Arguably the best-known and best contemporary poet and author to have emerged from the former East Germany, Grünbein received many major awards, including the 1995 Georg Büchner Preis, the most prestigious honor for a German-language author. Since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Grünbein, through his various writings, has been an active participant in the debates that aim at facilitating Germany's attempts at reshaping and redefining itself in the post-Cold War era. The essays collected here, covering two decades, represent a wide-ranging and representative cross section of the work of this poet, essayist, and great thinker. They are grouped into six sections that intersect thematically, with each of the sections in turn clustered around major recurring topics: autobiographical pieces; exploration of the author's major interests in art, literature, aesthetics and science; exploration of literary and philosophical tradition; and the living presence of classical antiquity. (The latter is echoed in the title of the book, referring to the sandbars of the Mediterranean and the extinct city of Atlantis.) This first book-length collection of Grünbein's essays is available in English for the first time (Ashes for Breakfast was his first poetry volume in translation).
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