Under the Neomoon

An abandoned construction site. Glowering pits and furnaces. A lone man in a bungalow.Widely considered to be one of the great German writers of the twentieth century, Wolfgang Hilbigs dark visions have long held readers aloft with their musical language and uncompromising vision of the modern world. InUnder the Neomoon, his debut short story collection originally published in East Germany in 1982, Hilbigs persistent fixationsfactory pits, rampant nature, and split identitiesare at their most visceral and brilliant. Rendered into English by Hilbigs longtime translator Isabel Fargo Cole, these short tales apply fluorescent language (garlands of cast-iron flowers, tall dark-green water grasses) to lives and spaces of foreclosed dreams.An electric collection that evokes the works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingeborg Bachmann,Under the Neomoonis a neon-bright reminder of humanitys folly and the importance of storytelling from down below, where the workers toil.