NO MAN'S TIME
251 pp.
- ISBN-10: 1499717857
- ISBN-13: 978-1499717853
No Man's Time.
An English translation of Jörg Bernig's novel
Niemandszeit. Translated from the German by Steven Lawrie.
‘The president worked late into the small hours that night and perhaps he believed that he was recording his name in the annals of history. Bold strokes! That was the only way. Even if that meant driving three million people out of the country. The country’s borders, indeed the borders of all countries, should correspond to the distribution of peoples, of languages and to different ways of living. This was a unique opportunity. Bold strokes! It had already started, and even before he returned, the hunt was on in the streets of Prague: Hunt them out! Find them! Kill them!’
Jörg Bernig’s novel is set amidst the chaos and confusion of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the aftermath of the Second World War. In a secluded no man’s land between East and West a group of refugees of differing origins find temporary sanctuary from their persecutors and from their own pasts—but this peaceful ‘no man’s time’ is threatened by the Revolutionary Guards who are still on their trail.
‘Lively and striking in style, [this book] is above all a convincing depiction of ordinary people under far from ordinary pressure.’ (New Books in German)
Jörg Bernig was born in 1964 in Wurzen in East Germany. After an apprenticeship as a miner he studied English and German language and literature at the University of Leipzig and thereafter completed his PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Bernig has spent time in the United Kingdom where he worked as a German teaching assistant at schools in Dunfermline and subsequently as Lektor and Research Assistant at the University of Swansea. He was Writer in Residence at the University of Aberdeen in autumn 2002 and Writer in Residence at the University of Swansea in autumn 2013.
His first literary publications consisted of poetry and novels which appeared in the late 1990s, and his work has been translated into the Czech, English, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian and Polish languages. Besides his literary career, he has engaged in teaching and research at the Technische Universität Dresden and is the author of academic publications on literary and historical topics.
Bernig, who has received numerous literary awards, is a member of the P.E.N.-Zentrum Deutschland and is a fellow of the academies the Sudetendeutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste, the Sächsische Akademie der Künste and the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste. Jörg Bernig lives and works in Radebeul, near Dresden.
No Man's Time, translated from the German by Steven Lawrie.
The web journal 'No Man's Land'
offers Chapter One of the English translation
No Man's Time free of charge. Billiger geht's nimmer! See:
No Man's Land
A selection of Jörg Bernig's poems, entitled
flower, angel, ship, has been published by Hafan. See:
Hafan Books
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