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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First thanks go to the refugees seeking asylum in Germany, most of whom requested that I not use their real names, and who talked with me, humored my naiveté, dispelled some of my ignorance, and disabused me of preconceptions.

Thanks to Barbara Gügold and the IES Abroad Institute for a research associate fellowship that brought me to Berlin in October 2015; and to the faculty at the Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. The Berlin Notebook was conceived of, researched, written, and published with support of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and additional funding from the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Thanks to those institutions for their support.

I’ve had the good fortune to work with stellar editors at the Los Angeles Review of Books who supported this project from the beginning: Gabrielle Calvocoressi was the first to express enthusiasm, and kept me going throughout October with her encouragement; Tom Lutz has stood firmly behind me the whole time; and Michael Ursell’s skillful, sympathetic editing made the Notebook readable and sharp. My thanks to all of them.

Among others I interviewed, I’d especially like to thank the poets Lian Yang, Alistair Noon, and Alexander Booth; artist Susanne Gerber; film-maker Karsten Eckardt; Rabbi Walter Rothschild; Cantor Jalda Rebling and Anna Adam of Ohel Hachidusch; Joseph Aish of Baghdad; the members of Freygang Band; Razan Nassreddine of the Berliner Multaka: Treffpunkt Projekt; photographer Alexandra Kinga Fekete; Syrian journalist Yasmine Merei; and all those volunteers working with the relief organization, Moabit Hilft.

Thanks also to Rosmarie Waldrop—poet, translator, editor, and publisher extrordinaire—for permission to print her translation of Gehard Rühm’s poem, “europe 1954” (I My Feet: Poems & Constellations, “Dichten =” series, number 7, Burning Deck, 2004).

I am indebted—verschuldet und verpflichtet—to Linda Parshall for help with the German. Any errors are due to my ignorance and inattention. (When she trained her hawk-eye on the typescript, the English also improved).

For six weeks in October 2015 and April 2016, Sarah Blake held down the fort in DC while I was in Germany. Her novelist’s attention to the typescript pushed it further in the right direction. There are no thanks equal to my gratitude and love.

Parts of the Berlin Notebook have been published in Tikkun (www.tikkun.org), B O D Y (www.bodyliterature.com), and The Threepenny Review (www.threepennyreview.com).