Anniversaries

From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl

by Uwe Johnson

translated by Damion Searls

New York Review Books, 1668 pp. (two vols.), $39.95

When Uwe Johnson, aged only 49, died on February 23 or 24, 1984, in the upstairs bedroom of his house in windswept Sheerness, Isle of Sheppey, England, he was all alone. His body was found only weeks later. Johnson’s neighbors remembered a man who, though he would visit the local pub at the same hour every day, otherwise kept to himself. In his work, however, Johnson rubbed shoulders with a whole universe of people.

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