Last Name	First Name	Language	Annotation
Walser	Robert	German	Robert Walser. The Robber [Der Räuber]. Tr. Susan Bernofsky. Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2000 [Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986]. 141 pp. Cloth: $40.00; IBSN 0-8032-4789-3. Paper: $15.00; ISBN 0-8032-9809-9. Robert Walser (1878-1956), the Swiss-German master of high modernist prose, was once so well known that the novelist Robert Musil, reviewing Franz Kafka's first book of stories, described Kafka as "a special case of the Walser type." Walser's last novel, The Robber, tells the story of a journey of self-discovery. It is a hybrid of love story, tragedy, and farce, with a protagonist who sweet-talks teaspoons, flirts with important politicians, plays maidservant to young boys, and uses a passerby's mouth as an ashtray. The story spoofs the nervous reactions of stiff-upper-lipped European petit bourgeois to whatever threatens the stability of its worldview. Susan Bernofsky has also translated Masquerade and Other Stories by Walser and Anecdotage by Gregor von Rezzori.
Wanso	Pak	Korean	Pak Wanso. My Very Last Possession and Other Stories by Pak Wanso. Tr. Chun Kyung-ja, Steven Epstein, John Frankl, Ryu Suk-Hee, and Ryu Young-Joo. M. E. Sharpe. 1999. 221 pp. Cloth: $75.00; ISBN 0-7656-0428-0. An anthology of ten short stories by one of Korea's most widely read contemporary writers, My Very Last Possession depicts the trials of the Korean War and the subsequent three decades of upheaval during which the country was transformed from a military dictatorship and an agriculturally based society to an urban industrialized, albeit troubled, democracy. Pak offers a searching woman's perspective on radical changes in Korean family structures and social values, exposing the cruelty and hypocrisy of Korea's Confucian traditions that have subjugated women for centuries. Chief Translator Chun Kyung-ja has published many translations of modern Korean prose and poetry, including the novels Peace Under Heaven by Ch'ae Man-Sik (1991) and The Shadow of Arms by Hwang Suk-Young (1994).
Wedekind	Frank	German	Frank Wedekind. Spring's Awakening: Tragedy of Childhood. Tr. Eric Bentley. Applause Books. 1996. 84 pp. Paper: $9.95; ISBN 1-55783-245-5. English version and Ten Notes by Bentley. Spring's Awakening is a tragi-comedy of teenage sex. Its fourteen-year-old heroine, Wendla, is killed by abortion pills. The young Moritz, terrorized by the world around him, and especially by his teachers, shoots himself. The ending seems likely to be the suicide of Moritz's friend, Melchior, but in a confrontation with a mysterious stranger (the famous Masked Man) he finally manages to shed his illusions and face the consequences.
Weil	Grete	German	Grete Weil. Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat [Tramhalte Beethoven-straat]. Tr. John Barrett. Verba Mundi/David R. Godine. 1997. 160 pp. Cloth: $22.95. ISBN 1-56792-032-4. Andreas, a once-promising poet, lives with his bride, Susanne, in postwar Germany. But although surrounded by the trappings of comfort and success, Andreas is obsessed by the memory of Susanne's younger brother, Daniel, whom he had sheltered in Amsterdam, but who was eventually deported by the Gestapo. Finally, he returns to Amsterdam to confront his memories of the war--for it was there that Andreas first recognized the horror inflicted by his own people, as every night he witnesses the round-up of the city's Jews beneath his window.
Weiss	Ernst	German	Ernst Weiss. The Aristocrat [Boëtius von Orlamünde]. Tr. Martin Chalmers. Serpent's Tail/Consortium Book Sales [S Fisher Verlag, 1928]. 1995. 208 pp. Paper: $13.99; ISBN 1-85242-262-9. The time: the summer of 1913. The place: House Onderkuhle, an exclusive boarding school for the sons of the aristocracy in eastern Belgium. The old order may be crumbling but at Onderkuhle training for a life of command goes unchallenged. The most important lessons: fencing, riding and, above all, the forms of etiquette─"the refinements of aristocratic intercourse." Boëtius von Orlamünde distinguishes himself at all of these. He subdues his doubts by undertaking ever more extreme physical tests, climaxing in the breaking-in of the stallion Cyrus. On the night the school burns down, Boëtius displays cowardice and forfeits nobility.
Welsh	Renate	German	Renate Welsh. Constanze Mozart: An Unimportant Woman [Constanze Mozart: Eine unbedeutende Frau]. Tr. Beth Bjorklund. Ariadne Press [Esslinger Edition J&V Verlag J.F. Schreiber GmbH, Esslingen, Germany, 1990]. 1997. 134 pp. Paper: ISBN 0-57241-036-1. Instead of Mozart, the musical genius, it is his wife, Constanze, who is here the focus of attention. Maligned by outside observers, from Mozart's father to present-day biographers and playwrights, Constanze was thought to be "not the right girl" for the great man. Welsh takes a different perspective, narrating events from Constanze's point of view.
Wilcock	J. Rodolfo	Italian	J. Rodolfo Wilcock. The Temple of Iconoclasts [La sinagoga degli iconoclasti]. Tr. Lawrence Venuti. San Francisco. Mercury House. Distributor: Consortium. 2000 [Adelphi Edizioni, Milano, 1972]. 208 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 1-56279-119-2. J. Rodolfo Wilcock's experimental fiction challenges the preference for realism that dominates Anglo-American writing, even the recent trends that are touted as "multicultural" but that risk replacing diversity with a homogenous narrative form. The Temple of Iconoclasts is a celebration of ethnic difference that acknowledges the brutal hierarchies in which various ethnicities have been positioned. A member of the circle of innovative writers that included Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Silvina Ocampo, Wilcock has written some 15 books of poetry, drama, journalism, and fiction. Recent translations by Lawrence Venuti include I. U. Tarchetti's Fantastic Tales and Passion: A Novel, both published by Mercury House.
Winkler	Josef	German	Josef Winkler. The Serf [Der Leibeigene]. Tr. Michael Mitchell. Ariadne Press [Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987]. 1997. 306 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-57241-024-8. The Serf belongs to the genre, the Anti-Heimatroman, novels which attach the conventional idyllic view of rural life and reveal the restrictions and repressions of an impoverished and authoritarian society. The hero is a writer who has returned to the hell from which he thought he had escaped. Writing is an addiction, and he needs the stimulus of his family and native village to feed his addiction. But he is an outsider in this conservative rural society, where attitudes from the Nazi past are often still there just below the surface. Mitchell has also translated György Sebestyén's The Works of Solitude and A Man Too White, as well as Gustav Meyrink's The Angel of the West Window, The Green Face, The White Dominican, Walpurgisnacht, and The Golem.
Witkiewicz	Stanislaw Ignacy	Polish	Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. Insatiability [Nienasycenie]. Tr. Louis Iribarne. Northwestern University Press. 1996. 530 pp. Cloth: $40.00; ISBN 0-8101-1133-0. This novel expresses the tortured intersection of political and personal destinies in Eastern Europe, tracing the adventures of a young Pole whose own fate parallels the collapse of Western civilization following a Chinese communist invasion from the East. Iribarne is professor of Slavic languages at the University of Toronto.
Wolfgruber	Gernot	German	Gernot Wolfgruber. Footloose [Auf freiem Fuss]. Tr. and afterword Robert Acker. Riverside, CA. Ariadne Press. 1999 [Residenz Verlag, Salzburg, 1975]. 143 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 1-57241-072-8. Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought. Translation Series. Footloose is the gripping first-person narrative of a teenage boy who recounts his experiences growing up in postwar Austria. The boy leaves school for the excitement of earning money as an apprentice. However, the grueling monotony of his work and the harsh treatment by his superiors soon lead him to other less noble pursuits. The boy's painful search for individuality, freedom, and meaningful employment along with the unpleasant concomitant consequences contain striking parallels to the contemporary American scene. This is Gernot Wolfgruber's first novel, and his first work to be translated into English.
Wordsworth	William	Latin	William Wordsworth. Translations of Chaucer and Virgil. Ed. Bruce E. Graver. Cornell University Press. 1998. 583 pp. Cloth: $80.00; ISBN 0-8014-3452-1. William Wordsworth's two most extensive translation projects were his modernization of selected poems by Chaucer and his unfinished translation of Virgil's Aeneid. Bruce E. Graver offers the first reliable texts, the first complete account of their genesis and publication, and the fullest account of Wordsworth's practice as a translator. Graver's reading of the Aeneid corrects hundreds of substantive errors in the published texts of the translation, his introduction and notes providing a critical monograph on Wordsworth and translation. He supplies evidence for a major reassessment of Wordsworth's attitudes toward preeminent English translator, John Dryden, and of the relationship of Wordsworth's poetry to British neoclassicism. Contents of Part I include Chaucer's The Prioress's Tale, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, Troilus and Cressida, and The Manciple, (from the Prologue) And his Tale. Part II contains translations from Books I, II, III, and excerpts from Book IV and VIII of Virgil's The Aeneid. Each section features an introductory essay, the translations, editor's notes, a chart of non-verbal variants in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, and transcriptions of Wordsworth's original manuscripts, all of which are extremely helpful for studying the poem's development.