What kind of scope and limits should a Companion to the Modern German Novel set itself? What in particular do we mean by 'modern'?

One approach would equate 'modern' with 'contemporary', and thus focus on the novel in the here-and-now, in 'our era' - whether that era be relatively narrowly defined as the period since the Wende (turning-point) of German unification in 1989-90, or more broadly as the six decades following the collapse of Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War. Both 1945 and 1989 mark important cultural as well as socio-political breaks in the continuum of German history, and there exists a considerable body of scholarly literature devoted to the development of the novel in these periods - as well as in the decades into which they are subdivided. To anchor ourselves purely in the 'now' would however make for a viewpoint that is inherently unstable, as well as lacking a longer-term historical perspective, and a Companion constructed around it would fairly soon be overtaken by events.