Tag: german lit

Spark of Life by Erich Maria Remarque

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Spark if Life by Erich Maria Remarque

German fiction

Original title – Der Funke Leben

Translator – James Stern

Source – Library book

I now reach the fifth and last book of this round of Simon’s and Karen’s year club. Last but not least is a powerful work from the German writer Erich Maria Remarque, He is best known for his book All Quiet on the Western Front, seen as one of the best books to capture the horror and utter madness of war. He fell victim to the Nazis when they came to power in Germany as they tried to smear his name and make out the events in All quiet fdidn’t happen and that he had fought in the war. Anyway, he left Germany and lived first in Switzerland and later in the US, where he became a citizen after Germany revoked his citizenship and banned his books. He in turn, changed the spelling of his surname from Remark to the French spelling Remarque. This book was dedicated to his sister, who had stayed in Germany and was killed for being a traitor by the Nazis Regime.

509 stared absent-mindedly at the wall. Silber, the Pole, while still lying in the barrack with bleeding intestines, had called it the Wailing Wall. He had also known most of the names by heart and in the beginning had even made bets as to which of them the spot of sun would reach first. Soon afterwards Silber had died; but on bright days the names had continued to wake to a ghostly life and then disappeared again into the dark. In summer when the sun stood higher others, scratched in lower down, became visible, and in winter the square moved higher up. But there were many more-Russian, Polish, Yiddish-which remained forever invisible because the light never reached them. The barrack had been put up so fast that the SS had not bothered to have the walls planed.

The inmates bothered even less, least of all about the inscriptions on the dark sections of the walls. These no one even attempted to decipher. Nobody was foolish enough to sacrifice a precious match simply to grow more desperate.

His fellow prisoners and how the ss came in

The book is set in the dying embers of World War II as the Allies and Russia are slowly putting a stranglehold on Germany. We join 509, he is a German political prisoner in a Concentration camp, they haven’t been lined up to be killed but just worked to the bone, he has been there for ten years. So when they get news that the war is coming to an end. There are snippets throughout the book, like the Bridge at Remagen, which had been taken, meaning they can cross into Germany. These men, the veterans of the time, started doing things that maybe a while ago would have got them killed, pushing the lines, hiding from fellow prisoners, as the feeling of the war got near, with the local towns now being regularly bombed. Can 5009 and his friends make it through the war? What will happen when the SS take over the running of the camp? There are some moment when they see one man talk about the washroom and how at another camp it had been a way to kill people and how when one soldier would come it measnmt one thing and then another soldier later on starts freeing some of his fellow prisoners this is the look at those german held in the death camps not killed but worked to they are virtually dead on the whole these are all educate menmiddle class souls broken by the camp

The roll call had already lasted more than an hour, but it still didn’t tally. It was due to the bombing. The labor gangs which worked in the copper foundry had suffered losses. One bomb had fallen into their division and a number of men had been killed and wounded. On top of this, after the first shock, the supervising SS-men had started firing on the prisoners who sought cover; they had feared they might escape. Thus a further half-dozen had perished.

After the bombing the prisoners had dragged out their dead from under the rubble and wreckage-or rather what was left of them. It was important for the roll call. Little as the life of a prisoner was valued and indifferent as the SS were to it, dead or alive the numbers at the roll call had to tally. Bureaucracy did not stop short at corpses.

This made me smile german effiency failing as madness starts to descend

I read All Quiet on the Western Front, and over the years, I’ve picked a few of his other books to read; they are still on my TBR. But when I looked up the books for this week, I saw what had happened to his sister and how it had led him to talk to some of the famous German survivors of these camps. He came up with 509, and this novel serves as a tribute to her. Unfortunately, when he published it in Germany, he initially removed the tribute to his sisters, as she was still viewed by many Germans as a traitor for what she had done. With recent events around the world, it may be worth reading this about what happens when a country turns against its own citizens with hate and lies! This is one of the reasons I love the club years is unearthign gems like this book. Have you read any of his other books besides All Quiet on the Western Front?

Mozart’s Journey to Prague by Eduard Mörike

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Mozart’s Journey to Prague by Eduard Mörike

German Literature

Original title – Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag

Translator –Leopold von Loewenstein-Wertheim

Source – Personal copy

I moved away from France in my year of Classics and went to Germany for a short, quirky novel written by Eduard Mörike, a Lutherananutherinan priest who studied in Tübinghen when he passed his Theology degree, he became a Vicart in a rural parish, but over time his writing took over he was considered one of the best lyrical poets of his time,. This book ends with one of his poems and Imagines a Day in the Life of the composer Mozart as he heads to Prague for the premiere of his Opera Don Giovanni. Happens to steal a bitter orange off a tree. This book has been made into film and A radio play in Germany over the years.

Most Gracious Lady,

Here I sit, a wretch in your paradise, like Adam after he had eaten the apple. The damage has been done and I cannot even blame Eve, who at this very moment is innocently sleeping in a four-poster at the inn, with Cupids and Graces hovering around. Command me, your Ladyship, I am at your disposal to answer for my extraordinary misdeed.

In sincere confusion, your Ladyship’s humble servant,

W.A. Mozart,

on his way to Prague.

He handed the note rather clumsily folded to the uneasily waiting servant and told him to deliver it to the Countess.

The letter he wrote after getting caught having the orange

We see Mozart heading with his wife, Constance, from Vienna to Prague. When they stop at a country estate mid-route, and Mozart sees an Orange on a bitter orange tree, he takes it but is seen by the estate Gardener. He then writes them a letter of apology (I love that there is still a time when the written word is needed to make peace with the local gentry, sow ehn the countess invites them for the night to stop with them Mozart and his wife to spend the evening with them. The count is celebrating his Niece Eugenie’s engagement. So, as the couple fit in, Mastero is asked to play them a piece from his forthcoming opera, which he is happy to do. But as this happens, Eugenie sees something troubling in Mastero’s future. Will his Art finally eat him up? This leaves Mozart questioning his life and how entwined his life and music are!

“I feel,” whispered Eugenie with shining eyes, while everyone expressed their approval of what they had just heard, “that we have seen a whole symphony in colour, a perfect example of the spirit of Mozart in its gayest guise. Don’t we see the whole charm and gracefulness of Figaro in this?”

Her fiancé was about to convey this remark to Mozart when the latter continued:

“Seventeen years have now gone by since I last saw Italy,” he said, “but who, having once seen it, especially Naples, would not think of it for the rest of his life – even if he had been no more than a child as I was. But never before has the memory of that beautiful evening in the Gulf of Naples returned to me so vividly as today in your garden. When I shut my eyes – brilliant, distinct and clear, without the thinnest veil to obscure it – the divine landscape lay before me: the sea, the coast, the mountains, the city, the colourful crowds lining the shore and then that strange fantastic ball game over the water.

His music sparks the family he is playing for

I will hold my hand up I am not a substantial Classical fan I have tried over the years and am aware of Mozart and his career in parts. So, for me, this was one of those books that I had to turn to and have a deep dive into his music and the opera and how it all fitted in on his timeline, especially with Eugenie’s talk of Mozart dying and his life. Mörike actually mixes the facts of the events up in his novella. But at the book’s heart is the connection between the  Mastero’s life and music. A life we were all reading was short, but he didn’t know this until the small glimpse from Eugenie into his future. This book can be read in the evening. It is what Peirene calls a film book and can be read in a couple of hours. If you like classical music, you will get more out of it than I would. I do have DSenis Forman’s Night at the Opera, a book that I picked up, so when I need context around a work of Opera, I can see what he said. This was at the time after his last opera wasn’t well received in Vienna; he was now Prague’s golden boy. Have you read this fun little novella?

Twenty two days or Half a lifetime by Franz Fühmann

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Twenty two day or Half a lifetime by Franz Fühmann

German Fiction

Original title -Zweiundzwanzig Tage oder Die Hälfte des Lebens

Translator – Lelia Vennewitz

Source – Personal copy

For my second book for German Lit Month, I moved off the Guide Crime novel and picked a book I had decided on earlier this year. Joe at Rough Ghost had put up a picture on social media of a book by Fühmann, but I’m not sure if it was this one or another. U had read The jew car by him a couple of years ago and hadn’t known he had some other books coming out years earlier, so I found a cheap copy of this book which is on a subject that he talked and wrote about a lot in his later life, and that is Germany’s past he hAD BEEN IN THE nazi party during the wart but lived in East Germany after the war and was a staunch socialist. This book, written later in his writing life, is part memoir, part travelogue. It follows a three-year period he spent in Budapest in 1972.

October I9

Budapest: perhaps even more mini-skirts than in Berlin, in any case shorter ones, sometimes ending above the top of the stocking, usually cheap materials with an inverted pleat back and front and the skimpiest ones covering the ungainliest thighs

The intersection outside the Astoria is a No Stopping zone, a taxi stops, the customer has trouble with his money, the driver explains, the customer searches, cars block the inter-section, the cars blow their horns, the cars make a racket, the customer negotiates, the driver shows the figure on his fingers, the cars are now jammed up beyond the intersec-tion, the customer doesn’t understand, the cars roar, the driver of the car behind the taxi jumps out, cursing as he thumps the rear end of the taxi, the driver waves him off, the curser flings up his arms, and the cars way at the back reverse or turn and look for another route.

I liked this observation about skirts very of its time !

Fühmann finds himself in Budapest as a 50-year-old on a trip to a writer’s conference.(I’m always amazed how much more in  Eastern European states’ Literature is taken)  We see him talking with his fellow writers and his own poetic piece a few times in the book as he wanders around Budapest, talking about the city but also looking back at his own past and those war and post-war years. As the ghost of the Warsaw apcts invasion of Budapest some fouyr years before this book a book that start like a travelogue about the place thew writers become a darker book a writer thinking about his writing and also the past isn ever good as he wanders dark street drinks with his fellow writers. Talking about their works and place, it is a world caught in Amber.

Among pillars, in niches, under arcades: four pools, three large, one smaller, one shell-shaped, one shaped like a stadium, the water rising in temperature from the smallest to the largest pool each time by four degrees, from twenty-eight to forty degrees Centigrade, and on the water in the circle of the talking heads, bibs floating like lotus blossoms

Thirteen Leopold Blooms: what a metamorphosis

In the sauna: the old men have left, and now above the common people an athlete sits on the arm of a chair, wringing himself out. Doggedly, as stubbornly solemn as an athlete who has come in eleventh at the regional champion-ship, he squeezes the water out of his tissues, pore by pore, and every time he lifts his elbow he ripples the muscles of his arm, and no one pays any attention, wise nation! For fifteen minutes he works the section between collarbone and the top of his left breast, I might have been curious to see whether he kept up this pace, but the heat drives me out

Had pick this bit with its nod to Joyce

This is one of those lost gems that maybe would be great reissued a man wandering post-68 Budapest, a writer remembering his past draft into war by the Nazis and then those post-war socialist years, a time when the world he knew seemed perfect. But as he wanders around Budapest, you can see how that changes, and he talks to other writers. This has a bit of everything in his poetry, fiction, travelogue, and memoir. In the days when reading of a place was how to feel it before the age of celeb travels, he makes us feel the town, the Acacia trees, and the writers he meets. The city itself wound but still getting by. I hope it gets a new publication. My book is over thirty years old. I know Seagull Books has brought a few of his other books out. Described as one of the most sensitive books in East Germany. It captures those two extreme views of German life from the mid-thirties to when the book was written in 1972. Have you a favourite East german writer ?

Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz

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Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz

German crime fiction

Original title – Hotel Cartagena

Translator Rachel ward

Source – Personal copy

I had read this last year when it was shortlisted for the translated crime prizes, but. I never got around to reviewing it. So when the first week of this year, GHerman lit month is m, meant to be a crime, I rarely follow Lizzy and Caroline’s prompts, but I will join in for once. This is part of a series of novels about a Prosecutor in Hamburg. But the novels seem to all be able to be read as stand-alone other than maybe knowing some of the characters a little more than if this is the book you start with, it works as a stand-alone read. We find out when the Prosecutor, Chastity Riley, the star of the series of books, is caught up when twenty heavily armed men storm into the hotel bar where she is at a birthday party.

He looked at the water and watched the ships leaving, the warm wind tickled the back of his neck, he had his hands in his trouser pockets, he was hungry. He still had a little change on him, but it wasn’t even enough for a fish roll.

He had spent all his money on the girl.

Elisabeth or whatever her name was.

Hed met her in the Markthalle, at the Black Flag concert he’d been looking forward to for weeks. When she’d given him a kind of sideways smile, he’d had a few seconds when he didn’t know who he had a bigger crush on, Henry Rollins or her. Then they danced, she was wild and laughed, and that flooded his bloodstream with happiness; after the concert, with all the loud music in his bones, he invited her back to St Pauli; she was kind of scared to come at first, but he talked her three friends round and they all went off to the Kiez to-gether.

The book takes us back to 84 had pick this as i love Henry Rollins

The hotel is owned by Konrad Hoogsmart, and it is him the heavily armed men have come to deal with as they have been sent by people he has in the past destroyed their lives. This is a book that has a clever style as each chapter is a little story in itself as we move through time and place to piece together the slow picture of the event that led to the hostage-taking over the years and around the world from the eighties when a young man now one of the hostages take left Hamburg to head to Columbia and then is now back seeking Hoogsmart whose hotel is named the Cartagena where the events of years ago had these two men following different paths that lead to the evening and the party that Chastity and her friends find themselves in as views but also hostages what will happen to them all what brought this all about ?

They ate dinner together in one of the expensive restaurants in the old town. Henning, José and this man, whose name was Esteban. He was a good head and shoulders taller than all the other Colombians Henning knew, those little men with hearty laughter in their faces. Esteban didn’t actually look like a Colombian at all, more like someone from Madrid. He looked like a torero. Long and slim and knife-sharp. His hands were something like a fan of scissors.

But he was very polite.

He wanted to know how Henning liked it in Cartagena, why hed left his home, what he liked to do in his spare time. And he was very interested in Hamburg and in the people there.

Lots of artists?

Musicians?

Jet set?

People with money?

Years later in Colubia the seeds of the hostage taking are sown.

I loved her style of writing. It is great for a backstory, which, in a way, is the central part of the book. The events that lead to the present are often missed in Crime fiction. In a way, this could have been an even bigger book than it was. It has a clever mix of humour, darkness, and menace. It also captures how one man’s life led him to be the hostage taker and take a face to the faceless. I think this is something modern crime is doing well I know a couple of recent tv series have taken the thieves as the main characters, I think the Sopranos and The wire were forerunners of this as the made the criminals as well as the detectives both as characters and there lives are shared. This is what we have here in the book: the past of the Hostage taker’s life from Hamburg through Columbia, then hiding in Curacao to the return, and the present, about Chastity and the other hostages at the birthday party. I think Rachel has captured this book so well in its tone in English. It is an exciting book by a writer, along with many other books in the series.  Have you read any books from Simone Buchholz or Orenda ?

 

 

 

The Fire by Daniela Krien

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The Fire by Daniela Krien

German fiction

Orignal title – Der Brand

Translator – Jamie Bulloch

Source – Library book

Do you have any must-read writers? These are ones you have read before and loved, and you must get to their next book when it comes out. Daniela Krien is one of those writers. This is her third book to be translated into English. I have reviewed and loved the other two. She is very good at relationships and personal interplay. She has been a full-time writer since 2010 and has four books out. Her latest has not long been published in Germany. There is an interview with her and her translator, Jamie Bulloch. Where Daniela talks about how she came up with the idea behind the book but needed a way into writing the book, and when her own holiday cottage burnt down, it gave her a way to talk about the couple in the book and how their marriage is at the point of the book this is a couple dealing with the past a couple with as they say an empty nest,

They would have been leaving in three days. They’ll never be able to find something similar at such short notice, not this yeat, not in the circumstances. Without much expectation she enters her requests on a holiday apartment website.

No matches. She tries again on another site – with the same result.

Rahel goes to the website with the Alpine cabin. She clicks from picture to picture, from the geraniums in the window boxes to the small veranda with a view of the mountain range opposite, and back to the house, this time from a different angle. Then the stone basin by the well and the colourful wildflower meadow, and all of a sudden she can picture the blazing fire on the mountain. She sees animals fleeing, a column of smoke rising into a night sky studded with stars, and in the middle of it all Peter and herself, as if on a funeral pyre

The cottage is gone whwere now for them, the farm.

So when their Alpine cottage is burnt down in a fire at the last minute before they are due to go away. Rahel and Peter have to find another destination and go to a farm where, as a kid, Rahel spent many summers. She is a psychotherapist, and Peter, a professor, is one of those men struggling to cope with the modern world. This is a marriage that requires TLC. Grown daughters cause them problems when they visit them. Then, something Peter has said in his job has made him be seen as a transphobic. He is a man caught in the past. This is about when you lose touch with the youth, your wife, and your kids. It is a book about a man who is lost in time and in the West as they are both children of the East. This is the book’s point: what happens when your values are outdated and your children are Western? Your job is now Western.

He chose Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. At a castle people are celebrating a wedding that ends in a drama, while an errant planet passes threateningly close to the earth. When it speeds on its way, the danger seems to have been dispelled, but then it turns, heading straight for the earth. The collision cannot be prevented, and only the depressive Justine – the bride – is serene about the impending end of the world. The film concludes with the planet Melancholia hitting the earth, destroying it. Peter kept staring at the screen for minutes afterwards. The credits were finished by the time he snapped out of his torpor.

Peter reaction to this is maybe more than it seems mabye his world is being destroyed!!

I love subtle books. This is one of those books about a couple at that age when the world has changed just enough to make you seem out of time, even more so when you grow up in the old East German, and the world you live in now is like Wtrst germany values attitudes have changed. Peter is a typical male of his age if he was here he’d be a fan of Rowling and Farage I could see buying a daily mail and moaning about the world he lives in. Yes, this is a universal story of empty nest cou,le but what happens when the gap is between you and, like Rahel, she wants to light the spark, but Peter is maybe too far gone to get a spark from. This would make a great film. The tension between the couple would be perfect. The marriage in Children’s Act Falling Apart is a perfect example of two great actors. This is a tremendous two-handed film. A younger version of on golden pond in a way a couple trying to escape and find a new path as memories and the future collide. Can you think of any other books dealing with Empty nests and a marriage falling apart and how some men are just stuck in the past.

Winston’s score: A 3 down from Krien. I can’t wait for book number four. She is a must-read writer for me.

 

What Darkness was by Inka Parei

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What Darkness was by Inka Parei

German fiction

Original title – Was Dunkelhiet war

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – personal copy\

I move over to Germany with my latest book for Woman in Translation month. This book won the Ingeborg Bachmann prize and is the second book I have reviewed from the writer Inka Parei. Having studied sociology, political science and sinology as a student. I love the phrase on the English translation of her Wiki pages, which describes her as a writer with the ethos of quality over quantity in her writing. So far, she has published three novels. This is the second I have reviewed Cold Centre by her, and her debut is called Shaow Boxer. They have all been published by Seagull Books. I picked this for today because it was one of those occasions when you read books within a short time and talk to each other, and this is the case. This book, like yesterday’s reviews for Yell, if you still can, also has a man nearing his death, and, like that book, it sees him looking back on his life.

The old man lowered his binoculars, his hands trembling. He had rough, sturdy hands covered in age spots and white patches devoid of pigment, the veins raised visibly beneath the skin. He had the furrowed hands of a man who does physical work even though he had never really done hard labour; he’d worked at the post office.

He could almost hear the hissing sound the leather of the belt made as it slid out of the loops. The younger of the two girls risked a glance outside, which suddenly grew long, hesitant, as if she had seen him. Then she turned away and ran to the door and someone extinguished the light.

This piece remind me of my grandfather he would watch comings and goings when he was alive

We meet an unnamed narrator who has collapsed in bed, and what follows is him thinking over what had just happened. He saw a stranger on the stairs, a series of odd doors fitted by one of his neighbours. This is September 1977, a period in West German history where the past of the country and the future were on fire. This is the time of the Badder Meinhof, kidnappings and general unrest and uncertainty. As he takes to his bed he also thinks back to the war years and how he end up in this city and with this house. Past and present mix as he tries to find out who the stranger on the stairs is. A man dying with this last puzzle and the question of his own dark past.A book that covers those twenty-odd post-war years that led to the events of that year. One man’s thoughts as he is near death. Who is the stranger? What is happening?

It took him a moment to notice the stranger. The old man was standing on the second step, lost in thought and annoyed at himself, and looking distractedly down at where the end of the stairs vanished into the darkness of a small reception room. A few patches of light from the lamp in the yard fell through the door. There was a zinc pail against one wall, next to it a scrubbing brush.

A deaning cloth had been spread out over the pail and had dried into shape draped over the edge. Someone had knocked it off and now it lay inverted, pointlessly mimicking the opening of the bucket, on the doormat.

He saw the tips of two shoes and knees swathed in grey flannel, and it was not until then that he recognized the rest, the whole of the man sitting against the wall with his legs drawn up, apparently unconscious or asleep.

The moment he saw the stranger that he questions through the book.

I love her writing, and Katy Translation Ikna Parei is a sparse writer who gets to the soul and haunting past of her country. She has a nod or maybe is from the same style of writing as Herta Müller. That feeling of mystery is strong in this book. Unanswered questions, dark pasts, we never quite see it all, and that is okay because this is one man’s vision of those years and what was happening in the late summer of 1977. This is one of the reasons I love Seagull books they bring us voices we would never see this is a delicate book well written a gem of a read that can be easily read in an evening that captures the country at that time and what had brought it there in some ways. Have you read this or any other books from Seagulls book’s German list? They have brought some great books out.

Winstonsdad scored A. I just need to get ahold of her debut novel, Shadow Boxer; as this writer, I enjoy reading.

Elly by Maike Wetzel

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Elly by Maike Wetzel

German fiction

Original title –  Elly

Translator – Lyn Marven

Source – Library

I saw this at the library on a recent visit and thought it was the perfect size for an evening read I still love the idea of a book being like a movie you can sit and read in a couple of hours. It was on a list of the best books in translation to read from the Guardian. It was also on the list for the Dagger Prize for books in Translation. Maike Wetzel studied in the UK and is also a screenwriter and novelist. She also had a short story collection translated into English. This novella caught my eye as it seems like it may have a twist around a child going missing and the outcome of this on the family.

The doctor hooks me up to the drip and puts me on the list for an operation. He wants to remove my appendix. My mother says again: Your colleague already took it out. The doctor prods my rigid belly. My mother stops fighting. She gives my name, our health insurance details. She called me Almut because of the north.

Because of the stiff breeze on the island of Sylt, where she has never been; because of the tall blond boy that she never kissed, because she doesn’t like tall blonds; because of the seagulls, whose cries make her melan-choly; and because of the seaweed and the salt which no longer cling to her legs: now it’s dark stretchy jeans with all their poisonous dyes instead. I’m also called Almut because it contains the German for courage, Mut, and my mother believed the name would give me

I just picked this as I had my appendix out as a kid

The book follows the effect on the family when the 11-year-old daughter, Elly, disappears. She was cycling home from a judo class. This follows when the daughter disappears. The family is gripped by grief and follows the police investigation. We see how Judith and Hamid Elly’s parents cope with this and how her older sister Ines struggles with the loss of her younger sister. So, after four long years, hope appears lost,, as time goes on, the hope of finding her alive drifts, and the hole that is left is still there, but the family, including her sister, move on with their lives. But then, after four years, Elly reappears, and the family is back whole again. However, as the family starts to heal, there are doubts about this girl who has returned as their daughter. Ines questions her about things they did as kids. Her grandmother has even bigger doubts. How has she come back? Is she Elly or ?

 

My sister disappears on a slightly overcast afternoon in June. I imagine how it happens. I see Elly wheeling her bike out of the garage. Her outline is clear and sharp, the background out of focus. She fixes her sports bag to the luggage rack. In it is her judo suit with the green belt. My sister is younger than me. I am thirteen at the time, she is just eleven. We live in a small town. Elly’s club meets in a sports hall in the nearest big town. She cycles there on her own across the fields. The wind sweeps through the wheat. From above, it looks like waves on water. Elly stands on the motorway bridge and looks down at the field. The wind ruffles her dark, almost black hair.

Ines talking About her sister disappering

This book is a wonderful mix of literary fiction and thriller in the way it is paced. The action slowly unwinds in the history of Elly disappearing, and its effect is told from all the family points of view, but the action turns around when the girl returns who is meant to be Elly. The book is an up-and-down ride. I was reminded of the early Peirene books that had the same quality as they did, and that is cinematic books that, like this book, take you as a reader on a journey. You can see that Maike is a screenwriter. This has the feel of a book that could easily be made into a film. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this being made into a film at some point I hope it does so I could watch it. It has a turning point of Elly returning and the doubts about her make this turn from a sad story of a lost daughter to something else. Do you have a favourite evening book, one you read in an evening like watching a great film? Do you like literary novels that have a feel of a thriller in the pace you can read them at?

Winstons score- A

A book strike me as perfect to be made into a film

Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth

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Weights and Measures by Joesph Roth

Austrian fiction

Original title – Das falsche Gewicht 

Translator – David Le Vay

Source – Personal copy

I looked at the Goodreads list of books for 1937. I’m unsure if I missed this or if it wasn’t on the list of books for the year. I looked on my shelves to see if any writers I liked had missed the list, and I found this one. I am a fan of Joseph Roth, who is most well-known for The Radetzky March. In a way, all his books are around the Austro-Hungarian empire. Here is a perfect example of that: we follow a marriage falling apart, and in that, it seemed an ideal bookend to the last book I reviewed, The Start of a Marriage Going Wrong by another short lived writer. Because Roth, like Szerb, died in World War Two, he was a more problematic drinker and had just heard of the death of Ernst Toller when he died a few days later.

Once upon a time in the District of Zlotogrod there lived an Inspector of Weights and Measures whose name was Anselm Eibenschütz. His duty consisted of checking the weights and measures of the tradesmen in the entire district. So, at specified intervals, Eibenschütz went from shop to shop and investigated the yardsticks and the scales and the weights. He was accompanied by a sergeant of gendarmerie in full panoply. Thus the State made manifest its intention to use arms, if necessary, to punish cheats, in accordance with the commandment proclaimed in the Holy Scrip-tures, which considers a cheat to be the same as a thief…

The introduction to the weights and measure officer of the title in the first page.

The book follows an Artillery officer, Anselm Elbenshchutz. He has taken a job in a small town near the Russian border, working for the government as a weights and measures officer, checking that everyone is doing it right.. But what happens when this man, a gentleman and officer with his principles, tries to lay the line of the law in this place where all he sees is people bending the rules and those near him taking bribes. He makes enemies, but when his wife, who made him move, has an affair with one of his clerks and becomes pregnant, he is drawn to a beautiful, mysterious Gypsy, Euphemia. She lives with one of the men he has most upset, Jadlowker, a profiteer. He tries to make money here and there. And as his world falls apart, we see how a good man ends up in a border area as people escape Russia. His wife then gets Caught up in the cholera outbreak in the area and dies with the Baby she has conceived with Anselm’s clerk. We see the spirit of the man broken. A motif and character that Roth has done well in the other books I have read over the years by Roth.

Eibenschütz looked at her constantly. He tried to catch her eye at least once, but he did not succeed. Her eyes were wandering somewhere in the distance. God alone knew what she was thinking about!

They resumed their game and Eibenschütz won a number of hands. He was a little shamefaced as he pocketed the money. And still Euphemia sat at the table, a silent flower. She glowed and remained silent.

All around there was the usual noise, caused by the deserters.

They crouched on the floor and played cards and threw dice. As soon as they had gambled everything away they began to sing. As usual, they sang the song Ja lubyl tibia’, out of tune and with croaking voices.

The Russian deserters that come across the border to his area and the Gpysy girl he falls for

Anselm, as a person who took the weights and measures job, was what would have at one time in the UK been called a Jobsworth. He’d been on the TV show That’s Life as someone who followed the line of the law to the point. But what follows is what happens to be hidden closed doors, those little bribes that, if unchecked, like here, where he lives, grow over time and what, when he arrives, seems an easy job. It isn’t, and as his world falls apart, as I say, this is a character Robert wrote well the fallen man as a character wife having an affair enemies everywhere. A love that is with his enemies this is a man in freefall as we see all around him turn bad and his world falls apart. All this is a short novella, a lesser-known book by Roth. The place he evokes is like an Austrian Cornwall of those smugglers and people trying to make a living on the other side of the law. Borders often have this dark side, even if a few things are cheaper over the border or the world seems better over the border. Well this is my third book for club1937 and a book that isn’t as well known as his other books. Have you read Roth?

Winstons score –A solid little novella from one of the great Austrian writers

ALI and Nino by Kurban Said

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Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

Azerbaijan fiction

Original title -Ali un Nino

Translator Jenia Gaman

Source – Personal copy

I love it when Simon and Karen announce the year of the club every six months. For me, it is an excuse to go down a rabbit hole and find interesting and exciting books to read for the year. Anyway thuis was the first choice for 1937. It has a great story. First, Kurban said it was a Non de plume. But over time, who it was isn’t known for sure. There is a whole wiki page about this on my edition that points towards Lev Nussimbaum, a writer who escaped Azerbaijan and a friend of someone else, the Austrian countess Elfriede nEherfenfels, also thought to be the writer of this book at some point. Another writer put forward by his son is Yusif Mirbaba oghlu Vazirov, a writer also connected to Baku, where the book is mainly set. The book came out i n1937 uin Austria given its timing would been contirversal. The book saw the light of day for a second time when it was found and translated into English by the translator in the fifties. Since then, it has been translated into thirty languages. It is a classic take on the forbidden love story.

My father went for advice to the Mullah at the mosque, who declared that all this Latin was just vain delusion.

So my father put on all his Turkish, Persian and Russian decorations, went to see the headmaster, donated some chemical equipment or other and I passed. A notice had been put up in the school stating that pupils were strictly forbidden to enter school premises with loaded revolvers, telephones were installed in town, and Nino Kipiani was still the most beautiful girl in the world.

His view on his girlfriend Nino the most Beautiful girl in the world.

The story follows a couple of the titles from when. They are at a Western school in Baku as kids. The struggle this leads to as Ali, although he goes to the school, is from an Azerbaijani family of Persian descent and is Muslim. Where as Nino is from a Georgian family and is Christian. So what follows is their love and wanting to marry. Getting first his family and then her family to agree to the wedding. All this is against the backdrop of the Cosmopolitan Baku of the time. It was full of Oil money, and many different people lived together there then, but the oil meant it was eyed by the Soviets to the north. The book is told from Ali’s perspective and what I loved is how he captured the feel of the city at that time. The twenties near the world is destined for war, but in this desert city, this leads to the people wanting their own freedom to escape the fear of the hammer and sickle to the North and the Soviet forces. Add to this the families want the best for their sons and daughters. Ali’s family is well known, and her family are royal in their way, as some call her a princess. What price is happiness as they have to escape their world of wealth? This is a story of deep love between two people and how it can win out.

When the first excitement was over I sneaked to the tele-phone. I had not spoken to Nino for two weeks. A wise rule demands that a man should keep away from women when he stands at life’s crossroads. Now I lifted the grip of the unwieldy apparatus, turned the bell and shouted into the mouth-piece: ‘3381!’ Nino’s voice replied: ‘Passed, Ali?’

‘Yes, Nino.’

“Congratulations, Ali!’

‘When and where, Nino?’

‘Five o’clock at the lake in the Governor’s Garden, Ali.’ I could not go on talking. Behind my back lurked the curious ears of my relations, servants and eunuchs. Behind Nino’s— her aristocratic mother. Better to stop. Anyway, a bodiless voice is so strange that one cannot really enjoy

I love the way the love affair goes so old fashioned to these days.

This has it all an exotic setting a world on the bring of madness of the war. A pair torn by family, religion and race, he is Asian and Muslim, and she is European and Christian, but at the heart of this all is the love between them. One mind turns to incredible stories of love, Romeo and Juliet, or something like The English Patient, with its exotic setting, a cosmopolitan time in Baku before the Soviets took over the country. Or even Florentino and Fernina come to mind in Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera of how love sees through everything. I also loved the place, the Baku of the time, which reminded me of how someone like Pamuk Captures Istanbul in his fiction. There is an eye for the details of daily life that makes the prose in this book leap off the page. It also reminds me why I always read books for the club year week, and that is the voyage of discovery of books like this that would have passed me by. Have you read this book or any other book from Azerbaijan?

Winston’s score – A – the hidden gem of a book about a love affair, the power of love, set in the wonderfully cosmopolitan Baku before Soviet rule.

 

 

Star 111 by Lutz Seiler

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Star 111 by Lutz Seiler

German fiction

Original title -Stern 111

Translator – Tess lewis

Source – Library copy

I remember this was shown a lot around Twitter or whatever it is called now(I hate calling it x wtf does that mean, really ). Anyway, rant over. So it was all over as it was one of the first two books from and other stories to have their new design, which is very eye-catching and unique. I had intended to read Lutz Seiler a few years ago when Kruso came out, but a mishap and the proof I was sent to my old address, and I never got a replacement but when I read this, and it took me back to the time in the early 90s in Germany, it seemed a perfect read for me and also I felt it maybe would be a booker book it is a while since I finished it and now I think it may actually be more of an IFFP book but it does capture that time just after the Berlin wall fell so well. Anyway I would still like see it on the longlist myself.

A man stepped out onto the street heading toward the city center and raised his arm. It was three o’clock in the morning. Without a word of thanks, he got in the car and leaned back in the seat.

They drove for a time without engaging in conversation. “Stop just up ahead,” the man ordered and stuck a bill rolled into a cylinder the size of a cigarette between the heating vent louvers on the dashboard. Carl had heard about illegal cabs, but never imagined it would be so easy.

Just before Alexanderplatz, he turned onto a street that seemed suitable at first glance. It was called Linien Strasse.Only two streetlamps were working in the first hundred meters, and Carl parked the Zhiguli somewhere in the half-light between them.

Carl as he heads in to Berlin and thos names and places that we have seen so often in books and films about Berlin.

Star11 follows the outcome of the wall falling through the prism of one family. When the wall falls what happens when the parents want to go west and seek a life in the West and the son here wants to stay in. the east.. What follows is wjhat happens when Inge and Walter end up leaving the son Carl behind in East GermanyThey call him baxck from his studies to his home town of Thüringham where they tell him they are going west. His father kleaves behin=d his Car a russian Zhiguli or as we knew them Lada’s bck in the day. Carl ends up as a bit iof a Jack the Lad; he is eventually drawn to Berlin and the anarchy scene there he ends up as a Squatter and becomes friends with his fellow squatters. Carl who was a bricklayer. Starts to run an illegal taxi service. His life is interspersed with snippets of his parents and how they fair in the West. as they go from place to place. Their son is drawn by a different world of poetry and life in East Berlin as the wall falls and the corner is turned and many people flow into East berlin drawn by the cheap and vacant properties left behind by those heading west.

The first letter seemed to have been written in a state of great agitation and confusion. It contained a fragmented description of her first stops in the West, a muddled sequence of places, which Carl later tried to untangle in a sketch. What emerged was the image of a large circular movement over hundreds of kilometers, first northwards to the Dutch border, then back southwards along the Rhine, “our emigration”” as his mother had begun calling it. Carl pinned the page with his topographical sketch above his workbench, next to the flute player: “The Way of My Parents.”

This made me think of where I lived at the time which was five miles from the DAutch border and not far from the Rhine

This is a classic come of age in fact it has a nod to Gunter Grass I felt in the style of the writing. He is one of the voices of the Wende generation that grew up when the wall fell. Like Clemens Meyer he uses hius own life he was a bricklayer and he went ot East Berlin and his won parent took that trek through the west to settle and find there new home. This is from the era of films like Goodbye lenin, the Follow up to Wings of Desire wherwe see Berlin after the Wall has fallen the madness of the place chaotic and full of possiblites and we see this in  Carls world. In an interview, he says you must invent to tell a true story using authentic start points to retell the times. He mixes his own life with the world he lives and sees. I felt this captured a time that is now part of history wreally fresh in my own mind was the wall falling and spending time in Germany not long after the wall fell. I feel he captures a time that has long gone well a different world. Have you read Lutz Seiler ?

Winstons score – A one of two books I held back to review and want see on the longlist most.

Anyone who utters a consoling word is a tratior by Alexander Kluge

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Anyone who utters a consoling word is a traitor by Alexander Kluger

German fiction

Original title –Wer ein Wort des Trostes spricht, ist ein Verräter

Translator Alta L Price

Source – Personal copy

As you may know, I am a massive fan of Kluge’s written works. He is a writer, filmmaker, and maybe the greatest secret of German writing. I still find it problematic that someone so similar in style to Sebald in his writing has not been better known in English. His works on the whole deal with the war and tend to look at it in great detail and try to take apart what happened, and here is the same it uses the post-war trials in Germany after the war of SS officers and those involved in the holocaust. It is a tribute to the German Jewish Judge Fritz Bauer, the man who tried Eichmann.

A wise man from Salamanca-doctor, theologian, jurist and forebear of Fray Luis de Léon–was a visionary. He could wind his way along the paths of the INTELLIGIBLE WORLD, parallel to the mere world of factual reality, to navigate the tunnels of the future. He never told a soul exactly how he did it. In the period prior to the 1492 edict of expulsion, it became glaring that Saint Dominic’s zealous followers posed the threat of persecution.

This sage advised several of Salamanca’s Sephardic families to emigrate to Lisbon before the forced expulsion. But they shouldn’t trust the Catholic rulers of Portugal for long, either; rather, he advised they continue their journey before 1497, moving on to the more tolerant Ottoman Empire or the Netherlands.

The Spanish Jews trying to escape

As always, his stories are like a whole view. He has mentioned he likes the Buchner quote I’ve always wanted to see what my head looks like from above.” That is how the book is made it events from France around Proust and certain French generals. I appreciate how the train line is so well built in Poland. He mixes little tales and history so well together. Tales like the expulsion of the Jews from Salmanca moved first to Catholic Lisbon, but then they headed north to Holland and Amsterdam. How the sheer number of forced labourers in 1942 had overwhelmed the Reich, and plans were in place if they reached India. Later on we see another mention of those Jews from Salamanca about Spaniards in the Fatherland. He has to lead Jewish history and life from 1492 to 1942 at times and the massacre of these Jews. We also witnessed Mass shootings at the camp, and then the post-war era led to the trials overseen by Bauer.

In the summer of 1942, the number of forced labourers from the Eastern territories in the German Reich reached its peak.

The units carrying out raids and organizing the transports were already overwhelmed. By the beginning of 1943, companies had begun rejecting many of the labourers being sent to the Reich because underage, incapacitated and sick people were being included, so they were loaded right back onto return transports to the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The condition of those shipped back home (often to the wrong place) appalled the local population–this was yet another organizational error that made itself felt anew every time another load of people was picked up. These errors were brought up at the Central Conference of Reich Labour Commandos, and it was proposed they be prevented by better staff training going forward. In the meantime, the VALUE OF THE LABOUR FORCE, which the Reich had easy access to in the previous year but was now increasingly difficult to obtain, was recognized in principle by Reich leaders.

The sheer number and loss of those made to do forced Labour

The book title is a partial quote from the motto of the art theorist and avant-garde artist Bazon Brock and suits the work Kluhge has made the war his own in his writing he is a fan of the writer and theorist Adorno. He has the talent to mix fact and fiction, walk the line of truth and justice, and the dark times in his own country and shine a light on what happened during those years. I am still not sure why he is not better known in English, maybe because he is on a smaller publisher, his books are online and easy to get hold of. He has said in speeches he likes to tread the line of fact and fiction.  Theory and practice, he also used the full quote from the title of the book. The poet can’t do that, but he can certainly tell about it – constellation, documentary and the authenticity of the original experience. No consolation stories. Whoever speaks a word of consolation is a traitor. He is the voice of the Germans’ soul and regret of those times. So this is the 6th book from Kluge I have reviewed. I have two more on my shelves. Have you read this book?

Winstons score – A 48 stunning stories

The Opppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

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THE Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

German fiction

Original title Die Geschwister Oppermann

Translator – James Cleugh

Source – Personal copy

 

Now, when I saw it was German lit month coming up I hadn’t seen or brought much German lit tjhe last couple of years. I have a lot on my shelves to read. But a trip to Matlock and I have an eye for Persephone books I can spot them on a shelf that grey cover just makes them jump out, and I had missed they had republished this book.  I had recently seem my American friends posting the Mcnally edition of this book online. I saw this in the Oxfam in Matlock and thought this be a perfect choice for German lit month. As Feutchwanger was a fierce critic of the rise of Nazis in his homeland, he was Jewish and a good friend and inspiration for his fellow writer Bertolt Brecht. They had written against the rise of Hitler together in the book. His house had been raided and stripped of things by Nazis agents. he managed to escape to the US. This book is the middle book of a trilogy but it stands alone as a novel that follows the years up to 1933 of a Jewish family in Berlin as the world closes in around them.

On the wall above his desk hung, as in all the Oppermann business offices, the portrait of old Immanuel. He felt a slight pang at the thought that it was no longer the original, but a copy. It was, of course, fundamentally a matter of indifference whether the original hung here or at Gustav’s. Gustav had, no doubt, more appreciation of it. He certainly had more time to look at it, and it was hung in a better position in his house.

Ultimately, too, Gustav really had a better right to it. Still, it was annoying to feel that from now on he, Martin, would no longer have the original before his eyes.

The past of the buisness the grandfaather that bstarted it but now that world had shrunk.

 

The book follows the family we learn that the grandfather of one of the main characters started the furniture business started by Emanuel Opper, a merchant who settled in Berlin and started the furniture business by selling to the German army. Now a successful business, we meet his grandson Gustav, a writer in the middle of writing a biography of Gotthold Lessing this comes up throughout the book as he is working and reworking the book, His two other brothers, Martin he is the ones running the family business and it is his world we see changing a lot and the other brother Edgar a doctor is suffering by the rise of antisemitism and lose of patients then the loss of his job at the hospital. We see this happening as it is heading to 1933 the family and friends around them in the Jewish community as others decide to go abroad to Switzerland. Other friends think it will not get worse; others, like the Oppermanns, try their best to get by in this shrinking world of freedoms and chances. First, they changed the name of the business to a German name then they had to merge with a business. Their house is raided, and things are taken. This finally makes them think of escape.

The question of transferring Oppermann’s FurnitureStores to Jaques Lavendel, who was a naturalised American citizen, had been under consideration several times; but the idea had been abandoned for various reasons. Curiously enough, Martin did not now advance any one of the many practical objections but said rather spitefully, ‘Lavendel would not be a good name for our stores.’ ‘I know that,’ replied Jaques quietly. ‘As far as I know there never was any question of it,’ he added, smiling.

The transformation of the two branches into the GermanFurniture Company was really not quite as simple as it appeared. There was a mass of details to be discussed; Jaques Lavendel had many useful suggestions to offer. Martin had to admit that Jaques was the more resourceful of the two of them.He expressed his thanks. Jagues stood up and took his leave with a firm, hearty handshake. ‘I, too, thank you sincerely,’ said Liselotte warmly in her strong, deep voice.

The having to change name and the owner of the buisnees to avoid losing it fully.

Originally he had worked this as a film script to be made into a film in the UK about the rise nazism and how easy it is to see the world shrink and people change, but then the film was dropped, and he reworked it into a novel, I loved how it drew you into their world and how you see the slowly the darkness and hate to draw in around them.  It is a family saga of a family being slowly pulled apart, and that is the beauty of this book it is subtle. The things happening around them come bit by bit, always feeling this is it, and then the next thing happens to them, but no. His books were burned by the Nazis at the time he was one of the best-known German writers alive. His work had been translated into English, but his book had dropped out of print until Persephone brought him back into print I hope the other two books in this trilogy come out for me this is an important book it was on the Deutsch Welle top 100 German books as the choice for 1933 (a great list for anyone wanting some new books in German to read). So this is my second book for this year, German lit month and a great discovery. Have you read this book ?

Winston score – +A Powerful yet subtle look at one Jewish family as Fascism rises in Berlin

Blueprint by Theresia Enzensberger

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Blueprint by Theresia Ezensberger

German fiction

Original title – Blaupause

Translator – Lucy Jones

Source – Personal copy

I have been missing this year’s German lit month. Still, I think for the first time in years, I just hadn’t planned for this month, so I am posting a lot fewer books than I have in other years, but this is the first of two books I will be reviewing. You know, strangely, it isn’t too. I came to sit and do this review; I think the two books have similar themes in the time they were set and the underlying story of the time, both set in the years before World War Two. But this is a modern story written by the daughter of one of Germany’s leading thinkers, Hans Magnus Enzenberger, a cultural commenter. This was her debut novel, and she has since written a second novel, which was listed for the German book prize when it came out last year.

For a moment, Gropius seems confused at my being in his room; then he collects himself. ‘Come in, sit down. What can I do for you?’ Now it’s my turn to be confused. He’s the one who asked me to come, after all, so why do I have to explain myself?

Perhaps institutional mechanisms at the Bauhaus work in the usual bureaucratic way – an invisible hand consisting of protocol, regulations and appointments bringing people together who aren’t exactly sure how they ended up there.

I explain that I’m new to the Bauhaus and that I was asked to introduce myself and bring my portfolio. Gropius’ face brightens.’Ah, that’s right, a new student.

Luise meets the great man as she is due to start at the Bauhaus as a student

Blueprint is about a student, Luise Schilling. She has lived in a traditional family in Berlin and wants to change the world around her as she studies architecture. She has decided to go to the Bah=uhaus and study under Gropius. We see her meet the man himself but get drawn to the alternative thoughts and lifestyle of those studying at the Bauhaus. The young Luise is drawn to a group of students following a spiritual path and an enigmatic student, Jakob, who is involved with the group. This is a girl becoming a woman as her eyes are opened by the students and world around her. But this is the late twenties, and events back with her family in Berlin, where violence is bubbling under the surface of the city. Whilst she is with her parents. This is all before the Bauhaus moves to it famous home, which happens later in the book. There is also the tale of her trying to get her ideas around social housing accepted.

Luise Schilling: There Goes the Neighborhood. Social Enclaves in the Shadow of Urban Planning, Sichter Verlag, Stuttgart. 368 pages, 12,80 DM

If you’re interested in architecture, these days, chances are you’re probably interested in the Bauhaus school.

Such a proclivity will make this book by German-born American, Luise Schilling, who studied architecture at the Bauhaus before the war, all the more astounding. For her There Goes The Neighborhood, she makes a case against the kind of holistic city planning preached and practised at the Bauhaus. Instead, Schilling demands that the city is seen as it is: a cluster of small, independent economic zones and organic communities. According to the author’s indignant thesis, urban planners are out of touch with urban populations.

Later her ideas get taken on board as show later near the end of the book.

There are benefits and downsides to her choice to use the Bauhaus as the book’s centre; that is, we all know of it, but then it, for me, needs a little more depth around Groupis. The main thing is that it makes you want to read the book but then feel you want more of the Bauhaus. But then it is mainly Luise’s story, which is one of a woman growing up escaping an overbearing father and initially finding freedom of thought and ideas in a group of students. Still, later in the book, we see how, in a way, the restrictions of her being a female are still there when her ideas are sidelined. But then later, when seen after the war, her accurate visionary idea comes to light. Add to this is the story of what is happening in the background with her family in Berlin, away from the dreamland that is Basuhaus and the events that lead to the rise of Hitler are there to be seen. The other book I am about to finish is set a few years after this and shows the events after this book well. Have you read this or any books by her father? I have a book under review by him as well.

Winston’s score – B – a great coming-of-age story that shows how females still couldn’t go as far as they wanted, even in the Bauhaus.

Conversation of Three wayfarers by Peter Weiss

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Conversation of the three wayfarers

German fiction

Original title – Das Gespräch der drei Gehenden

Translator –  E B Garside

Source – Personal copy

A big dig into the books that came out in 1962, and I found this it is a writer I had heard a little about but hadn’t gotten to, and this book seemed perfect it is just 90 pages long. Peter Weiss was a member of the post-war gruppe 47 Writers in Germany, but he left Germany in 1939 and lived in Sweden with his family he was one of the most avant-garde writers of his generation he wrote for the stage and novels. He is maybe one of the writers in his generation who should have been better known to the English-speaking world.In the post-war years, he was a critical voice in a lot of the events of the sixties, Cuba and Vietnam being two of them. He is a writer that was hard to pigeonhole. He had been compared at times to Roman Noveau writers and absurdist writers like Beckett.

That ring res big did nothing bus ily walk

leather caps and long raincoats, they called themselves Abel, Babel and Cabel, and while they walked they talked to each other. They walked and looked around and saw what there was to see, and they talked about it and about other things that had happened. When one was talking the two others kept still and listened or looked around and listened to something else, and when one of them had finished saying what he had to say, the second one spoke up, and then the third, and the others listened or thought about something else.

They had stout boots for walking, but they carried only as much with them as would fit into the pockets of their clothes, as much as they could quickly lay their hands on and put away again. Since they looked alike they were taken for brothers by passersby, but they were not brothers at all, they were only men who walked walked walked, having met each other by chance, Abel and Babel, and then Abel, Babel and Cabel. Abel and Babel had met each other on the bridge,

The opening lines of the book and you see how the brothers merge into one at times.

The book is a strange one it is about three brothers called Abel, Babel and Cabel. We spend time as they tell tales of the wanderings. But we never quite know who is talking to us and that we seem to drift in time over the years. As three men recount events. We see a bridge, but even before the bridge is there, the brothers are talking to the Ferryman about his son, his life and the world he lives in. Then a tale of crossing to marry his bride he got pregnant. Then other odd tales of men wandering with just a slipper to fix something. These are odd snippets of everyday life told in a way that makes you, as a reader drawn into the book. The book has no real plot it has sections narrated by different narrators, be we never know which of the brothers it is telling the tale.

Once, in the summertime, a party of guests came running down to the shore, many threw off their clothes, others jumped into the water with their clothes on, and some of them swam out, one of them coming toward him. The ferryman sat still in his boat and saw how the head in the water was drawing nearer, with the mouth making soft blowing sounds. The swimmer came up to the side of the boat, the ferryman already could see the whites of his eyes shining, and the swimmer’s hands stretched out, and the body came after them, and Jym was standing in the boat, bolt upright, naked, dripping.

He stood there for some seconds, or minutes, the ferryman did not tell me just how long, then he again dived into the water, headfirst, swam back to the shore.

The Ferryman one of the main characters in the tales they tell.

This is a book that needs to be short as it makes your mind spin the way it drifts, but it all seems to flow and not jar, which is a wonderful job of the writer and the translator to keep it feeling like that. I was imagining the time traveller in H G Wellls Time traveller as he drifts through time and things appear and disappear. I loved the passage with the ferryman, a job long gone, a man who saw people across a river daily. We see his world and his sons, who he feels will follow him to be ferrymen. But then there is a bridge that is new than old. Time flows forward and back in the book. He also has a clever way of seeing little details like the sound of the ferry, those little trinkets we can all recount that noise and smell we remember of a mundane event. This is a flat book but with these little gems scattered through it. An odd book and a little gem Have you read Peter Weiss.

Winston’s score – A He should be better known a writer who is unique in his style.