J. Wassermann (1873-1934) was a renowned and, late in his
life, bestselling German-Jewish author of fiction, plays,
biographies, and a memoir, My Path as a German and a Jew.
Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator. He has translated
nine books by Joseph Roth and was awarded the PEN translation prize
for String of Pearls. His Selected Poems were published in 2010. He
lives in London.
“Translator Michael Hofmann has unearthed Wassermann’s barely
fictionalized and utterly modern marriage tragedy and rendered it
in English as a stand-alone novel, My Marriage. It is as lush and
brutal—and genuinely honest—a portrait of a relationship as I have
ever come across…This is Wassermann, a chronic overwriter, at his
boiled-down best. My Marriage is a story that he had been honing in
his head for years. Mr. Hofmann’s perceptive translation tunes the
novel for the contemporary ear, but really for all time: This is
perfectly etched domestic tragedy….[Wassermann] is a master
novelist.” —Nathaniel Popkin, The Wall Street Journal
I absolutely could not put My Marriage aside.” —Kai Maristed, The
Arts Fuse
"My Marriage is the best (and roughest) novel I have ever read
that focuses on a failed marriage...The novel’s final section,
“The Age of Dissolution,” is a marvel of Bleak House-level
legal disputation, a masterpiece of dead-hearted obsession, and an
accidental treatise on how love and marriage disintegrate under the
weight of bureaucracy...My Marriage is a masterpiece of
matrimonial despair.” —Jonathon Sturgeon, FlavorWire
"The opening pages of this novel by the German writer Jakob
Wassermann (1873-1934) are like something out of Chekhov - it's all
there, the ennui, the preening etiquette, the intellectual
posturing. As the marriage progresses, the tone becomes
increasingly neurotic....a devastating indictment of the choices we
make out of convenience against our hearts and instincts, and the
tragedies that ensue." --Andre Naffis-Sahely, The Independent
"...suprisingly modern in its depiction of the emotional trauma of
a bad marriage." --Arif Akbar, The Independent
"The candour and extremity and intelligence...are profoundly
affecting ... This is a literary masterwork of a vanished kind, but
through the remarkable Hofmann it is born again as a story for our
age. Hofmann has the rare ability to refresh the very heart of a
text in translating it, to increase its connections to life."
--Rachel Cusk, The Guardian
"[Wassermann's] most elegant and focused work." --Nick Richardson,
London Review of Books
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