'I was just a regular idiot, a nutcase, a show-off and all that. Nothing to cry about. Seriously' Edgar W., teenage dropout, unrequited lover, unrecognized genius - and dead - tells the story of his brief, spectacular life. It is the story of how he rebels against the petty rules of communist East Germany to live in an abandoned summer house, with just a tape recorder and a battered copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther for company. Of his passionate love for the dark-eyed, unattainable kindergarten teacher Charlie. And of how, in a series of calamitous events (involving electricity and a spray paint machine), he meets his untimely end. Absurd, funny and touching, this cult German bestseller is both a satire on life in the GDR and a hymn to youthful freedom.

"Edgar's voice is reminiscent of Holden Caulfield's, full of naïveté and and youthful arrogance, thoughtful and self-aware... a touching and tragic coming-of-age tale that utilizes other pieces of art to examine life in East Germany" - Publishers Weekly

"Blackly comic and slickly irreverent... an East German Holden Caulfield... Pushkin Press deserves praise for giving English readers the chance to discover Plenzdorf's wonderful little novel - one that is tragic, yet full of "zing"" - Star Tribune

"A magnificent realisation of teenage angst... a classic of late twentieth century European fiction" - BookTrust

"Hip-sardonic... a mocking parody of Goethe's romantic epic" - Time

"Immensely exciting" - Die Tat (Zürich)

"[A story of] epic force and human intensity... never overly sentimental" - Welt

"[Plenzdorf is] an agile and smart writer... a real expert... The New Sorrows of Young W. belongs to those books... that are important literary documents of their time, because they for the first time articulate something... which has hitherto either not been seen clearly, or not been seen at all" - Die Zeit

"Young W.'s death appears to announce the birth of an eminent new talent, and maybe even the long-awaited beginning of a new kind of literature" - Süddeutsche Zeitung

"An innovative novel" - Publishers Weekly

"The effectiveness of this novel... is explained by Plenzdorf's skill in presenting this young human being, with his honesty and direktness, and simultaneously his helplessness... and to express the problems of this eighteen-year-old in the language of an eighteen-year-old... supremely interesting" - Die Tat (Frankfurt)

"Reaches beyond the borders of East Germany, allowing young people... who live under other political and social conditions to recognise themselves in the protagonist, the rebellious young W. in love... Plenzdorf has done his country's literature an immeasurable service" - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"Spirited, rebellious" - Spiegel