"This book is a wild and wonderful ride. Your guide?? Rebecca Schuman?? is a super-smart and very funny person who writes brilliantly about Germany and Germans (who are not what you think) and being young and insane and life in general and?? just read it?? OK?"
-Dave Barry
Sometimes Love Gets Lost in Translation
You know that feeling you get watching the elevator doors slam shut just before your toxic coworker can step in? Or seeing a parking ticket on a Hummer? Theres a word for this mix of malice and joy and the Germans (of course) invented it. Its Schadenfreude deriving pleasure from others misfortune. Misfortune happens to be a specialty of Slate columnist Rebecca Schumanand this is great news for the Germans. For Rebecca adores the Vaterland with the kind of single-minded passion its Volk usually reserve for beer soccer and being right all the time.
Lets just say the affection isnt mutual.
Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love in love with a boy (who breaks her heart) a language (thats nearly impossible to master) a culture (thats nihilistic but punctual) and a landscape (thats breathtaking when theres not a wall in the way). Rebecca is an everyday misunderstood 90s teenager with a passion for Pearl Jam and Ethan Hawke circa Reality Bites until two men walk into her high school Civics class: Dylan Gellner with deep brown eyes and an even deeper soul?? and Franz Kafka