Schadenfreude, A Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For

by Rebecca Schuman Narrated by Christa Lewis

Overview

Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love-in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that's nearly impossible to master), a culture (that's nihilistic, but punctual), and a landscape (that's breathtaking when there's not a wall in the way).



Rebecca is an everyday, misunderstood nineties teenager with a passion for Pearl Jam and Ethan Hawke circa Reality Bites, until two men walk into her high school Civics class: Dylan Gellner, with deep brown eyes and an even deeper soul, and Franz Kafka, hitching a ride in Dylan's backpack. These two men are the axe to the frozen sea that is Rebecca's spirit, and what flows forth is a passion for all things German. First love might be fleeting, but Kafka is forever, and in pursuit of this elusive passion Rebecca will spend two decades stuttering and stumbling through German sentences, trying to win over a people who can't be bothered.



Schadenfreude, A Love Story is an exhilarating, hilarious, and yes, maybe even heartfelt memoir proving that sometimes the truest loves play hard to get.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

10/24/2016
Schuman structures this disarming memoir around nine German words, including the eponymous schadenfreude (pleasure derived from another’s suffering), inviting the reader to enjoy her travails. She writes with hilarious candor about herself as an entitled teenager, complete with bleached hair and goth makeup, tormenting a German host family, and later as an assertive, vegetarian, chain-smoking 20-something sharing a loft deep in postreunification Berlin. Schuman relates her “metamorphosis into monstrous Eurotrash,” complete with clashing bright separates accessorized by multiple scarves, worn year-round, to illustrate Wohngemeinschaft, the German name for an apartment shared with someone who isn’t family. The concepts behind her selected German terms may be universal, but Schuman’s application of them is uniquely Teutonic as she weaves anecdotes with lessons learned to hilarious effect. Schuman’s journeys to Germany and her pursuit of further connection with her beloved Franz Kafka bring to mind another great travel memoirist, Geoff Dyer, writing about D.H. Lawrence. As Dyer does, Schuman entertains while relating her inner conflicts, personal and cultural hypocrisies, and overblown self-delusions during her decades-long struggle with the German language and those who speak it. Schuman’s engrossing book is a feast of honesty, humility and humor, all the hallmarks of great confessional literature. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

"This book is a wild and wonderful ride. Your guide, Rebecca Schuman, is a super-smart and very funny person who writes brilliantly about Germany and Germans (who are not what you think) and being young and insane and life in general and… just read it, OK?"
- Dave Barry

“An anthropological love story that’s spit-out-your-schnitzel funny. She had me at wohngemeinschaften.”
- Pamela Druckerman, author of New York Times Bestselling Bringing Up Bébé

"I don't know the German for 'madcap romp' (and I wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway), but SCHADENFREUDE is a rip from the start, cursing its way from conceited high school boys to fluorescent dance clothes that just don't work in the US. Behold, the follies of all us childlike adults!"
- Rosecrans Baldwin, author of Paris, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down

“A brain-pleasing page-turner.”
—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

"A fun, wickedly intelligent book about failure, Kafka, and what it means to slowly perfect a language for one's own place in the world. Schuman throws herself headlong into the strange intersections between American grandiosity and German self-effacement with boundless energy, insight, and no shortage of wonderful, cringeworthy moments. What a rewarding, hilarious read."
— Mike Scalise, The Brand New Catastrophe

"Schuman’s youth in the 1990s plays out through the nine chapters of her hilarious memoir... A comedic patchwork of quirky anecdotes written in smooth, sometimes-cocky prose, liberally sprinkled with free-flowing expletives and consistent sincerity. Schuman’s droll, self-deprecating, wild life (so far) will find particular appeal with readers who enjoy memoirs that don’t take themselves too seriously."
— Kirkus Reviews

"Schuman’s journeys to Germany and her pursuit of further connection with her beloved Franz Kafka bring to mind another great travel memoirist, Geoff Dyer, writing about D.H. Lawrence. As Dyer does, Schuman entertains while relating her inner conflicts, personal and cultural hypocrisies, and overblown self-delusions during her decades-long struggle with the German language and those who speak it. Schuman’s engrossing book is a feast of honesty, humility and humor, all the hallmarks of great confessional literature."
— Publishers Weekly

"Her stories of traveling in Europe, taking language classes, and falling in love may be cringe-worthy at times, but they’re also fun."
— Bustle

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"Schuman's engrossing book is a feast of honesty, humility and humor, all the hallmarks of great confessional literature." —Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

2016-12-07
The candid adventures of a plucky, German-obsessed American student. Slate columnist Schuman's youth in the 1990s plays out through the nine chapters of her hilarious memoir, her first book. The author titles each chapter with a relevant German word, reflecting a mood or event in her self-discovery and her vivid love for German culture, including an enduring, lifelong affinity for Franz Kafka—who, she notes, wasn't German. During her senior year in high school, this self-proclaimed "nonpracticing half-Jew from Oregon" spent her time poring over SAT practice tests and nurturing a fawning obsession with Dylan, a handsome, "so brilliant and so pained" geek who found Schuman's brainy awkwardness intellectually stimulating. But his college dreams and personal goals stagnated any progression in their relationship. The author plodded on at college as a German major and then fully immersed herself in the culture, grammar, and history of life abroad. A culture clash ensued immediately as her host family found Schuman's new "postgrunge aesthetic" quite different from her introductory photograph. Surviving on her own with a newfound independence breathed new life into her travels, and she moved into a loft residence in Berlin as a vegetarian and "moderate smoker." Highlights include a mishap involving the recovery of her lost passport, pithy social observations, and epiphanies about how hypocritical Germanic culture can be. "They will think nothing of telling you that you have gained weight," she writes, "but in other situations, they have ironclad laws of politeness." The author's comparison of Prague's post-Cold War metamorphosis to Gregor Samsa's own transformation is creatively descriptive, as is her account of her anxiety at being perceived as having Imposter Syndrome while at graduate school in Southern California. Built on her inner angst and painstaking quest for self-discovery throughout her burgeoning adulthood, Schuman's memoir is a comedic patchwork of quirky anecdotes written in smooth, sometimes-cocky prose, liberally sprinkled with free-flowing expletives and consistent sincerity. Schuman's droll, self-deprecating, wild life (so far) will find particular appeal with readers who enjoy memoirs that don't take themselves too seriously.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170521425
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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