Chronik der Gefühle

The Chronicle of Emotions is a singular endeavor in contemporary literature: it narrates through biographies and stories the experiences and, above all, the feelings with which we respond to time, eras, and their fractures. Alexander Kluge's magnum opus is a meandering book of emotions that seeks to explore our sometimes enigmatic, sometimes oddly resistant behaviors, reactions, and passions from ever new perspectives. The two volumes, Basic Stories and Biographies, contain all of Kluge's narrative texts in a dramaturgy that functions like our memory: backward from the present. The latest stories recount the beginning of the 21st century, depict biographies around 1989, from the time of the Bonn Republic, and further back to 1945. Sometimes in laconic brevity, sometimes in expansive detail.