German book on the British

A German book about the British and their relationship to Europe has appeared recently (only in German). It is called Großbritannien – Insel zwischen den Welten, and is by a journalist on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Christian Schubert.

The Guardian has a report on the book by Luke Harding:

bq. Schubert describes a day in the life of the typical British family – Mr and Mrs Jones – for his German readers. The Joneses get their children ready for school and Mr Jones then goes to work on the train. Mrs Jones collects the kids at 3pm (much later than in Germany); in the evening she shoves a ready-made meal from Marks & Spencer in the microwave (Britons eat more ready-made meals than any other European nation, except for Sweden). The following morning, Mr Jones has a shower. He doesn’t have a proper, powerful shower like you get in Germany, though, but stands under a miserable trickle of water.

bq. Our failure to guarantee vigorous water pressure, Schubert laments, is a result of a more general British failing: we don’t invest in our own infrastructure.

3 thoughts on “German book on the British

  1. That was such a terrible article in the Guardian – it just pulls out a bunch of random factoids. If you find out what the book really says, I’d be very interested to know.

  2. Ah – I was just wondering whether to list you.

    I don’t know about this book. I have a number of such books but rarely read them. I suspect it hasn’t even been published yet. I will see if I can skim through it at the bookshop some time. An FAZ journalist should be too bad.

  3. I checked: amazon.de lists it. (Is it odd to have wishlists at online bookshops in languages one doesn’t actually know?)

    By the time it comes out in paperback I should be able to read it, anyway. It’s always fun to see one’s own culture from the outside. (Except when it isn’t, probably.)

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