Category: GERMAN LIT MONTH

The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller

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The hunger angel by Herta Muller

German  title Atemschaukel

Translator Philip Boehm

Source – review copy

Well this is the third book from the German /Romanian Nobel winning writer  Herta Muller ,Every time I try her books I found myself more drawn into her style and quirky imagery and wordplay .She is a true one-off, this book is another that is set partly in her homeland of Romanian but this time it is in the mid forties as the war is drawing to an end .We see how the German Romanian suffered at the hands of the Soviets .

What can be said about chronic hunger .Perhaps that there’s a hunger that can make you sick  with hunger .That it comes in addition to the hunger you already fell .Then there is a hunger which is always new ,which grows insatiably ,which pounces on the never-ending old hunger that already took such effort to tame .

Leo on hunger when he has been at the camp a while .

We meet Leo he is in his teens and he is a German Romanian just like Herta Muller is herself .We see his life as he is caught up in the post world war two events ,as Romania side with the Germans the Soviets are now rounding up all the German connected Romanians Like Leo to send to the Labour camps ,WE see how this young man caught up in this copes with the horrors of a labour camp we see how a normal man ,this man has a poet’s eye as you will see from who it based on ,has to struggle and change to cope with the system in the camps and is thus on the other side is a broken man and maybe not as free as he seems  .It seems that Muller largely based Leo on Oskar Pastior a German Romanian like Muller ,she was friends with him and they had planned to write this book together meeting near the end of his life and making a journey to the place he had been sent in the old soviet union (now in Ukraine ) to get a feel for the man here is him reading one of his own poems in German  but Oskar passed  away before they could  finish the project ,so this is her take on his time in a labour camp from what she learned in the time they spent together ..

There are also other partners .

I’ve danced with the teapot .

With the sugar bowl .

With the biscuit tin.

With the telephone .

With the alarm clock .

With the ashtray .

With the house key .

This poem on the last page sounds like Paitor from the two poems I ve read and is Leo when he is free or is he ?

 

Well it is an easy piece to compare this to Aleksandra Solzhenitsyn one day in the life .. and in some ways Darkness at noon by Koestler .Both of which show the horror of the labour camps or soviet prison system (yes I know darkness never says it is russia but it is implied that it is ).It does and it doesn’t ,I feel it is Muller own unique style that maybe sets this above the others and the clever use of the Hunger angel metaphor ,each person has their own Hunger angels in their minds what form it takes is unique to each of them .Another hard look into her own origins and that of her fellow German Romanians .Like in her other books they always seem stuck between two worlds and not of one place or the other not Romanian or German and this is rather like Muller’s writing that always seems misplaced not quite german and not quite east european , it is always uniquely her .Another great read for Lizzy’s and Caroline’s German lit month

Have you read this book ?

Do you have a favourite book set in the labour camps ?

 

Winters in the south by Norbert Gstrein

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Winters in the South by Norbert Gstrein

orginal title Die Winter im Süden,

Austrian Fiction

Translators – Anthea Bell and  Julian Evans

Source – review copy

Well Norbert Gstrein name was new to me when this book dropped through my door a few weeks ago ,but a quote from the great W G Sebald on Gstrein last book that was translated into english over ten years ago “an exceptional work of prose fiction” So Norbert Gstrein who is he Well he grew up in a small hidden village in the Tyrol in Austria ,his brother is a famous ski racer ,he was interested in maths early in his life ,he later studied it a university ,but after that took up writing it was his novel english years that first caught the eye that was his third this Winter in the South is his sixth of the seven he has written .

It was in her second month in Zagreb in the autumn the war began ,that the news reached Marija that made her life Foreign to her for ever .She had not set eyes on her father for more than forty – five years ,and had thought he was dead for almost as long, so at first she did not react at all to the advertisement that the neighbours had left outside her door and that couldn’t possibly have been from him.

the book opens as Marija world is thrown doubly into chaos .

 

Winter in the south ,is a book about people and war ,but more about  two wars the second world war and the Balkan conflict .The two main people are Marija a women in her fifties whose marriage on rocky ground ,but is returning to her native Croatia and to Zagreb ,as this happens her father who fled leaving he Marija and her mother as he was a well-known Croatian fascist in the second world war ,he ran to Argentina .But the father is now drawn by the war and splitting of Yugoslavia and the return of Fascism maybe to Croatia ,also to get to know the daughter he hasn’t seen for over fifty years .But will she forgive ,is he to old for war ? Do people change ,where is home and what is important to people is it family or politics that  matters ?

Whenever he felt like breathing some life into the stalemate of his Zagreb existence he talked about Buenos Aires in the same homesick way he talked about Croatia back in Argentina .

The father is maybe a man now with no homeland after he returns

This book is full of threads a classic piece of central European writing a book that dives into the soul of people and what drives them  .The prose follows ,the father flight from Vienna after a killing in 1945 ,his following life in Argentina (having just read Gombrowicz diaries on his time in Argentina it was interesting to see a fictional take on living there ).Then there is his daughter life in the Croatia of the nineties that is beginning to drift towards the madness of war again .Gstrein shows both the personnel cost of war ,the story of a family broken apart after the second world war .But also the echos in the conflict in Yugoslavia that hark back to  as the old wounds of world war two surfaced as the war began ,as the fact that the two major part of Yugoslavia had been on different sides in the war .Then the father why is this man in his seventies at ,east so willing to go to war again ?As many of you that read this blog on a regular basis know I have a soft spot for Balkan conflict stories  and also for fiction set round Argentina ,due to time working in the nineties with many refugees in Germany from this war .Anthea Bell and Julian Evans have managed to make this complex work come alive in English and yet again another great selection from Machlehose one does wonder why it has been ten years between translations for a writer with seven novels and a number of prizes for his books ,He seems a hidden gem of Austrian writing .

Have you read his earlier book The English years ?

 

Summer Lies by Bernhard Schlink

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Summer Lies by Bernhard Schlink

German fiction (short stories )

Translator – Carol Brown Janeaway

Source review copy

Now I am a huge fan  Schlink’s works ,he studied law and now is a professor of law  ,he  also writes crime fiction ,but for me it is his more literary options that always grab me .So when the chance to read this his latest collection of short stories I couldn’t turn it down .It was a perfect fit for both Lizzie and Caroline’s German Lit month ,but also the first Bernhard Schlink reading week which Judith over at Readers in the wilderness is hosting this week .This also follows the news last week that his most famous Novel The reader is one of the world book night choices for 2013 ,I ve already put it down as my first choice to give away .

He had arrived thirteen days before .The season was over ,and with it the good weather .It was raining ,and he spent the afternoon with a book on the covered porch of his bed and breakfast .When he made himself go out into the bad weather the next day to walk along the beach in the rain to the light house ,he first encountered the woman on the way there ,and then on the way back .

Richard and Susan meet on the story after the season .

Well to summer lies .Now my first question is do you ever give a book a theme song ?Well I’ve had a song for this book with the lyric along the lines of  summer days . but for the life of me I can’t place the song .But yes as I read sometimes a song helps me along .So back to the book summer lies is a collection of almost and what might have been .A very clever  collection of stories of what it is to be middle-aged  man and face those points we all have too at some point .We meet a couple  Richard and Susan in the first story He is a man who is set in his way the meets the lovely Heiress Susan on holiday and then wonders how he will fit this women in his everyday life .Elsewhere we see a professor looking into the abyss  as he has cancer .A middle-aged man takes his elderly father to a music festival .We see this as a way for the father and son to connect .A chance meeting on a plane will lead two lives off on different paths .

“I expect you’re pleased that the government …”

It sounded as if father wanted to launch into one of their customary political arguments .He didn’t let him finish .”I haven’t read the paper for days .Not til next week.Shall we take a walk on the beach ? His father insisted on reading the rest of the paper.But stopped trying to draw him into an argument .Finally he folded the paper and laid it on the table “Shall we ?”

The father and son at the Bach music festival looking to connect

This is collection I recall connect with ,something about men at a certain point in there lives .turning points in the path of life .I was reminded of the lines in the film history boys about turning points in history .These stories on the whole are about turning points can A man have a women in his life or not ,what will that decision make in his future (this your are not told but you do wonder ). The son and father will these new sense of closeness last or is it a fleeting moment to be remembered in the future .Schlink does a wonderful job of just revealing enough about each character and there lives to make the story work but just that these are lean stories ,he also has a great eye for the world around him . .These stories cover the world but the fact that the men in the stories seem to be all of a similar age you get a feel of connection via that .It was adapted for radio here recently ,but I thought this is the sort of collection that would make a great film along the lines of Magnolia or short cuts where each story can be jumped in and out off  could be strung into an earlier one .

Have you read Schlink ?

Do you theme songs to books ?

Correction by Thomas Bernhard

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Correction by Thomas Bernhard 

Austrian fiction 

Translator Sophie Wilkins 

Source own copy 

Where start this is the third Bernhard I’ve read other the years he is always a writer that draws me into his complex world .born in Holland,but then  he moved to live with family in Austria and went to various schools in Salzburg his grandfather wanted him to have an artistic education .He then start an apprenticeship in a shop in the late 1940’s be then fell ill with a lung condition and thus began writing in the 1950’s often viewed as an outsider and a trouble cause in his native Austria due to his frequent criticism’s of the Austrian art and lit world .But he was held in high regard around the world .Correction is one of his best known Novel .

This piece of prose had been a good example of Roithamer’s logical cast of mind  ,everything he later became,all he came to be ,was already prefigured in this short piece ,a description , in measured clearly articulated terms ,of a segment of nature familiar to us in the smallest detail .

 

The  novel follows a man Roithamer (this character seems to be loosely based on Ludwig Wittgenstein the Philosopher ,thou he didn’t commit suicide like Roithamer).Roithamer is dead his story is told by his friend as he sort his estate out .We hear a story of this man’s obsession building a cone-shaped building in the middle of the woods and then giving and making his sister live there .She ides and this then sets about a series of events that lead to the death of Roithamer .He was  also working on a manuscript for many years until his death that he Roithamer keeps editing or correcting  it as he was never fully happy with it .

And where I asked myself,did Holler get the idea for this house of his ,because I am fully aware that I got my idea ,to build the cone for my sister ,from holler and his house at Aurach gorge .

the idea for the cone .

Well its hard to describe Bernhard books and not get lost in them,  he is a writer that twists and turns likes snake his proses are slippy  and hard to grasp hold of ,thus making you as the reader take your time over them  .Due to the mention on the rear cover I read up on Wittgenstein via his wiki page and yes the bones of the story is very similar he had a sister he built her a house ,he studied at Cambridge like the main character .Then another strand in this books  is the constant correcting and building the cone almost like this is symbolic of a man wanting to make a mark on his world ,this in part feels maybe like Bernhard own struggle his wanting to make a mark on the world .You are drag into a world of a hopeless quest for the perfect ,I do wonder if this is a search that happens a lot in Austrian fiction having recently read the new Peirene sea of ink by Richard Weihe another story this based on a Chinese painter that was driven mad by the search for perfection in his case art in one stroke .As much as it is Bernhard story you can see echo’s in the story of Ralph Ellison the writer of invisible man who spent thirty years working and writing 200 pages of what was his second and final novel Juneteenth (he never finished it he died before it was ,so it was edited and published by his estate ) .As ever I leave his novels in awe he was maybe the best writer of the mid 20th century Bernhard isn’t easy but when you make the effort boy is he worth it  .Sorry for the quotes it hard to pull them as his sentences can go on for pages and the is no paragraphs just page after page of writing .I admired the search for the perfect text the perfect place to live the cone .I am someone who maybe settles for less than best in my own world but then I ‘m not so driven .

Have you read Bernhard if so what did you like ?

Do you search for perfection when  writing your posts ?

 

  

Maybe this time by Alois Hotschnig

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Maybe this time Alois Hotschnig

Austrian fiction (short stories )

Translator – Tess Lewis

Source – review copy

Alois was born in Berg in Austria .He studied medicine ,then German and English language and literature at university of Innsbruck but didn’t get a degree ,since that he has been a freelancer writer working in many fields of writing he has also won 13 prizes for his works including the Austrian writers prize .

Now maybe this time has sat since last german lit month and it was unreviewed ,partly due to the fact I want to use it somewhere maybe in a short story project but never quite got round to it .I found I initially struggled to connect with this collection of stories but I am a believe in Meike and her choices for Peirene so rather than last year post a so so post I decide to reread the collection to see if after a second run through if I connected more to these stories than on my first reading so yesterday I reread it all as it is only 106 pages and actual written probably about seventy-five pages so only took an evening to reread .So on the second rereading I cracked what Hotschnig had in mind .

Whenever I left the house ,they lay in their jetty and when I came back ,hours later they were still lying there .In the sun ,in the shade in the wind and rain .Day in ,day out every day .

The opening lines of the first story the same silence the same noise.

From the opening story onwards the is a feeling of detachment in these stories an old women and her neighbours their ,are they real or spirits is she real why are they there these are all questions you are left with .Elsewhere a woman is seemingly being followed every day via a cafe to her house ,is this a stalker ,detective or just a spirit ? Some one awakes with blisters on their hands and a story in there mind but is it their story or not .These are just some of the tales you encounter in this collection .

I pulled myself together ,convinced the darkness was deceiving me .But my hands throbbed with pain, and with the pain they became mine once more .I tore open the curtains and examined my hands in the daylight .They were covered with blisters .

From the story the beginning of something just what is happening ?

 

The beauty of these short stories is what is happening in them  is left to you as the reader to figure out most of the time .As  these are bare bones of stories few names descriptions just happenings and  actions  most often viewed from the main characters in the stories usually .On the back of the book  he is compared to Kafka and Bernhard I don’t see Bern hard although maybe in longer fiction he may be more like the great Austrian master ,I as a reader always assume Bernhard as deep almost self-indulgent prose that make the reader really dive in , this isn’t Hotschnig now part of Kafka I get the feeling of not knowing where you are is a common theme .But for me it brought to mind a couple of things the first is the scenes in the two Wim Wenders films wings of desire and faraway so close were we meet the angels Daniel and Cassiel as they glimpse people life’s as they are sad ,old ,have secrets or stories to tell and we see it through the eyes of the angels .Another collection I was reminded of was Roald Dahls Tales of the unexpected not so much in story lines but more in the fact both collections keep you thinking as the unexpected happens and you wonder where the stories are going .

How is your favourite Austrian writer ?

Do you like stories that make you the reader think ?

Dying by Arthur Schnitzler

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Dying by Arthur Schnitzler

Austrian fiction

Translated by Anthea Bell

source – library book

When I happened on this at the library the other week I just had to pick it up for German lit month as the book dream story by him I read for last years German lit month was on of my favourite books last year .He start of as a doctor was friends with Freud then became a writer.He was known for tackling taboo subjects and one would imagine at the time this book was written it maybe was slightly taboo  ,he wrote numerous plays ,novels and short stories this dying is one of his earliest books .he was also part of a group that meet in cafes in Vienna that were called the Viennese modernist .

Then with his head still against her breast so that his words came to her with a heavy ,hollow sound ,he said ,”Marie,Marie ,I didn’t want to tell you ,one more year and then it will be over ” now he was weeping violently and loudly

Felix telling Marie what he has near start of the book

Now dying is the story of a couple Felix and Marie it starts with them enjoying life as a romantic couple but then we start see that Felix isn’t well in fact he is dying .Now Marie is so in love with her man she vows to him that when he dies she will die at the same time  her self  out of love for him(but also as it turns out maybe duty ) .As the novel progress we see Felix getting weaker but also Marie that at the start of the story comes across as maybe a little weak and maybe under Felix’s spell become a stronger more independent women .

She had partly recovered her composure .She threw her hat down on the chair behind her ,sat down on the sofa too and said coaxingly ” darling I only went out for an hour in the open air .I was afraid I might fall ill myself and then what use would I be to you ? And I took a cab so as to get back quickly ”

Marie becomes much bolder through out the book

The heart of this story is what would you do for love how much is your life work fundamental questions that everybody ask themselves from time to time in their own lives , also power in relationships who has the upper hand  Felix over Marie in a way a the start she loves him deeply but then when she makes the promise to die she then sees her life for what it truly is and over the last year of Felix life see her change  .Another book from this time with a strong female at the centre of the story .I could see this making a great two hander play or film with two great actors at the lead it would make for wonderful drama .I enjoyed  this another small gem from Pushkin they manage to find so many wonderful novellas from round Europe.

Have you read this book ?

Do you have a favourite Austrian writer ?

From the diary of a snail by Gunter Grass

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From the diary of a snail by Gunter Grass

German fiction

Translator -Ralph Manheim

Source –  personnel copy

Well it’s here again German lit month and this is my first offering a Gunter Grass I have reviewed cat and Mouse by him Before ,so won’t say much about him ,He has won the Nobel prize for literature  in 1999 and is known for quite outspoken at time and being  controversial as well his latest following comments about Israeli  .But he has also campaign for social reform and the social democrats in Germany .This is where this book from the diary of a snail .

This book seems a very personal book looking into Gunter Grass back story ,he was quite close to Willy Brandt (at time he meet he was starting to campaign to be chancellor of Germany ) so from 1961 Grass had worked for something called the political election forum of German writers .This book in the main part follows the narrator that is part of Brandt’s election team as they follow the election of him as chancellor  ,this is also coupled with a story of a Jew during the second world war  in the home city of Grass in Danzig .I ve also wondered a about Willy Brandt from the time I spent in Germany I know how well-regarded he was almost mythical so some glimpse I got by this book where interesting .Also another view of Danzig during the second world war was interesting his great trilogy is also based there but was from a German perspective , not a German Jewish perspective like this book .The title is also a view of how politics work slowly like a snail but also is maybe symbolic we see slugs and snails crop up through out the prose .

For me the election campaign began in a drizzle on the lower Rhine .In the Kleve town hall I spoke on “twenty years of federal Republic ” a speech which afterwards lost weight in some towns ,put a topical fat in others ,and never came to a full stop .

Early on read this and knew I d love it as I lived in Kleve for a year

So after the book visiting a town I had lived in I was gripped .I am a fan of Grass not the man himself I do find he is someone the maybe like the myth of himself and also to be in the public eye a lot .But this has all the classic marks of his writing the Danzig war setting is a theme that has cropped up in a lot of his books ,as has social commentary a book ,like “my century ” also touched these subjects .Maybe not the book to begin a journey with Grass as it is complex but it is also a personal book with the strong first person narrative in the present well the Brandt campaign you feel this is grass himself not a character ..Grass has since published two vols ‘(in english ) of an autobiography the third to come some time soon but due to the nature of the book a dictionary of Grimm’s words that tally to Grass life it will be a while to translate . I shall be reading peeling the onion part one of the collection soon and will see if the character in this book is Grass .

Have you read this book ?

Do you think Grass is maybe a bit outspoken ?

Homo Faber by Max Frisch

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Homo Faber by Max Frisch

Translator – Michael Bullock

Swiss Fiction

Max Frisch was Swiss writer ,he worked for a early part  of his career as a journalist ,then study architecture and became a architect .he was a member of gruppe Olten a group of post war swiss writer that meet in a old swiss rail cafe they beleived in a democratic  socailist   society .Homo Faber is the story of Walter Faber he is an  engineer,we meet him as he is travleing roun the world on behalf of the united nations .He is onn a flight that crashes in Mexican desert .This leads Walter to confront his life firstly loooking back to an affair in europe when younger ,this in turns leads to a meeting with a daughter he never knew he had .all this has the feel of a Greek tragedy Walter is on a journey through hisd life and what has happened in his life first his love of Hannah who is now married to some one else ,he sits next to a man on the flight who is the brother of his old friend that married hannah ,this is all in what is the first section then in the second section after the crash and he returns to europe and takes a cruise on this cruise he meets a young women called Sabeth that he falls in love with mainly due to the fact she so reminds him of his first love Hannah ,is she her daughter ? well you’ll have to read Homo faber to find out so they spend the night together after watching a lunar eclipse ,at the same time Walter is having stomach trouble this leads to the fact when he arrives in athens he has to have an operation .this where the book ends or the reports end as Max Frisch use a report style to narrate the novel .

Sabeth was standing above and beside me .I could see her rope soled shoes ,then her bare calves ,her thighs ,which even when foreshortened very slender ,anmd her pelvis in the tight jeans she was standing with both hands in her trouser  pockets

Walter is weight up Sabeth a younger women that may be his daughter

I so pleased for german lit month and it making me look up and down the library shelves for some new german language fiction tpo me this is one such ,although after some rersearch I ve a feeling I may have seen the film version of this book callerd voyager a number of years ago .Max Frisch is a clever writer this book has so many layers and twist and turns ,it links the modern world to that of Greek legend ,but also you can see his architects eye in the structure of the prose the abilty to see what has been and what will be and able to link them together like drawing up the plans for a modernist building .there are so many themes in this book forbidden love ,lost ,growing use of technology for man , feminism it is a book that will have you thinking for weeks after you put it down it did me oh and just for my friend rob Walter types his reports on a hermes baby typewriter .The translation was by Michael Bullock exiled for this is a ook that has so many turns and Bullock kept it a page turner .

Have you read this book ?

The wall jumper by Peter Schneider

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The wall jumper by Peter Schneider

Translator – Leigh Harfey

German Fiction

Peter Schneider is a German writer in the sixties he was very active on the German student movement ,he has written numerous novel ,short stories and film scripts ,he currently teaches at Georgetown in the USA .This book was originally published in the early Eighties and is about the Berlin wall we are introduced to an array of characters that have jump the Berlin wall and survived from east to west ,one such character is Robert an east Berliner who was attracted to the bright lights ,we meet him in a bar in Berlin and we find that he is finding it hard to adjust to his new life in the west .As he struggles he has descended into drink .Other stories are about people wanting to see western films .Lena an ex lover of the narrator of this book whose whole family are still stuck in the east side of germany .There is a lot of sorrow at times in these tales of the grass not being greener on the other side of the fence .

In conversations with Robert ,it has become clearer what I’m looking for :the story of a man who lose himself and starts turning into a nobody .By a chain of circumstances still unknown to me ,he become a boundary walker between the two german states .

the narrator weighing up Robert .

When I saw this on the library shelf I was quite looking forward to it as one of my favourite films is der himmel über berlin (wings of desire )which is set just before the Berlin wall fell and the wall is a large character in that film ,and it is in this book but some how I found Schneider writing very dry almost Journalistic in a way .The description of the people the narrator talks to all feel like the could have been drawn from the newspapers of the time ,you never get further than the story of how they got there and how they are coping ,we also get a lot of factual info that slow the narrative at a point .I m not saying I didn’t enjoy the book I did I just think if I d read it twenty years ago just as the wall was there or just after it has fallen  I d called it the best book I d ever read but time has passed and it is a good book on the time and the power the wall had on the city not just as a barrier but also as a symbol for the cold war .I m sure in another twenty years this will be a must read for the generations that can’t remember the wall .The book was translated by Leigh Harfey a reasonable translation you get no clue to if the book was a s dry in the original german but I think it may have been .

Have your read this book ?

A perfect waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer

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A perfect waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer

Swiss fiction

Translator – John Brownjohn

I went to library when the german lit month was first mention determined to try some new writers in German and this was one of them I got .I ,must admit the mention of magic mountain and the Downton abbey feel of Erneste the  waiter on the front sold it to me when I mention I got it some one from germany said of that is a LGBF book ,that peaked my interest more it is hard enough getting a book translated but very few LGBF make out through from their original language to english .

So we meet Erneste he is like the star waiter of a swiss hotel good at his job able to speak four languages he has it all going for him work wise ,so one of his perks for being the star waiter is he meets the passengers and new staff that arrive at the picturesque hotel by ferry .So one day he arrives and meet a new waiter a young German looking to expand his horizons Jakob and also two pretty young country girls as the book unfolds we see the two men grow closer but this is in 1935 and just over the border the dark shadow of the war is effecting the hotel as this happen the two men kiss and a new arrival an exiled German writer called Julius sends a spanner into the works for Ernste ,as he also has eyes for the young Jakob anyway Jakob goes back to Germany and then America  and Erneste carries on as a waiter til one day a letter arrives in 1966 many years later this sparks of the whole story being told as it is from Jakob who now is living in the us and has fallen on hard times since they last meet just before the war .

He sometimes caught himself yearning for the authentic Jakob while the real one was lying beside him .Although he could feel the warmth of him ,he kept thinking of the Jakob who had left him behind on the platform in Basel and then ,far away in Koln ,dissolved into thin air .

Erneste dream of Jakob .

This book is a great insight into gay love just before the world war two but also what happens when lovers move apart and go on very different paths in their lives ,also it catches that dream world just before the war where life in some ways in a place like the hotel where they worked was just perfect .We also see how people’s lives can arc one goes one way and another twists off like Jacob of to the US .I loved Sulzer style this is a gentle story of what at the time was a frowned on love between two men told with sensitivity and honesty .I really want to read some of his other books I think I ve found a special writer in Sulzer .I m sure large part of this is due to John Brownjohn translation skills as well holding the gentle prose together of this book .

Have you read any translated LGBF ?

Who is your favourite Swiss writer ?

Jarmilla by Ernst Weiss

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Jarmilla A Love Story From Bohemia by Ernst Weiss

German Fiction

Translated by Rebecca Morrison and Petra Howard-wuerz

Ernst Weiss was a German  jewish writer that was good friends with both Franz Kafka who edit some of his earlier works and Stefan Zweig This book Zweig considered Weiss best writing  .Jarmilla is set in the 1930’s in a small rural Bohemian village The title character Jarmilla is a pretty young women described as the village beauty  that married her sugar daddy a local feather merchant a rich man who keeps her in the way she has grown accustom too .But then a younger man a watch  maker appears creating a love  triangle ,Jarmilla is offer a new life by this man in America away from the feather merchant but also away from the money .we see the love affair blossom between the watch maker and Jarmilla he at one point compares her breasts to bohemian apples full of scent and skin like down .But as much as the is love in this affair Jarmilla is always held back by the life she has living with the rich feather merchant and in  That is the crux of the book that decision it is about what is important in people’s lives love or money ,safety or danger .  The book is very short only 80 odd pages long .It  was also lost for a long time until a copy was found in Prague university in 1990 and published in 1998 and this translation published in 2004 by Pushkin press .

It was around the time that my mother died ,she wasn’t old but in a lot of pain .The funeral left me devastated Jarmilla slipped away to see me .This time her silvery hand didn’t hold any wretched watch which had been broken Deliberately ” I noticed how cautiously he pronounced the word silvery as though trespassing .

Jarmilla gets closer to the watch maker

I can see why Zweig  so loved this story from his friend Weiss ,there are echos of his work in it that thing about crossing lines from rich to poor ,from old world europe to new world America .Similar feeling to the post office girl except in this one Jarmilla has control of what happens unlike Christine in the post office girl .As for Weiss his own story is very sad he fled Germany when Hitler rose to power to Paris and eventually killed himself as the german troops rolled into Paris in 1940 .

Have you read Weiss books ?

The pigeon by Patrick Suskind

~ winstonsdad ~ 18 Comments

The pigeon by Patrick Suskind

German fiction

translator – John E. Wood

 

Suskind is best known for his book Perfume and also the fact he doesn’t give any interview so very little is known about his life .This book is a very short fable like story of a man driven to the edge by a pigeon .er that sounds familiar a bit like the raven by Edgar Allen Poe yes this is sort of homage to that .

So we meet Jonathan Noel a french security guard this man likes order in his life in fact you could say he is a little to order and has borderline OCD .hiding himself from the world since his wife left him .So when one day a Pigeon decides to make his home in his apartment.

Now he saw the pigeon .It was sitting to his right a distance of about five feet ,at the very end of the hall crouched in one corner ,So light fell on the spot and Jonathan cast such a brief glance in that direction ,that he could not discern whether it was asleep or awake ,whether its eyes was open or closed .

Jonathan weighing up the pigeon .

I could imagine Jonathan being a reality tv star ,the man who hide for 30 years with a job that has minimal contact with people as that is what Jonathan thinks he wants little human contact  and a small apartment in a large building where he can hide as he dash trying to be unseen for the communal bathroom .You feel  Suskind is maybe using this as wider vision of modern man don’t we all live somewhat in bubbles these days ?This story has that strong German tradition of fables like Grimm the story can be read in many ways and although very short 77 pages in this edition from penguin with a largish font  .is the pigeon a symbol of something Jonathan lost in his life and by trying to chase the pigeon he may find again ?The book owes much to the Poe poem for the inspiration of the bird to drive some one to the very edge and has what many would call a Kafkaesque edge to it in the fact that Jonathan is facing a unknown foe in the pigeon and also facing the world some what a new because of the pigeon .I liked perfume and was pleased this although different to perfume completely is still beautifully written tale .

Have you read this book ?

do you like fables ?

 

German Lit Month

~ winstonsdad ~ 30 Comments

I wasn’t overly keen to join the german lit challenge that has been organized by Marcel of Lizzy’s  literary life and Caroline of beauty is a sleeping cat I read a lot of germanic literature as it is one of my favourite areas of translated fiction but I m notoriously bad a challenges but I ve pulled my socks up and got the planning head on as Worzel Gummidge would have said so here is what has been read ready and what is waiting to be read –

 

Read 

So here are books read for german lit month so far –

Homo Faber by Max Frisch – one mans life summed up whilst he is stuck in the desert .

Visitation – Jenny Erpenbeck – this was iffp shortlist was one I didn’t review at time have read since but not reviewed so will do next month a village told in fable like style .

Correction – Thomas Bernhard .Bernhard was the best post war german writer this is about a man building a  cone in a woods but about more than it seems !

The wall jumper – Peter Schneider Set in time of berlin wall a journalistic style book about people who tried to cross the wall .

Jarmilla -Ernst Weiss  Stefan Zweig’s best friend a love triangle in a rural town in bohemia in the 30’s

Maybe this time -Alois Hotsching tales of the unexpected ,weird going ons a very unusual short story collection .

not pictured but read

Nadirs – Herta Muller her debut collection ,family life and the horrors of communism

Robert Musil and Hans Fallada mini penguin classics from earlier this year .

To read 

Auto de fe by Elias Canetti – The story of Peter Kien from the Nobel winner he was Bulgarian but wrote in german

The case of sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig – Classic WW1 story with a anti-war message .quote on front caught my eye from J B Priestley “the greatest novel on a war theme … from any country ” sounds great .

The pigeon by Patrick Suskind – the reclusive german writer isn’t new to me but having just read perfume this tale partly inspired by the raven by Poe sounds like a great second book to read a man driven mad by a pigeon .

A perfect waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer I thought I d read a couple Swiss novels but looked at blog and hadn’t so picked this up set in mid 1930’s about a waiter in a hotel looked like a great choice .

Well that’s it so far I hope to get to library again this month for a few more so can try to get a couple more ready have some on my shelves to either reread or not read as well .

What are you reading for german lit month ?

Have you read any of these ?