Gabriele Tergit
The Effingers
fiction, new
Edited by Nicole Henneberg, first published in 1951
900pp (235,000 words)
>> A Jewish family saga from 1878 to 1948, in the tradition of »Buddenbrooks«
>> SPIEGEL Bestseller List
Stretching across four generations, this modern epic follows the Effingers, a Jewish family that attains considerable wealth through hard work, good luck and talent. Beginning with the relatively comfortable life of a working family in a south German town, when Germany under Bismarck seemed to have a bright future, the novel reaches its apex in cosmopolitan Berlin in the roaring twenties, where the Effingers are leading elegant, upper-middle-class lives. Vividly detailed and true-to-life, the novel conjures up this German-Jewish world for the reader, a world sustained and populated by a cast of distinctive, carefully drawn characters, like the intelligent and very modest Paul Effinger or the artistically gifted, graceful but naïve Sofie Oppner. Yet, like so many other families, the Effingers were ultimately torn apart by the devastating currents of history: the horrors of the twentieth century, its two world wars, proved their undoing.
It’s hard to believe that Gabriele Tergit, the famous journalist and writer of the Weimar Era, struggled to find a publisher for the novel after the Second World War. Evidently many people found the material too controversial so soon after the Holocaust. Yet this book is neither a lament nor an accusation; its insight and diversity of voices make The Effingers a masterpiece, full of humour, quick dialogue, poetic sensitivity and profound human empathy.
Rights sold
France – Christian Bourgois
Italy – Einaudi
Spain – Libros del Asteroide
UK – Pushkin Press
US – The New York Review of Books
The Netherlands – Van Maaskant Haun
book club – Büchergilde Gutenberg
paperback – Random House / btb
audiobook - speak low
film rights – optioned
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Reviews
»The most important German family and social novel since Mann’s Buddenbrooks.«
Gerhard Beckmann, BuchMarkt
»A splendid, life-affirming, optimistic and deeply distressing panopticon of Jewish Germany that has to find and keep its permanent place in the German canon.«
Volker Weidermann, LiteraturSPIEGEL
»THE EFFINGERS is an eventful and moving family epic.«
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Federal Republic of Germany
»A tribute to the lost German-Jewish homeland, wrested from bitterness, yet with tentative hope for a common future - in spite of everything.«
Erhard Schütz, Die Welt
»Tergit writes with lightness and musicality, with a good ear for how people talk, and a
fine, deeply human wit. A book to make your heart jump.«
Juliane Liebert, DIE ZEIT
»Smart, moving, humorous.«
Susanne Mayer, DIE ZEIT
»A panoramic German-Jewish novel between Fontane and Thomas Mann! […] Enthralling! Read it!«
Volker Weidermann, ZDF, »Das literarische Quartett« (TV)
»It's a scandal that this book has not yet become an integral part of the German literary canon.«
Thea Dorn, ZDF, »Das literarische Quartett« (TV)
»A vanished world captured for the next generation. (...) Definitely recommended!«
Dorothee Wahl, Frankfurter Rundschau
»This wide-ranging book is astonishing, courageous and significant.«
Axel Eggebrecht, Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
»Admirably impartial.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»There is no other novel that preserves the lost Berlin and the world of its Jewish population like THE EFFINGERS. It is of a disturbing truthfulness.«
Jens Bisky, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»The city's rapid transition from 1880 to World War II rarely becomes as vivid as in this book.«
Sabine Rohlf, Berliner Zeitung
»THE EFFINGERS is a beguiling and sensual novel which captivates, above all, through its atmospheric density and cultural-historical perspective.«
Oliver vom Hove, Der Standard
»The feminist Buddenbrooks.«
Axel Brüggemann, Jüdische Allgemeine
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