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Joel Agee

Biography

Joel Agee

Joel Agee is a writer and translator. He has been awarded a Gugenheim fellowship and numerous prizes for his translation work, including the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin in 2008; the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist’s verse play "Penthesilea"; and the ALTA National Translation Award for his translation of SELECTED WRITINGS OF FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT. He is the author of two memoirs: TWELVE YEARS: An American Boyhood in East Germany and, more recently, IN THE HOUSE OF MY FEAR. His translation of Prometheus Bound was produced at the Getty Villa in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Joel Agee

Books by Joel Agee

The Stone World
by Joel Agee - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Joel Agee’s first novel begins in a house with a large garden in an unnamed Mexican town in the late 1940s, where six-and-a-half-year-old Peter reads, dreams and plays with his friends. The world around him is a unique one in history: a community of leftist emigrés who have found refuge in Mexico from the Nazi and fascist regimes of Europe, rubbing shoulders with Mexican labor activists and leftists such as Frida Kahlo. But the emigrés long for home --- including Peter’s stepfather, who wants to return to his native Germany. Going back to Europe may not be safe for any of them yet, however, which gives rise to anguished arguments among Peter’s parents and their tight group of friends.