From Me Through Uwe

...but the last word is pronounced "U-Vuh." It is a German name which sounds like the male counterpart to "Eva."

Born in 1934, Uwe Johnson grew up in what became East Germany–or the German Democratic Republic–in 1949. In a country controlled by the Soviet Union, Uwe Johnson was a novelist. If you can imagine what Franz Kafka would have written under the repressed influence of Nikita Khruschev, you can appreciate Mr. Johnson's novel, SPECULATIONS ABOUT JAKOB. But anyone, anywhere, at any time, should be able to appreciate this quote:

Whoever enters the world addresses himself as “I,” that’s the most important to him, but he finds himself in the company of several other I’s and has to readjust his self-importance. The concept of the universe probably starts with “I.”