About the author: Roger Kingerlee gained a First in Modern Languages and a D.Phil in German literature at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. Dr. Kingerlee, who was a Hanseatic scholar in Hamburg, has subsequently devoted himself to psychology and now works as a trainee clinical psychologist in Norfolk, England.
2001 0-7734-7493-5 This book offers original interpretations of three great German-language novels from the 1920s, showing how ecological and feminist debates of today had already been initiated by men at that time. It examines Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz; Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities, and Hans Henny Jahnn’s Perrudja. Together, these novels illustrate how notions of masculinity had become problematic even by the 1920s; and suggest how increased self-awareness can improve men’s lives. “Dr. Kingerlee’s level-headed and well-informed reading of these notorious complex texts not only makes them accessible to the apprehensive reader, it also convincingly rescues at least one of them from crass accusations of extreme male chauvinism. . . . one of the major virtues of this highly original book is that it provokes one to ask questions about maleness and selfhood and to test out one’s answers against those which are explored in the literary texts under discussion.” – Richard Sheppard