Revolting Families: Toxic Intimacy, Private Politics, and Literary Realisms in the German Sixties

Revolting Families places the literary depiction of familial and intimate relations in 1960s West Germany against the backdrop of public discourse on the political significance of the private sphere. Carrie Smith-Prei focuses on debut works by German authors considered to be part of the “new” and “black” realism movements: Dieter Wellershoff, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Gisela Elsner, and Renate Rasp. Each of the works by these authors uses depictions of neurosis, disgust, vertigo, or violence t...