AT THE JUNCTION OF LITERARY ERAS. NEW REALISM IN MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE – ABOUT JULI ZEH’S AND SIMON URBAN’S NOVEL “BETWEEN WORLDS” (“ZWISCHEN WELTEN”)

Abstract

The heated discussion that unfolded at the turn of the century in both Russian and German literary criticism around the term “new realism” revealed some characteristic features of the new method, but at the same time left a number of unresolved issues. The works that critics attribute to this method mark a turn to a new problem and offer society the often “unpleasant” truth about the world. The term “new realism” appears in German philosophy and literary theory at the turn of the century in the works of G.P. Müller, J. Hermand. The main postulates of the philosophical theory of new realism are formulated in 2012 by philosopher Marcus Gabriel. At the turn of the century and in the first two decades of the new century, a number of works with common characteristics of “new realism” appeared in Russian and foreign literature. The “transitivity” of literary epochs is due to the crisis of public opinion. This mindset has become decisive in the works of the “new realists”. The researcher considers the specifics of the new realism in German literature based on the material of the novel “Between Worlds” by the modern writer Juli Zeh, one of the most successful and widely read authors in Germany, whose works always have an acute social orientation. The new novel “Between Worlds”, co-authored with Simon Urban and published in 2023, adjoins the earlier works “Unterleuten” and “About People” (“Über Menschen”) and is a landmark for modern German fiction, because it reveals everything the main pain points of the current public life of the country.