Description
Book SynopsisGerman-speaking Canadians from various national and cultural backgrounds – German, Austrian, Swiss, Mennonite – make up the third largest ethnic group in Canada. Yet despite their prominence and achievements, The Old World and the New is the first book to explore the contributions of men and women in this group to the Canadian literary tradition.
These writers underwent vastly different experiences as immigrants in twentieth-century Canada. Else Seel left behind the dynamic literary life of Berlin at the same time of the Weimar Republic to become a settler’s wife in the interior of British Columbia, a latter-day Susanna Moodie. Frederick Philip Grove did his best to cloud his past, though his European literary roots remained strong, and became part of the Canadian mainstream. Ulrich Schaffer, in his search meaning in today’s world, drew intensely on two homelands and on his religious faith, but remains virtually unknown in his adopted
