Peter Blickle garners acclaim for second fiction work

KALAMAZOO--Dr. Peter Blickle, Western Michigan University professor of foreign languages, has been garnering acclaim for his second work of fiction.

"Von einer Liebe zur andern" ("From Love to Love"), has been well received in Germany, including through an October reading invitation shortly after the novel was published last July. Blickle read to a full house in the medieval German city of Pfullendorf. Several newspaper reviews reported that he "cast a spell over the audience."

The book tells the love story of a literature professor originally from Germany's upper Swabia and an American-Jewish violinist.

Although about love and its various qualities, it is deeply rooted in German history and in the human soul. Blickle recounts his narratives in scenic images and rich metaphors of language often purposefully and eloquently mysterious in their tension and struggle.

Blickle teaches German at WMU and serves as advisor for the University's German program. He has written and translated several highly regarded books in both German and English, and he won the Irseer Pegasus Award for his fiction in 2004.

His first novel, "Blaulicht im Nebel" ("Ambulance in Fog"), was published in 2002. Among Blickle's scholarly books, 2002's "Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland," which has established itself as one of the standard works on this German concept.