Schadenfreude, A Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For

Written by Rebecca Schuman

Narrated by Christa Lewis

Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love—in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that's nearly impossible to master), a culture (that's nihilistic, but punctual), and a landscape (that's breathtaking when there's not a wall in the way).



Rebecca is an everyday, misunderstood nineties teenager with a passion for Pearl Jam and Ethan Hawke circa Reality Bites, until two men walk into her high school Civics class: Dylan Gellner, with deep brown eyes and an even deeper soul, and Franz Kafka, hitching a ride in Dylan's backpack. These two men are the axe to the frozen sea that is Rebecca's spirit, and what flows forth is a passion for all things German. First love might be fleeting, but Kafka is forever, and in pursuit of this elusive passion Rebecca will spend two decades stuttering and stumbling through German sentences, trying to win over a people who can't be bothered.



Schadenfreude, A Love Story is an exhilarating, hilarious, and yes, maybe even heartfelt memoir proving that sometimes the truest loves play hard to get.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jun 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781541475946

Rebecca Schuman

Rebecca Schuman is a frequent contributor to Slate, where she writes about higher education, Germany, popular culture and parenting. She holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Irvine. Schadenfreude, A Love Story is her first book.

Reviews for Schadenfreude, A Love Story

[jostie13 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Overwritten. The writing has a David Sedaris feel but is unfortunately never as satisfying.

[spinsterrevival · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have never read and will likely never read Kafka, but I really enjoyed this memoir of the author falling for a boy and how it lead her through her life. Since she’s my age peer in that she graduated high school the year before me, it was fun to see an alternate universe life.

She’s awesomely self aware enough to know exactly how she sounds, and it made this a joy to laugh with her. The audiobook was great especially as the narrator had all the German to read as well. I didn’t know anything about Germans except the bad past, so it was interesting to know that my personality would likely fit in very well with them; too bad I don’t drink. Finally, I loved the author’s honesty here, especially as the author breaks down the shittiness of academia and how she crafted a different living for herself.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A breath of fresh air. No amount of mercilessly self-deprecating humor and astonishingly hilarious self-bashing aimed to put herself in a negative light could erase the talent that Rebecca Schuman obviously possesses. Even her swear words didn't offend me as they usually tend to do - maybe because her humor is so riotous that it all fits in! My hat goes off to her for bearing her soul in such a way, making hilarity even of a serious situation. She might not have felt that way about this or that event of her life at the moment when it was happening, but she had more than enough courage to put an ironic and satirical spin on it afterwards, with an unforgettable look back. The book covers 20 years of her life, starting at when she was in high school. And don't even think you can judge what's to come from the title (and even the very lengthy subtitle!) - you won't be able to! The author's note says it's "a work of nonfiction" but it certainly reads like great fiction!

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Schadenfreude: A Love Story is the quirky memoir of Rebecca Schuman, a child of the grungy 1990s whose high-school infatuation with Kafka leads her to study German in college. She has a number of alcohol and cigarette-fueled adventures while studying abroad, and finds that despite her love for classic German literature, actual German people, with their bluntness and casual attitude towards nudity, don't appeal to her very much. The language's grammar and vocabulary prove challenging as well. But eventually Schuman sheds her Gen Y slacker persona, and, having made peace with the language and culture, goes on to earn a hard-won PhD in German. Then she tackles the limited job market for doctorate holders in the humanities.

This coming of age memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever wrestled with learning a foreign language or fitting into an unfamiliar culture, whether that's Germany or graduate school.