Tag: German literature

Juli Zeh ‘New Year’

From his youngest age, Henning had become used to considering everything he did, said or even thought as an attack on his mother’s happiness. He often regretted being alive.***

As the book starts, Henning is on holiday with his family in Lanzerote. We’ve all been on these holidays, on one side of the divide or another where you just have to get away from the people you came with, to get some fresh air, to calm down or whatever. Henning without thinking too much about it gets on his bike and starts peddling outside of their rental, he doesn’t take anything with him, such as water or whatever and heads uphill. This is Lanzerote hot even in the winter, and when you set off uphill, well it just keeps going up. Henning is young still and needs to use up energy. Young children can be so frustrating, his wife isn’t happy having Hennings sister staying at theirs whilst they are away, keep peddling!

As he eventually runs out of steam and just makes it to the top he feels foolish not having any water and stops to knock on an isolated door to ask for some. Then something strange happens to him, he slowly recognises this house and deep seated memories come back to him, he is a child and slowly an event no body has ever spoken to him about comes back to him:

The next morning mum and dad are no longer there. When Henning gets up, Luna is still asleep. He crosses the corridors which, in the light of day have found their normal size, and the main room bathed in sun. As often at this time of day, the wooden door is open to let in the cool breeze. Henning continues through to the kitchen – in the morning there is a sweet smell with a bitter trace of coffee, and mum is usually washing plates in the sink or laying out the crockery on a tray for breakfast. But there is nobody in the kitchen, he can smell nothing. When this happens his parents or on the patio. Henning walks back across the main room his naked feet going flip flop on the cold tiles. He walks outside through the wooden door it’s very hot and the light is blinding. He walks around the edge of the patio, one edge of which is protected from the wind by a wall and from the sun by a wooden roof where there is a large table with stone benches, that’s where they usually have breakfast. The table is empty. No sign of mum or dad.***

He and his baby sister were found abandoned after several days alone in the house, a harrowing experience that has and still unbeknown to him effects his life today, his feelings for his mother well up in him, epitomised by the opening quote.

This experience brings him to speak to his mother, why had she never mentioned this? And to begin to understand the mess his sister’s life has become and that he must stop protecting her at last if she is to flourish.

As good as ever from Juli Zeh, why she is translated so little into english beats me.

First Published in german as “Neue Jahr” in 2018, by Random House
Translated into french by Rose Labourie and published as “Nouvel An” by Actes Sud in 2019
*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Dès son plus jeune âge, Henning avait pris l’habitude de considérer tout ce qu’il faisait, disait ou seulement pensait comme une atteinte au bonheur de sa mère. Il regrettait souvent d’être en vie.

Le lendemain matin, papa et maman ne sont plus là. Quand Henning se lève, Luna dort encore. Il traverse les couloirs qui, à la lumière du matin, ont retrouvé leur taille normale, et la grande salle baignée de soleil. Comme souvent à cette heure de la journée, la porte en bois est ouverte pour laisser entrer l’air frais. Henning continue jusqu’à la cuisine – le matin, il y a une odeur de sucré avec des traces amères de café, et maman est généralement en train de laver des assiettes dans l’évier ou de disposer la vaisselle du petit-déjeuner sur un plateau. Mais à la cuisine, il n’y a personne, ça ne sent rien. Dans ce cas, c’est que les parents sont sur la terrasse. Henning retraverse la grande salle, ses pieds nus font floc-floc sur les dalles froides. Il franchit la porte en bois et se retrouve dehors, il fait très chaud et la lumière est aveuglante. Il longe le parapet de la terrasse, dont une des extrémités est protégée du vent par un mur et du soleil par un toit en bois. Une grande table avec des bancs en pierre y est installée, c’est là qu’ils prennent d’habitude leur petit-déjeuner. La table est vide. Pas de trace de papa et maman.

Claudie Hunzinger ‘Les Grands Cerfs’

The economic impact for the Rhineland can be summarised as follows: 1 deer shot = 1260 euros saved for the timber industry.***

Years ago, Nils and Pamina, still students take the radical decision to move to the mountains and live on a high prairie cut of from the world in this book read for the Roman de Rochefort. Sure each year at set times they heard wild life noises and discovered their young trees had been massacred in the morning, but then Léo arrived, maybe an ex-military man, wanting to know if he can set up an observation post on their land and then for ten years not much happens.

Léo tells Pamina of the stags he observes and of which he takes photos, of Wow of Apollo, of Arador and of Geronimo. Léo who has observed these animals and knows them has given them names to personalise them. Slowly Pamina is pulled into the story until one day she gives in to a whim and goes to the observation point. She slowly learns that observing these animals is 99% waiting and 1 % observation, she is drawn in to Léo’s tales and marvels at these wonderful creatures. As she gets to know more about them, of their world, of their vocabulary, antlers, horns, velvet, moult and feels she knows them, of their life cycle, the animals begin to be shot, the wonderful Wow and the old clever Arador.

Claudie Hunziger renders their lives real to us, their growing antlers, shedding their velvet by impact with the trees, rubbing their antlers up against the trees to give them a finish, colour, rubbing up against a nut tree for instance to give an antler a gold colour. She tells us of the nights where they fight for ascendancy, of their mating and of then losing their antlers, their moult until the cycle begins in the spring. She tells us of their surviving the hunger of winter in the snow, eating tree bark.

Léo brings Pamina into contact with the forestry commission and the hunters who together “regulate” the “stock” of deer and learns of the future for the deer as shown in the opening quote from the representative of the commission. He explains to her that the forestry commission who regulate the livestock, auctioning of bracelets, the right to kill a deer, are only interested in the timber the forest produces:

He presented himself, what’s more, as a representative of the forestry commission responsible for implementing the national policy which is to ensure the regeneration of the forest and of its financial returns. That is to say to favour coniferous trees, silver firs, spice trees, Douglas firs, the woody species the most chewed by stags, eaten if you like……And that that required a population of deer reduced to a strict minimum.***

And of course what the hunters really want are the antlers, the stags are their real prey. Pamina lives this as her personal window onto the sixth great extinction which is now underway.

If you didn’t know about the life of stags before you read this, you certainly knew more afterwards. This was written passionately.

First Published in French as “Les grands cerfs” by Grasset in 2019
*** my translation

The quote as read in French before translation

L’impact économique pour la Rhénanie Palatinat se résume ainsi: 1 chevreuil tiré = 1260 euros d’économie pour l’industrie forestière.

s’est d’ailleurs présenté comme un agent de l’ONF chargé d’appliquer la politique nationale qui est de veiller à la régénération des forêts et à leur rendement financier. C’est à dire de veiller à privilégier les conifères, sapins pectinés, épiceas, douglas, espèces ligneuses les plus “abrouties” par les cerfs, bouffées, quoi…. Et que ça passait par un peuplement de cervidés réduit au minimum

Juli Zeh ‘Empty Hearts’

“Let me talk to Babak for a minute,” says Britta. “It’s about business.” “No talking, not now. I’m calling to tell you to stay calm. This probably has nothing at all to do with us.” “Didn’t you see that—” “Of course, it’s possible I saw a suicide belt, but I’m not certain. The news reports aren’t clear. Stay calm, spend your evening with your family, don’t log on to the Internet. Everything the same as usual. Okay? We’ll talk tomorrow.” “Okay.” “Until morning, then.”

Juli Zeh enjoys taking quirks or faults in our society, in the relationships between people and pushing them that little bit further such as in my recently reviewed Unterleuten where she takes the suppressed feelings in a village and pushes the people over the edge. Here in Empty Hearts, set in the near future her main idea is at once simple and twisted, as the book begins, Britta is at home with her family and some friends when a foiled terrorist attack takes place at the airport cargo terminal live on TV and Britta has an emotional response that her husband tries to reduce by explanation:

Is it one of your patients?” Richard and the others know that occasionally one of The Bridge’s clients “does something stupid,” as Britta puts it. When that happens, she acts devastated for a couple of days, while the other three strive to console her, assuring her that she bears no guilt, reminding her that her therapeutic success rate is higher than ninety percent. “They’re just people,” Richard usually says in such cases. “You can try to help them, but there’s only so much you can do.”

This is where we understand that Britta has some sort of involvement with people at risk. Her immediate reaction when she then telephones her work partner Babak lets us understand that her involvement in what has happened is far from straightforward as illustrated in the opening quote. We soon understand the basic premise of the book, which is then developed into the story. The Bridge, Britta’s company, has developed software to trace people who are suicide risks and then puts them through a twelve point psychological program to help them back into society, these people are often thankful and make the donations they live from. The Bridge has a near 90% success rate, but what happens to the 10%? These are the Bridges real business as we learn that they are in fact a service company supplying these people to terrorist organisations from which they make considerably more money, the immerged part of the iceberg.

From the initial terrorist action at the start of the book, whose perpetrators were not from the Bridge, Britta’s life begins to spin out of control in this fascinating thriller.

First Published in German as “Leere Herzen” in 2017 by Luchterhand Literaturverlag.
Translated into English by John Cullen and published as “Empty Hearts” in 2017 by Nan A. Talese

Daniel Kehlmann ‘Tyll‘

Booker International Prize 2020: 6 Books shortlisted for this prize.

1. “Tyll”: In order of reading book number 1.

I don’t normally follow this prize in detail but I end up reading some of the shortlisted books, since, due to the confinement, the award has been delayed and I’m into my third book of the six, I thought here goes
In order to follow this event, hopefully I’ll manage to write articles on all six of the short listed books and propose my winner before the official announcement.

Visit the official site for more details: Booker International Prize 2020

Tyll Ulenspiegel… sang a mocking ballad about the poor, stupid Winter King, the Elector Palatine, who had thought he could defeat the Kaiser and accept Prague’s crown from the Protestants, yet his kingship had melted away even before the snow. He sang about the Kaiser too, who was always cold from praying, the little man trembling before the Swedes in the imperial palace in Vienna, and then he sang about the King of Sweden, the Lion of Midnight, strong as a bear, but of what use had it been to him against the bullets in Lützen that took his life like that of any mere soldier, and out was your light, and gone the little royal soul, gone the lion! Tyll Ulenspiegel laughed, and we laughed too, because you couldn’t resist him and because it did us good to remember that these great men were dead and we were still alive, and then he sang about the King of Spain with his bulging lower lip, who believed he ruled the world even though he was broke as a chicken.

Daniel Kehlmann’s latest novel places the legend of Tyll in the Europe’s thirty years war where some estimates suggest up to fifty percent of the population of Germany succumbed to war and it’s byproducts famine and disease. The book is organised into separate stories involving the jester Tyll and the events of this complex war of the early seventeenth century. As the book begins, near the end of the war, Tyll arrives in a village of about one hundred people, so far spared by the war and amongst juggling, theatre and tightrope walking he tells the story of the war so far as in the opening quote in a language that would be easily understood by the people at the time and is at the same time a prologue to the book we are about to discover.

We move back to Tyll’s youth and one of the events this war for control of Europe between the Habsburgs, catholics and the Lutherians and Calvinists becomes known for. A previous peace treaty had set that if the ruler of one of the areas in the contested parts of Germany should be of a religion, or convert then everyone under his rule should be of the same religion. Thus when two Jesuits arrived in their village at the behest of the ruler, Kehlmann uses the individual story as an illustration of the global situation as Tyll’s father is tried for witchcraft, with the full use of torture and the Jesuit’s reasoned explanation for their “fair” trial.

Tyll lives through a number of events, becoming the Jester to the Calvinist Winter King, Frederick V, whose reclamation of the kingdom of Bohemia was the event which started the war and who had been deposed after one winter. Frederick was married to Elizabeth Stuart and it is through her, years later that we visit the peace conference, a surreal process where none of the key protagonists were allowed to be present and their negotiators had little or no power to come to agreements.

On the road with Tyll we see the brutality and filth of this war with camps of one hundred thousand soldiers but no latrines, of the intervention of the king of Sweden on the Protestant side and eventually the intervention in the war of France, against the Habsburgs, and thus on the Protestant side.

If you know nothing of this period of history, and here I hold my hand up, this is a fascinating way of discovering it

First Published in German as “Tyll” in 2017 by Rowohlt. Translated into English by Ross Benjamin and published in 2020 as Tyll by Pantheon. Translated into French by Juliette Aubert and published in 2020 as “Le Roman de Tyll Ulespiègle” by Actes Sud

Juli Zeh ‘Unterleuten’

“The land rent for ten wind turbines is fifty thousand euros a year. You work it out for a hundred turbines. Just to see what sort of a retirement that pays.”….
“Gombrowski’s going to wind up Ökologica. He doesn’t need it any more. Finished, over.”
The effect was immediate. Kron cut short all muttering with a movement of his hand.
“Think a bit. Ökologica hasn’t been profitable in a long time. Why is Gombrowski so set on the wind park? To pay himself a tidy pension.”
This time he let them mutter. Except for Ulrich, they all had family that worked at Ökologica: daughters, nephews, sons and sons in law; Björn’s grand-daughter had just begun an apprenticeship in agronomy. In Unterleuten to lose your job was the equivalent of a professional death sentence.***

Juli Zeh takes the time to set the scene in this delicious rural thriller, where the events that take place are blurred by the form, they are seen from the viewpoints of each of the many protagonists living in the village of Unterleuten in Brandebourg about fifty kilometres from Berlin, there are no truths only different perspectives. There are the new arrivals, moving in from the city and the villagers who have lived the tumultuous times of the twentieth century, the disenfranchisement of the land owners, the collectivisation of the land followed by targets set in Berlin that didn’t take account of the seasons and the capability of the land, the flight of villagers to the West, The Stasi’s spying of the people, the wall falling and coming to terms with Capitalism. The villagers all know each other or are related and old contentions run deep. Each of the protagonists, as the events unfold, is persuaded to be acting justly as the village’s fine balance is knocked out of equilibrium.

There is the mayor, Arne Seidel, who best represents the arbitrariness of the past fifty years, once the vet trained in The DDR, but whose training was no longer recognised after re-unification. Arne is then left a broken man when his beloved wife dies of a short illness only to discover that she had been a Stasi informer, writing page after page about him every week, before he is then coaxed by Rudolph Gombrowski into becoming Mayor.

There are the two long term enemies, Kron, a one time convinced communist who regrets the passing of the DDR and the privatisation of the collective farm, and whose wife ran away to the West years during the Cold War leaving him with a young daughter to bring up. There is Gombrowski the man who had taken the collective farm in hand after unification and created a private company, guaranteeing employment for a large part of the the local population but making himself rich at the same time. We soon learn that problems are handled locally without outside interference, police or lawyers as opposed to the West, Gombrowski and Kron had opposed each other as Gombrowski tried to take over the collective farm and had a meeting in the forest during a storm from which one person died and Kron suffered broken legs as Gombrowski was then able to take over the farm. But what really happened that day? Whose interest is it to leave a doubt?

For many years Seidel and Gombrowski have acted in tandem, both believing this is the best for the community with the excesses from Gombrowski’s company Ökologica GmbH, more or less subsidising the village.

Then there are the newcomers, of which two stand out, the highly manipulative, stop at nothing Linda Franzen, who wants to set up a ranch for sick horses but needs money and land, and there is “The Bird Protector”, Gerhard Fließ, who wants to restrict any human activity that will threaten the presence of the Ruffs that feed in the region during their annual migration, Gerhard uses his power to prevent Linda from building an enclosure for the horses. Neither of which understand the old antagonisms present in the community.

To this state of affairs, set in 2010, Juli Zeh throws in a private company, Vento Direct with a project to install a wind turbines park in the local countryside, where no single land owner has quite a large enough patch of land without the small patch which Linda Franzen discovers she owns….
This was a magnificent read which I highly recommend.

First Published in German as “Unterleuten” in 2016 by Random House GmbH.
Translated into French by Rose Labourie and published as “Brandebourg ” in 2017 by Actes Sud
*** My translation

The quote as read in French

“Le fermage pour Dix éoliennes, c’est cinquante Mille euros par an. Á vous de faire le calcul pour cent éoliennes. Histoires de voir quelle retraite ça donne.”….
“Gombrowski va fermer l’Ökologica. Il n’en a plus besoin. Fini, terminé.”
L’effet fut immédiat. Kron coupa court aux murmures qui s’élevaient d’un geste de la main.
“Réfléchisez un peu. Ça fait longtemps que l’Ökologica n’est plus rentable. Pourquoi est-ce que Gombrowski tient tellement au parc éolien? Pour se faire une jolie pension de retraite.”
Cette fois, il les laissa murmurer. Á part Ulrich, ils avaient tous de la famille qui travaillait á l’Ökologica: fille, neveu, fils et gendre; la petite fille de Björn venait de commencer un apprentissage d’agronomie. Á Unterleuten, perdre son travaille était l’équivalent d’un arrêt de mort professionnel.

Lukas Bärfuß “One Hundred Days”

They weren’t just shoemakers, farmers, doctors, drivers, sons, mothers, daughters, or whatever. First and foremost, you were either one of the Longs or one of the Shorts. Expats avoided these local terms–they were forbidden words, associated with calamity, with murder, expulsion, revolution, and war. And we never asked anyone their affiliation, as we called it, because we didn’t know what exactly these groups were, whether they were tribes, ethnicities, or castes. But Short or Long, they all spoke the same language and we didn’t have a foolproof way of telling them apart.

I’ve chosen Lucas Bärfuß, the 2019 winner of the Georg Büchner for my last book to be read for this year’s German lit month. With this his 2008 book about a young Swiss aid worker caught up in the Rwandan Genocide, David an idealistic young man, who four years previously has gone to Rwanda, The Switzerland of Africa, “not just because of the mountains and the cows, but also because of the discipline that ruled every aspect of daily life”, as part of The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. The intersection between David’s personal life, as he falls for an open, free young Rwandan, Agathe, who causes him to stay behind, hiding in his villa for one hundred days after the last Europeans leave the country, the duration of the Rwandan genocide.

As the opening quote leads us to believe, the Europeans in general but the Swiss agency in particular, who had been present since the independance in the 60’s, had no real window to or comprehension of the complex ethnic situation in this up to then well run country. Bärfuß, through David, tells us of the pressures on the country, first economic, as the Americans ended the international export agreement on coffee, the almost single export matter of Rwanda, putting a sharp slide on the price of coffee, then population, as there was no longer enough land to support an agricultural based society:

The country was overpopulated and the situation in Butare province was especially dire. For every dead person there were three newborns, more mouths that had to be fed somehow. If the country’s population continued to grow at the same rate, it would double in fifteen years. Already the demand for land could not be met. The hills were cultivated all the way to their summits. Even the dead were begrudged their graves. Since no one wanted the land to lie fallow, goats were allowed to graze in the graveyard. After ten years the graves were dug up….

Having told us of the pressures he then tells us of the two other necessary ingredients, firstly political historical, of the changes in the country when the Belgians took over the colony from the Germans at the end of the Great War and the subsequent decline of Kigali the erstwhile capital and the Belgian’s working with the Longs, of many of the Longs then being forced to flee to Uganda at the independance of Rwanda and of the subsequent instability caused by their being expelled from Uganda:

But then the monster rose again and repressed history rose again in the guise of the expelled Longs, returning home from their Ugandan exile, and because the Shorts had never allowed them to cross the border freely, the Longs sent their sons armed with rifles.

And secondly, organisational, as David explains that the relative stability of Rwanda up until this point can be linked to its organisation, where everyone knows his place in society, as in his own country Switzerland, but that here in Rwanda everything is controlled centrally, a prerequisite he surmises for a genocide:

Like all of Rwanda’s 840 mayors, he had been personally appointed to his office by the President. In theory, the local council held authority, but since most of the councilors had only gone to primary school, the mayor led the council like a bull with a nose ring. Each community was divided into ten sections, and these in turn were divided up into cells. The cells were not just administrative units, but were divisions of the political party. There were no independent structures and even the lowest-level leaders were controlled by the administration in Kigali. Each citizen knew his place and his superiors and followed orders that came directly from the capital.

As David lays out this backdrop he tells us his personal story, of his slowly losing his idealism in favour of the realism needed for his mission, epitomised by a story he tells of letting his house keeper, a Long, grow vegetables in his garden which helped to support her family of eight only to find that that the agencies project for a much needed orphanage was turned down because of this and that he then ripped out the garden. David tells us of how the people in Rwanda changed through the story of his girlfriend, Agathe, a Short and how she changes from a proud and independant woman to a rabble rouser and of his own confusion in his relationship with her, leading to his staying behind when the other Europeans fled in the hope of seeing her again even though he knew of her actions.

David tries to analyse the work carried out by his agency, for instance when they arranged for the radio broadcasters to be trained into making their programs more interesting:

They had learned the lesson. The broadcasts were entertaining. They played music, performed short sketches in which two shrewd farmers discussed the stupidity of the inkotanyi, as they called the members of the rebel army. Fine, it wasn’t our intention to teach the génocidaires how to do their work, and it was certainly not our fault if they used the radio as a murder weapon, but somehow I could never shake the feeling that I was observing one of the agency’s more successful projects.

Finally he tells us of the West’s missreading of the situation through the voice if Missland, an old hand aid worker who had long since come to terms with the situation:

This country’s history is one giant lie, Missland had said, and he made fun of the experts whose report demanded that the President take measures against the death squads. The man from whom they demand action is himself commanding the death squads..

This is a powerful story that I would recommend to anyone, my first encounter with Bärfuß’s work but certainly not my last.

First Published in German as “Hundert Tage” in 2008 by Wallstein.
Translated into English by Tess Lewis and published as “One Hundred Days” in 2013 by Granta Books

Britta Böhler “The Decision”

Yes, Heinrich was often right. His “subject” still exists today. The eternal petty bourgeois mindset, kneeling to those above you, tramping on those beneath you. “Everyone should have someone above himself he is afraid of and someone below that is afraid of him.”***

This book by Britta Böhler, read for German lit month in French, concerns three days in 1936 between when the nobel prize winning author of The Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann had handed in a letter to be published stating clealy his opinions as a critical opponent of Nazi Germany and his agreement for it to be published. It examines what may have been going through his mind, the greatest German writer of his time , who abhorred the Nazi regime but who would have to sacrifice his German readership, the only ones he really wrote for.

At the end of February 1933. Thomas Mann, his wife Katia and his daughter Medi leave Germany for a three week holiday in the Swiss mountains, he couldn’t know that this trip was one way and that he was leaving Germany:

During this time in his fatherland the world collapsed. You leave in all innocence on holiday and, before you know it, you no longer have a fatherland. And that at dizzying speed.
The fire in the Reichstag, the dissolution of Parliament, Hindenburg speech. The first proclamation of the state of emergency, a decree to protect the people and the state, what could that mean, I ask you?….And the there were the March elections, and he regained hope. Hitler had got it wrong, the majority of Germans hadn’t voted for him. But soon, it appeared that it changed nothing. New emergency decrees followed, the Reichstag had been completely neutralised. In November there would be new elections, and Hitler celebrated his defeat as a victory.***

Thomas Mann is described as a patriarch who lives for writing and is unfit for anything else in real life, from the outset the Nazis attack him in the press and as he stays longer than he is supposed to in Switzerland, they confiscate is house in Munich. He examines his relationship with his brother, the writer Heinrich Mann, he describes as a lover of wine and women, thinking back to a recent visit he had payed him in the south of France. Heinrich was impulsive and decisive, when in the first world war Thomas had taken two years to write on the nobility of war, missing the change in heart of the people and being published late in the war, Heinrich had written aboutreplacing the regime by a republic. Thomas was also frustrated by his son, Klaus who he compares to Heinrich, Klaus who for his first issue of “Die Sammlung”, an antifascist review, in 1933 had published A scathing article by his uncle Heinrich.

As Thomas dithers during these three days, he is under pressure from his daughter Erika who cannot understand his not clearly coming out against Germany. As he tells Katia at the end of the three days:

“The letter will be published tomorrow”, he says.
“it’s really what you want?”
He folds his napkin, empties his glass. How can he explain to her that he has made the decision to lose his fatherland? Or more precisely that he is losing nothing, that they can’t take Germany from him?
He rises and kisses Katia on the cheek.
“Germany is to be found where I am”, he says, and heads for the phone.***

A rich journey into the past where, against his inner convictions, Thomas Mann decides that literature cannot live in isolation from politics.

First Published in German as “Der Brief des Zauberers” in 2014 by Aufbau.
Translated into French by Corinna Gepner and published as “La décision” in 2014 by Sock
Translated into English by Jeannette K. Ringold and published as “The Decision” in 2015 by Haus
*** My translation

Martin Suter ‘A Perfect Friend’

“The scents of Jasmin, rose, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang, amber and vanilla penetrated the darkness. The left half of his lips felt something soft. A mouth? Fabio jerked his eyes open.img_0029Before him, so close that he couldn’t focus on it was a woman’s face.
“Norina?”
The face pulled back. Now he could make it out.
High cheekbones, big blue eyes, a small mouth with full lips, short blond hair. Mid twenties.
“Hello Fabio”, she said smiling. Bravely, it seemed to Fabio.
“Hello”, said Fabio. He had never seen the woman before.***

In this book, read for German Literature month, Fabio wakes from a coma with post traumatic memory loss, as the doctor tells him, six days after incurring a severe head injury for which he has no memory. Things begin to get complicated when a woman he doesn’t know comes to visit him, as illustrated in the opening quote. He quickly comes to the realisation that he can no longer remember fifty days of his life, and in these fifty days he slowly comes to understand that his life has been turned upside down, he has left his job and his girl friend, Norina, and taken up with a new set of friends, as he confesses to his memory specialist:

“Have you already once had a case like me?”…
“All cases are different.”….
“but not so completely. Before, I’d written about people like Fredi Keller. And then I’m going all over these bling-bling clubs in the city with him. I live with a lady who is fully engaged in the struggle against exploitation of women in the sex business. And then I become a regular in a strip club. I make fun out of the lying press releases that arrive at my desk everyday. And then I get involved with one of these women that writes them. I’ve become the exact opposite of myself.***

Fabio is visited by his closest friend Lucas, whom he remembers and who works at the same newspaper as Fabio, Lucas, by ommission, neither tells Fabio that he had left his job at the newspaper before his accident nor that he had left his girlfriend Norina, he also omits to tell him that he himself is now living with Norina. Fabio leaves the hospital with his new girl friend Marlen, is a stranger to him, and who also doesn’t tell him he has lost his job. So after his first visit to his memory specialist who tells him he should slowly begin to live his life in a settled manner in order to regain his missing memory, he goes in to work where he find someone else installed at his workplace. He then learns of the last subjects he had been working on, that he had published an article about the suicide of a researcher who had thrown himself in front of a train. Fabio also learns from his bosses secretary that he had been working on a secret story and that in the time span lost from his memory he had changed entirely from the Fabio he had been to this new Fabio. On a personal basis, Fabio cannot understand why Norina will not answer his calls, until he sees Lucas entering her appartment.

The scene is now set as Fabio tries to retrace the secret story he had been working on, discovering that someone had deleted his electronic data and his backups, and that that person could only be Lucas.

The intrigue he is chasing is linked to the date the book was published, Prions and Suter’s home country, choclate from Switzerland and of course corruption. Could somebody change so entirely in such a short time? What was Lucas’ role in this story? Is Fabio the person he remembers himself to be or the person preople think he has become? Who is the person he will be from now on? For this and many other questions watch the film in French or read the book in German or French, No English translation available.

First Published in German as “Der Perfekter Freund” by Diogenes Verlag in 2002
Translated into French by Olivier Mannoni and published as “L’Ami Parfait” in 2003 by Seuil.
Film in French directed by Antoine de Caunes and released in 2006
*** my translation

The quotes as read in German before translation

In die Dunkleheit Drang der Duft von Jasmin, Rose, Maiglöckchen, Ylang-Ylang, Amber und Vanille. Die linke Hälfte seiner Lippen spürte etwas Weiches. Einen Mund? Fabio schlug die Augen auf. Vor ihm, so dicht, daß er es nicht fokussieren konnte, war das Gesicht einer Frau.
“Norina?”
Das Gesicht wich zurück. Jetzt konnte er es erkennen.
Hohe Backenknochen, große blaue Augen, kleiner Mund mit vollen Lippen, blondes kurzes Haar. Mitte Zwanzig.
“Hallo Fabio”, sagt sie und lächelt. Tapfer, wie es Fabio schien.
“Hallo”, sagt Fabio. Er hatte die Frau noch nie gesehen.

Hatten Sie schon einmal einen Fall wie mich?…
“Alle Fälle sind verschieden.”…..
“Aber nicht so radikal. Gegen Leute wie Fredi Keller Habe Ich früher geschrieben. Und dann ziehe ich mit ihm durch die Schickimicki-Lokale der Stadt. Ich lebe mit einer Frau zusammen, die sich gegen die Ausbeutung de Frauen durch das Sexgewerbe engagiert. Und dann werde ich zum Stammgast in einem Striplokal. Ich mache mich Lustig über dir verlogenen Presseinformationen, die auf meinem Schreibtisch landen. Und dann lasse ich mich mit einer dieser Tanten ein, die sie schreiben. Ich habe mich ins pure Gegenteil meiner selbst verwandelt.”

Olga Grjasnowa ‘ City of Jasmine’

Hammoudi is welcomed by his own rowdy group, although he had actually intended to take a taxi straight to his hotel. He’d like a little peace and quiet–two nights of sleeping alone, far away from Claire and from his family waiting for him in Deir ez-Zor. A brief time out, just for himself. That’s why he didn’t tell his friends in Damascus his arrival time. They interpreted his silence as forgetfulness and simply looked up the landing time online. Now they wrap him in hugs and kiss him on the cheeks. Hammoudi is loaded into a car, complete with his heavy case full of gifts.

Grajasnowa’s study of the slow almost imperceptible slide of normal society into chaos and beyond begins with the temporary return of Hammoudi to Syria as illustrated in the opening quote. After studying in Paris and being accepted in a prestigious Hospital as a plastic surgeon, Hammoudi need only reurn home to renew his passport, a formality, to take up the position and to live with his Jewish girlfriend, herself a surgeon in Paris. Onc home the complications begin:

‘You can have your passport back but you’re not allowed to leave the country.’ ‘Pardon?’ Hammoudi responds. ‘The Security Service has some concerns about letting you leave the country again. Please contact the relevant authority.’ ‘But the Syrian embassy assured me I could just get my passport renewed. It wasn’t a big deal, they told me.’ ‘Where was that?’ ‘In Paris.’ ‘Then go and see my colleagues in Paris.’ ‘But I’d have to leave the country first!’ ‘I’m not going to get into a discussion.’ His face devoid of expression, the civil servant flips open the next file.

We follow Hammoudi’s life as he slowly realises he won’t be leaving in the near future and in order to obtain an equivalency document to practice in Syria he must sit an exam, at the first sitting he answers all of the questions and fails, at the second sitting he pays the expected bribe and steadfastly refuses to answer a single question and of course passes.

In parallel we follow the story of Amal, the daughter of a rich father who makes money working for the Assad regime, amid a general but timid uprising of the people to obtain basic rites. No one in Syria is dupe, they all know of the brutality of the Assad regime:

Amal got a degree in English literature but books weren’t enough for her, so one day she auditioned for the prestigious Institute of Dramatic Arts. All that seems long ago now. Fear has settled in like a parasite building a nest inside her ribs. Amal knows exactly what might happen to her but she doesn’t know when or whether it will come about, and it’s this uncertainty that makes her tremble. Too many people around her have been arrested or tortured or have simply disappeared, which amounts to the same thing.

The situation in Syria slowly deteriorates, as the Regime has a file on everybody, with absolutely anybody being a potential informant, Amal is arrested once for being present at a demonstration where Grajasnowa describes the arrest and detention process of a totalitarian state; as her father tells her, he can bribe her captors to get her release but there are so many different organisations capable of arresting her that he would have to know that she had been arrested and then know who held her in order to pay.

Amal leaves Syria for Jordan whilst Hammoudi’s town of Deir ez-Zor finds itself a rebel centre. As the regime then tries to bomb the town and its people off of the map, Hammoudi, at great risk to his life, runs an underground surgery where he saves some lives but loses many. As Daesh first appear then absorb mant of the warring factions, Hammoudi who has repeatedly, under pressure, operated on and saved leaders of the oposition finds himself a target of Daesh and flees at the last minute with help from the retreating forces and decides to try to find his way to Europe.

The story then moves on to the tragedy of immigration as he must first cross over into Europe and then move within Europe, he reflects on the situation he discovers in the camps:

Illegal immigration is strictly regulated at the camp but not by the European governments, there’s a hierarchy of refugees. Syrians usually arrive in whole families and in boats that are slightly better and not quite as overcrowded they’re from the former middle class and they have small financial reserves that have enabled them to get to Europe. Pakistanis and Afghans cross the Mediterranean in extremely unseaworthy boats, in some cases so tightly packed that they don’t even have space to sit. The Afghans are also the most prepared for the journey, their rucksacks are very well packed and they often have instant access to dry shoes and socks. Syrians though often don’t have a plan, they don’t know what’s happening to them. The preparedness of its emigrants is still the best indicator of the state of a society. At the bottom of the hierarchy are the people from central and Northern Africa.

As the final tragedy approaches we learn from Hammoudi how much he has been marked by his experience as when interrogated by the Europeans to decide on his status, he is able to quote the exact number of lives he was unable to save.

This story successfully transmits the idea of inevitability, if you live there , no matter who you are, there is no way out. As Amal finally realises, all those years of studying and working to become someone have been lost forever.

First Published in German as “Gott ist nicht Schuchtern” in 2017 by Aufbau Verlag.
Translated into English as City of Jasmine by Katy Derbyshire and published in 2019 by Oneword Publications.

Robert Menasse ‘The Capital’

For any member of the Commission hoping to promote a project, to realise that nobody takes an interest in it is a great relief.***

This is a satire about Europe and the European ideal seen through the eyes of multiple characters, each with their own responsibility within the Europe they live in and its almost planned stagnation. This book looks at the two contradictory forces playing with the destiny of the continent, on one hand a supranational European organisation lead by the Commission and set up after the results of the unbridled nationalism of the early twentieth century had gone to the extremes of the extermination camps and with the main objective which could be summed up as “never again”. On the other hand the representatives of the nation states who want to protect their individual states from a supranational ideal and are themselves at present undergoing the pressure and changes brought about by populism and nationalism within their own countries.

There is the ambitious Fenia Xenopoulou, a Cypriote but with a Greek passport as Cyprus was not a member of Europe until after she had arrived, trained in economics but who has been promoted to a role in Culture:

Greece eventually gets “Culture”….with its never ending financial and budgetary crisis, Greece had hit rock bottom and thus was defenseless and had no other choice but to accept what was given to them: the department everybody looked down on. It wasn’t a mission it was a punishment: when you dont know how to handle money, it’s best not to have any, and so that’s how you wind up with a department that has no budget.***

Xeno, as she is known needs a success to get her career back on track. When in answer to a call for a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the commission one of her team comes up with the idea of putting Auschwitz at the centre of the celebrations, “never again”, why populism and nationalism should never again be allowed to gain foothold, Menasse’s satire on the inner workings of the the Commission and how to kill a project is sumptuous. Xeno is outplayed by the chief of cabinet of the president of the Commission, Romolo Strozzi, a former Olympic fencing medalist, who gives her project the go ahead:

She had a strange feeling. she suppressed it. What was troubling her were the last few sentences Strozzi spoke at the end about planning the next stage: Oh yes, Ill take care of how we’ll include the member states in the project.
The member states? you mean the Council? Xeno replied. Why? I thought we’d agreed, the project is the Commissions responsibility.
Yes that’s clear. But it was the member states that created the Commission.
Yes of course.
It was at that moment exactly that Xeno wasn’t agile enough. that “yes of course” cut an opening in her defense.***

Strozzi is then able behind the scenes to use the member states against the Commission to kill the project. Menasse gives us his view of the sterility of advisory groups who are experts in the status quo and a case study of Europe being unable to negotiate a contract to sell pork offals to China with then, Germany first, and the other nations each negotiating their own contracts with China but from positions of weakness as no individual country is able to satisfy the full demand.

In these few lines I’ve simplified a rich and thought provoking book.

First Published in German as “Die Hauptstadt” in 2017 by Suhrkamp
Translated into French as “La Capitale” by Olivier Mannoni and published in 2019 by Verdier
Translated into English by Jamie Bullock and to be published in 2019 by Maclehose Press.
*** my translation

The quotes as read in French before translation

Pour tout membre de la commission désireux de faire avancer un projet, constater que personne ne s’intéressait été un grand soulagement

“La “culture” revint finalement à la Grèce….avec son interminable crise financière et budgétaire, la Grèce avait déjà touché le fond, elle était donc sans défense et n’avait d’autre choix que de prendre ce qu’on lui donnait: le service que tout le monde dédaignait. Ce n’était pas un mission, c’était un punition: quand on ne sait pas se débrouiller avec l’argent, mieux ne pas en avoir entre les mains, et c’est comme cela qu’on se retrouve avec le département dépourvu de budget”

Elle a eu un drôle de sensation. Elle la refoula. Ce qu’elle repoussa, c’étaient les deux ou trois phrases que Strozzi avait prononcées à la fin, à propos de la suite de la planification: Ah oui je m’occuperai de la manière dont nous intégrerons les états membres dans le projet. Les états membres? Le Conseil donc? avait répondu Xénon. Pour quoi faire? Nous étions d’accord , le projet est l’affaire de la commission.
Oui c’est claire. Mais ce sont les états membres qui ont fondé la commission.
Bien sûr.
C’est précisément à ce moment là que Xeno avait manqué d’agilité. Ce “bien sur” creuset une ouverture définitive dans sa défense.