Schadenfreude, A Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For

"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 hitching a ride in Dylans backpack. These two men are the axe to the frozen sea that is Rebeccas spirit and what flows forth is a passion for all things German. First love might be fleeting but Kafka is forever and in pursuit of this elusive passion Rebecca will spend two decades stuttering and stumbling through German sentences trying to win over a people who cant be bothered. At once a snapshot of a young woman finding herself and a country slowly starting to stitch itself back together after nearly a century of war (both hot and cold) Schadenfreude A Love Story is an exhilarating hilarious and yes maybe even heartfelt memoir proving that sometimes the truest loves play hard to get.