Storm of Steel

About the Author and the Translator

Ernst Junger was born in Heidelberg in 1895. He ran away from school to enlist in the Foreign Legion and in 1914 volunteered to join the German army. He fought throughout the war and recorded his experiences in several books, most famously in In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel). While admired by the Nazis, he remained critical of them and through novels such as On the Marble Cliffs (1939) sought to understand the impasse into which Germany was heading. Throughout the Nazi period he was a controversial “inner emigrant,” distanced from the regime yet only obliquely in opposition. His most famous later books include Heliopolis (1949), The Glass Bees (1957), Eumeswil (1977), Aladdin’s Problem (1983), and A Dangerous Encounter (1985). He died in 1998.

Michael Hofmann has translated Joseph Roth, Herta Muller, Zoe Jenny, Wim Wenders, Wolfgang Koeppen, and Franz Kafka. His own books include Corona, Corona and Behind the Lines. He also coedited, with James Ladun, After Ovid.