The god of that summer by Ralf Rothmann
German fiction
Original title – Der Gott jenes Sommers
Translator: Shaun Whiteside
Source – Personal copy
I am late starting German lit month this year. I have never been the best at it, as I’ve been fitting what I read into the plans put up for the month, but I’ll post the German lit I read over the month anyway, in order, as ever. I started with this book, which I hadn’t written a review of the other day; it would have been the 1600 review, but it just missed out. I read one other book by Ralf Rothmann, Fire Doesn’t Burn, seven years ago. As I said in the last review, this is another writer who has a few books in English but is a major figure in German literature, as he mixes real-life insight into the Ruhr Valley he has lived in and also looks back at Germany’s past in World War II; this is the case in this book. He has also been outspoken around book prizes, in fact withdrawing his book from the German book prizes in the past. German book critics have called this the Frankfurt Hunger Games; maybe, as we end the Booker season, one can see that!!
Her sister, red-haired like herself and with the same curly hair, had, unlike her, dark eyes – a brown in which she seldom saw more than brown – and not nearly as many freckles. She flicked her cigarette ash on the floorẠOh, we’re gradually getting used to that, plenty of experience by now. Of everything going up, I mean. But I think you’re our guardian angel, even if you haven’t got a halo. By the way, does the old man know what you’re doing here? I remember that he doesn’t like refugees in the stables.. ‘ Luisa threw her scarf over her shoulder, stepped into the corridor and closed the gate. ‘Why? After all, you’re here too,’ she replied. ‘And besides, we’re not refugees.
We’re from Kiel!’
They move to escape the war !
This book is part of a loose trilogy Rothmann has written about World War II and its aftermath in Germany. This is the second book and follows a young girl, Luisa, as she flees with her mother and older sister, Billie, to the relative safety of Kiel in northern Germany. As they are escaping the Russians are winning out in the east, and they are on their brother-in-law’s dairy farm. All this is in the summer of 1945 as the brother-in-law, an SS officer, turns his eys to Billie as the bombing draws ever near to their world. The world is viewed through Luisa’s eyes, so those men in striped uniforms are from the concentration camp; it shows how blind some people were to the horrors, but the book shows the conduct of the brother-in-law and the violence that followed the SS. Alongside this is the bombing and the influx of more and more people escaping to the western side of Germany. It captures a country falling apart through the eyes of a young girl and its effects on those around her as the war is drawing to a close.
More and more refugees were coming to the farm. They were installing rows of makeshift beds in almost every outhouse and even in the byre. Although it was still freezing at night, the horses, including Breeze, had to go to the paddock in the park, and Luisa got hold of an old woollen blanket and tied it around the horse’s neck and the base of its tail. Admittedly it was barely putting on any weight, but its hooves seemed to be getting better; already it wasn’t walking as hesitantly as before, and the others tolerated it in their midst. Particularly after sunset they stood crammed together, and when Luisa read in her room she could hear the animals coughing in the darkness.
The war gets closer as more try to escape to the west !
The book deserves to sit alongside works by Grass and Böll about the war. I was reminded of other child narrators, from The Book Thief to the violence of Flyora in Come and See, the russian film. This is between them, from the bully of the SS brother-in-law to the fact that the violence and upset of the war is never really that far away. The book reads like a collection of reflections from the time it was written, told in short chapters that give it a pace that mirrors what it must have felt like, with the undercurrent that the war wasn’t going the way Germany wanted. It does capture how a child would view this, not quite seeing what we see, like when one of her sisters vanishes in the city, is more than it seems to our narrator. This is the first book for this year’s German lit month, with a few more to come. Have you read any books from Rothmann?
