Most of the chapters in this volume were delivered as papers at a conference on the same theme
held at the University of Kent in April 2002. The essays collected here by scholars from the
UK Ireland Germany and the US address a topic of fundamental concern across all the
disciplines engaged with the study of contemporary Germany: the evolving relationship between
urban and rural space the metropolitan centre and the provincial Heimat. The volume identifies
and investigates a number of recent trends: the emergence of 'eco-literature' the renaissance
of writing - in prose and verse - inspired by the new Berlin the realignment of regional
sensibilities which is complicated by the troubled tradition of Heimat in all its literary
manifestations and the continuing disjunctions between East and West. Individual essays engage
with the work of established writers (Günter de Bruyn Hubert Fichte Peter Handke WG Sebald
Siegfried Lenz Martin Walser and Elfriede Jelinek) and emerging talents (Georg Klein
Christof Hamann Ludwig Laher and Arnold Stadler).
