How German Is It by Walter Abish
Published 1981 · 252 pages · 63,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is How German Is It to read?
How German Is It scores 62 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 52 out of 100
- Abish writes in cool, precise prose that echoes German bureaucratic language. The vocabulary stays measured and controlled—clinical almost. Words carry weight because of their restraint, their careful avoidance of emotion even when describing horror.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Sentences proceed with deliberate flatness, declarative and detached. Abish fragments his narrative into short, disconnected segments. The syntax creates intellectual distance—you experience post-war Germany through a prose style that mirrors its emotional numbness.
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- The novel examines how Germans constructed their post-war identity—what they remembered, what they buried. Ideas about collective guilt, historical amnesia, and the persistence of the past shape every scene. Abstract questions drive the narrative forward.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Abish packs considerable historical and cultural reference into compact prose, demanding familiarity with Nazi history and post-war reconstruction. The novel rewards readers who bring context, though the fragmented structure resists easy absorption.
- Narrative indirection: 65 out of 100
- Ulrich Hargenau returns to Germany, but his investigation remains oblique. Nothing is stated plainly—meanings hide beneath polite surfaces, beneath new buildings built over mass graves. Readers must interpret what characters avoid confronting directly.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- The new town built over a concentration camp site concentrates the novel's themes into physical space. Architecture, language, social rituals—all become symbolic of Germany's relationship to its past. Abish makes post-war German culture itself a symbol.
- Ironic distance: 65 out of 100
- Abish maintains steady ironic detachment, his flat prose exposing the ironies of German reconstruction. The gap between the polished new Germany and its buried history generates continuous dark humor. The distance is intellectual, unforgiving.
- Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
- The novel refuses closure. Mass graves surface, then the town moves on. Ulrich learns things that change nothing. Abish denies the satisfaction of confrontation or catharsis, mirroring how Germany itself avoided reckoning. The ambiguity is purposeful.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- Abish fragments his narrative into numbered sections of varying length, shifting between scenes, reflections, and historical information. The discontinuous structure demands active reading—you assemble meaning from juxtaposed fragments rather than following a plot.
How How German Is It is regarded
How German Is It holds a literary regard score of 59 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.