The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt

　　威廉‧葛納奇諾的布赫納獎得獎小說Ein Regenschirm fuer diesen Tag (直譯:【一把雨傘給這天用】)終於有英譯本了。Philip Boehm成熟的翻譯風格，成功地把作者介紹給英語世界的讀者。是ㄧ本不可錯過的德國當代小說。

　　一個四十六歲的男人受僱於一個高級製鞋公司，他的工作是穿著新設計的鞋漫步法蘭克福街頭，一個試鞋人。法蘭克福也是他的原生地，在這城市游走當時，也遭遇了他的過去，生命中的女人一一出現，也經驗了生命的神秘。在散步的文學傳統下，他記下周遭事物，重要到微不足道的，最後拼貼成一幅他心理城市風景。

　　This brief and poignant novel from Germany explores existential questions as its 46-year-old narrator reflects on broken relationships and other failures, and struggles to come to terms with life.

　　"The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt" by Wilhelm Genazino, 2004 recipient of the Georg-Buchner-Preis, Germany's highest literary honor, is finally available to English-speaking readers in a pitch-perfect translation by Philip Boehm.

　　Employed by a high-end shoe manufacturer to test new products, the narrator spends his days wandering through his native city, encountering faces from his past (primarily female) and experiencing anew the many manifestations of the mystery of life. In the grand tradition of literary flaneurs, he takes note of his surroundings, from the significant to the mundane, and assembles them into a sort of mental collage that is at once self-portrait and cityscape.

　　Most remarkable in Genazino's work is the humor with which he invests this melancholic character. Though at times he fears that he teeters on the brink of insanity, he good-naturedly pursues the strange twists of fate that land him variously behind a table at the flea market, in a newspaper office, by the banks of a flooded river, or in a friend's bed. As Peter von Matt wrote in "Der Spiegel," "Indeed, there is hardly a subtler humorist among today's writers than Genazino."