Chicago Alexanderplatz: Alfred Döblin's The Three Leaps of Wang Lun Part 1

Please join us in an Alfred Döblin seminar over the next two years where we will try to tackle and read all of Alfred Döblin's writings.

Chicago Alexanderplatz is a subgroup of Modernist Fiction that will inaugurate a new series of Meetups dedicated to German Literary Modernism and exploring the life and work of Alfred Döblin, author of the 1929 German Modernist Classic—Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Alfred Döblin is widely known for only this one novel, which has overshadowed all his prior and subsequent work. In recent years, there has been a renaissance of sorts in the reception of Döblin in English, thanks to the pioneering new translation of Berlin Alexanderplatz by Michael Hofmann published by NYRB Classics in 2018, and the launch of Beyond Alexanderplatz by the translator Chris Godwin, a website dedicated to exploring Döblin’s lesser known work and nonfiction

In this Meetup we will read Alfred Döblin's first novel the 1915 novel The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, an epic about China over the course of 4 Meetups. For this Meetup, please read the Dedication, the Prologue, and Book One: Wang Lun.

Here for the first time in English is Alfred Döblin's astonishing epic of eighteenth century China, hailed on its publication in 1915 as a master-piece of Expressionist prose, and since recognized to be the first modern German novel.

The Three Leaps of Wang Lun is the story of a doomed sectarian rebellion during the reign of Emperor Ch'ien-lung (1736-1796). It is also the most sustained evocation, in any European language, of a China untouched by the West. Döblin's imagination, almost hallucinatory in its intensity, brings this China to vivid life. Teeming cities and Tibetan wastes, political intrigue and religious yearning, life at Court and the fate of wandering outcasts are depicted in a language of enormous vigour, unfolding the theme of meekness against force, a mystical sense of the world against the realities of power. This translation for the first time presents the whole work as Döblin wrote it. The inclusion of the Prologue, dropped from the first German edition and never replaced, restores a unity of structure and theme missing from previous editions. The Introduction places the novel in the context of Döblin's life and work, the Expressionist movement and the historical background, and discusses its theme and style.

Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Leaps-Wang-Lun-Chinese-ebook/dp/B08DRYW4RD/ref=mp_s_a_1_9?qid=1684938974&refinements=p_27%3AAlfred+Doblin&s=books&sr=1-9