RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Hermann was invited to give the prestigious Frankfurt Poetics Lectures. These have now been published, slightly edited and in an elegant translation by Katy Derbyshire, as We Would Have Told Each Other Everything. The lectures take the form of three essays written in the register of autofiction. Moving loosely from Hermann’s formative years as a young mother, then delving deeper into her childhood, to finally homing in on her artistic practice, they amount to a long, discursive meditation on writing ... Judith Hermann cannot tell the thing she needs to tell, the thing that is at the heart of her writing. One might consider this a failing. It is a surprise to find that it isn’t – that, in her careful, measured way, she can tell it in this way, and tell it right.
