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

Author: Rebecca Schuman

Narrator: Christa Lewis

Unabridged: 8 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/06/2017

Synopsis

Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love—in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that's nearly impossible to master), a culture (that's nihilistic, but punctual), and a landscape (that's breathtaking when there's not a wall in the way).

Rebecca is an everyday, misunderstood nineties 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 Dylan's backpack. These two men are the axe to the frozen sea that is Rebecca's 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 can't be bothered.

Schadenfreude, A Love Story is an exhilarating, hilarious, and yes, maybe even heartfelt memoir proving that sometimes the truest loves play hard to get.

About Rebecca Schuman

Rebecca Schuman is a frequent contributor to Slate, where she writes about higher education, Germany, popular culture, and parenting. She holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Irvine. Schadenfreude, A Love Story is her first book.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah

It's a good thing I started this book early in the morning on a day when I didn't have a lot I had to do, because I was hooked from the first paragraph and could not put the book down until I finished it late into the night. I found it funny and engaging; Schuman clearly has a way with words. While......more

Goodreads review by Jessica

I do not read many memoirs (which is what I say almost every time I review a memoir) so every time one works for me there's some specific thing that brings me in and makes me fall a little bit in love with the book and the author. In Schadenfreude, it's Schuman's willingness to examine her younger s......more

Goodreads review by Sebastian

Biting, hilarious, poignant. What else could you want from self-deprecating, super-smart memoir? Oh yeah, KAFKA! Being myself a lifelong Kafka superfan, imo, the conceit of threading the pitch black funny moralist as a sort of mascot for the author’s love affair with difficult boys, 90s expat-life an......more

Goodreads review by Irena

I enjoyed this memoir about the author's long-lasting romance with the German language. In many ways, this "relationship" defined her life. Even though her attempt to transform her infatuation with the language into an academic career eventually ended in frustration, one can never completely part wa......more

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