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The Wall Jumper
 
 
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The Wall Jumper [Paperback]

Peter Schneider , Ian McEwan
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Penguin English Library)
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The Penguin English Library features the best novels in the English language. Get lost in the amazing stories, browse the Penguin English Library.

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Product details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics (3 Nov 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141187980
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141187983
  • Product Dimensions: 19 x 12.8 x 1.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 26,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Schneider
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Product Description

Product Description

Berlin before the fall of the Wall is a city divided, yet its ordinary residents find ways to live and survive on both sides. There is Robert, teller of barroom anecdotes over beer and vodka, adjusting to a new life in the west; Pommerer, trying to outwit the system in the east; the unnamed narrator, who 'escapes' back-and-forth to collect stories; his beguiling, exiled lover Lena; the three boys who defect to watch Hollywood films; and the man who leaps across the Wall again and again - simply because he cannot help himself.

All are, in their different ways, wall jumpers, trying to lose themselves but still trapped wherever they go. Ultimately, the walls inside their heads prove to be more powerful than any man-made barrier ...

About the Author

Peter Schneider was born in Luebeck, Germany, in 1940. He is the author of more than 20 books, including novels, short stories and collections of essays, and his writings have been translated into more than 20 languages. Among those in English are The Wall Jumper (1983), Couplings (1996) and his most recent novel, Eduard's Homecoming (2000). As a journalist, he has contributed to Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Time and Le Monde among many others. He has also written several screenplays. He lives in Washington, D.C., where he is Roth Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Georgetown University.

Ian McEwan has written two collections of stories, First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets, and ten novels, The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time, The Innocent, Black Dogs, The Daydreamer, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday. He won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam in 1998.


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In Berlin, the prevailing winds are from the west. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant. 29 Nov 2005
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is a Brilliant essay-novel which is also extremely funny in the vein of Catch 22 - characters who try to outwit the communist system which somehow still manages to get the better of them. However it is more thoughtful than Catch-22 and particularly at the beginning hardly feels like a novel at all as characterisation is set aside in favour of thematic exposition. This short book also provides terrific insight into the minds of people both sides of the Berlin Wall well before it came down.However it has an unfinished feel, as it concentrates on a small subsection of people of a certain age (mainly men) and has hardly any women characters. The book is actually a novella of only 140 pages which in one sense is its main flaw. If it had been developed - particularly the characterisation - and expanded, it would have easily have sat up there with major classics. Even so, given the paucity of literature about divided Berlin, this book is an absolute must for anyone wanting to know what it was really like for the inhabitants before 1989. At All times Peter Schneider's writing is assured, polished and extremely effective. The main problem with the penguin edition, however, is that it uses a very American translation which jars.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ian McEwan acknowledges in the introduction "at a glance The Wall Jumper appears to be reportage rather than fiction." Published in 1982, seven years befopre the wall came down, this novella has little plot and character interaction but it deftly highlights the obvious and also the subtle differences between West and East Berliners. The reportage of various famous wall jumper incidents over the years is blended in with the impact each German state's influence has on its citizens. The narrator is a West Berliner who regularly visits East Berlin and writes about the meetings he has with various citizens. The narrator's encounters with Robert a former East Berliner now living disenchantedly in West Berlin highlight their different 'eyes' and conclusions in which they perceive the same events. An interesting aside Schneider reminds us that the US had boycotted the Moscow Olympics because of Russia's occupation of Afghanistan. This book is not for those big on plot and characterisation but it is a very revealing account on the influence the state has over the individual and the way we perceive things.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
The Wall Jumper 20 July 2009
Format:Paperback
Well written book on stories of indivduals living on both sides of the Berlin Wall
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