One of the great writers of German modernism, Arno Schmidt was born in 1914 in Hamburg. The radio dialogs represent some of the "conversations" Schmidt performed on radio from 1955 to 1971. In twenty-two dialogs, selected from thirty-four published radio dialogs, Schmidt discussed a wide range of literary writing, from the works of German Romanticism to discussions of American and British writers, engaging his German audiences and challenging them to reexamine the canon. Included in Radio Dialogs I are dialogs on German authors Barthold Heinrich Brockes, Christoph Martin Wieland, Ludwig Tieck, and Karl May; the British Brontes; and the Irish master James Joyce.