-chair of the PEN Translation Committee and Advisory Editor for
The Hudson Review. Her essays and reviews have appeared in a number of journals and newspapers including
Bookforum,
Partisan Review,
The Hudson Review,
World Literature Today,
The Wall Street Journal and
The American Scholar.
This event received support from Books First, the Goethe-Institut’s new program for bringing literature in German to English-speaking readers.
Back
