Tag: Katy Derbyshire

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.

While we were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer

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While we were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer

German Fiction

Original title -Als wir träumten

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – Personal copy (I did have an e-galley)

I am late to a couple of the international booker reviews. I have left this as it was my personal favourite of this years longlist. Meyer is a writer whose work I have long admired. He was first brought to us by And other stories that brought out All the Lights which I reviewed on the blog 12 years ago. He has since then been published by Fitzcaraldo; such is the nature of books in translation that this was his debut novel, and his second novel, bricks and mortar, which I had also reviewed, came out I loved. But this novel captures him. as a raw young writer. Meyer is a writer who has lived a life growing up in the East. He has worked blue-collar jobs as a security guard and forklift driver. He has been in the situations and worlds his characters live in. This writer has lived in part of the world he writes about, and this group of lads trying their best to make their way in their world after the wall fell and their world changed utterly.

The shooting was over. The green lamp at the shooting range for the electric rifles had lit up one last time, a hit, my last shot, six out of ten, not bad at all, and the pop of the air rifles had stopped over in Room Two where the Free German Youth had been shooting. We put the electric rifles down on the tables and went to the door.
‘Did you see, Danny? I was really good,’ Mark said down in the schoolyard, and he laughed and slapped his chest. ‘Almost like Old Surehand! You’ll never beat my nine

The boys at the fair shooting early on things get darker when they get older .

 

This classic piece Bildungsroman focuses on the tight n=knit group of four boys living in Leipzig and trying to see the world beyond their brewery quarter hard living tough streets.Rico, Mark, Paul and Daniel. We see their world as they try to get through every day in their hard-hitting world. From drinking, stealing cars, Danny getting prison tattoos, the boxing matches, this is a man’s world. Danny and his dad support football his dad an alcoholic. We see the football club they love and the violence involved in the football of the late 90s, as the boys try to get to Manhood as they run through the nights, escaping the law and running illegal clubs. This is a world of a world emerging from oppression, hope but no hope really at this time. Danny is Meyer. He is, as Tony put it in our group chat, the one that is there but seems to avoid the worst of the trouble. One imagines Clemens has rewritten himself slightly.

the Tattooist and Thilo the Drinker donit know each other, and that’s a good thing cause Thilo be Drinker talks a lot of crap and pisses people off and wort stop talking stupid crap at them when he’s had a drink and he’s almost always drinking.
Tattoo-Thilo doesn’t drink much; he broke the habit in jail. He’s been to jail a couple of times even though hes not yet twenty, and he doesn’t like people talking stupid crap at him. I don’t know exactly what he did time for, but GBH was on the list.
I get my tats from Tattoo-Thilo ’cause he’s got a pretty good reputation when it comes to tats, not just in our neighbourhood. Rico told me there are even guys from the red-light district who go to him, and Rico got inked by him as well, but that was in jail. Rico doesn’t talk about jail much, but I know almost all tattooists get their training there.

Danny gets his tattoos

I was drawn to this before it came out or was on the list of comparisons to Irvine Welsh. I get that part.I was a huge Welsh fan back in the day. I was in my 20s a lad I loved drinking, loved football, got in fights, have been in tricky situations and have known a number of shady characters, but I am maybe more of a Danny than any of the other characters I am a bit straight-laced at times. But to me, this is more bloody Shane Meadows all four of these characters could have fallen off the screen into the pages of This is England series set over the same period and also following a similar group of lads through their ups and downs. I know there is a film of this but I tell you, Meadows would make this book a masterpiece of a film. It captures the lost hope of the working-class world. It is the ghost of those early Springsteen songs running the streets on the edge of the law. It is hard to hold back how much I loved this it reminds me of the kitchen sink and working-class novels I loved in my youth. Have you read any books from Meyer?

Winston’s score of A++++++++ is just stunning !!!

Journey through a Tragicomic Century by Francis Nenik

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Journey through a Tragicomedy Century (The Absurd life of Hasso Grabner) by Franci Nenik

German Narrative non-fiction

Original title – Reise durch ein tragikomisches Jahrhundert. Das irrwitzige Leben des Hasso Grabner

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – review copy

I reviewed an earlier release from Francis Nenik. He is called the greatest unknown writer in Germany. I was caught by this book’s description so read the earlier work first. This is the first of three releases from the new publisher V&q books an English arm of a German publisher. the series is edited by the translator of this book the Berlin-based Katy Derbyshire. This was on a list of the 30 hottest books in Germany when it came out a few years ago. He has had a number of books translated into English.

On arrival he has to undress and is examined, numbered and showered. When he steps out of the washroom, he’s standing before me. Hasso Grabener, !.74 metres tall and 65 Kilogrammes heavy. He’s 23 years old, has a full head of brown hair and a large straight nose in a slightly haggard face. his chin is wide, his mouth of normal size, his lips averagely curved. Behind them is a complete set of teeth. He lookls quite healthy at first glance. His muscles are big and his bones are tonn. When he breathes in, he can extend his chest circumference to 93 centimetres, and when he breathes out there are still 81 centimetres left. He has no scars and tattoos, only a mole above the left corner of his mouth.His skin colour is white , his posture upright.

On his arrival to Buchenwald Hasso is healthy young man.

Francis Nenik discovered Hasso Grabner whilst he was researching a list of German poets for an essay. When one reads this book a narrative tale of his life and he led a life. He grew up in foster care after being born just before world war one. He got connected to socialism and communism at an early age. Of course as a young communist in Leipzig. Grabner is a chancer he eventually ends up in Buchenwald concentration camp eventually as the librarian in the prison library. He somehow manages to get let out and ends up in wartime Greece in Corfu in a penal troop but he helps the locals by letting them know to move the Jews out of the area. When they have to escape Greece he the fervent communist gets an Iron cross from the Germans. He settles in East Germany getting a job high up in the steelworks. Then becomes a writer but this leads to him being watched by the Stasi later in his career. he did in the mid 70’s.

Hasso Grabner, meanwhile, sticks out, continues his youth work, joins the Leipzig KPD’S district commitee, joins the Socialist unity party (SED), freshly cemented out of SPD and KPD in APril 46, immediately takes uo a ost in that party’s district council and, seeing as the unity party wants to see the youth united as well (And multiple burdens are a matter of course for Grabner the workhorse), is also chairman of Leipzig’s newly founded free Democratic Youth (FDJ) by March. Or not, as the case may be. The respective sources disagree on the matter. “HAsso Grabner becomes FDJ chairman, it says in one, while another stubbornly insists: “Alfred Nothnangel takes on chair of Leipzig FDJ”.

After the war he is a communist iun East Germany.

#This is like his earlier book I review one of those books that is written by someone with a love of history but also a love of those that have been passed by and in Hasso Grabner we have such a character. This is a life that shouldn’t be he was a chancer that maybe had mire lucj=k than most given his stubborn nature that must have helped. The book is a narrative journey through his life and those dreadful events over the last century. Nenik himself is a writer that isn’t all he says in his earlier book he said he was a full-time farmer but this may not be true. This is the first of three books from V&Q I am planning to review in my journey to get to 100 books from Germany under review. This is an interesting life story and a great debut from a new publisher.

The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping by Francis Nenik

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The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping by Francis Nenik

German fiction

Original title – Vom Wunder der doppelten Biografieführung

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – Personal copy

I received the three books that are forthcoming this month from the new English Imprint V&Q. There was one from the description made me want to see if the writer had any other books in English. The writer Francis Nenik is a farmer by day and writer by night. He has published several novels this is what caught my eye he had published a work in loose leaves which reminds me of the great book by B S Johnson that has a similar format. the book coming out soon is similar to this as it follows the real-life of someone. Here is the life told in a short book of two poets.

The only person, it seems to take an interest in Nicholas Moore thenceforth is the man who steals his wallet in the crush at London’s petticoat lane market; containing not so much money as letters of inestimable value – letter that moore had exchanged over the years with the American poet Wallace Stevens and the British writer Osbert Sitwell.

All that remains is lonely, wasted land.Everywhere around him. Not only has Priscilla left, but she has also taken their daughter with her, and Moore has to give up theflat where three of them previously lived. He finds a new place to live (Where he stays for the rest of his life) : a small groud floor flat in a desolate part of Southeast London.

Moore life falls aprt when his wife leaves him. He does later remarry.

The two poets in this book only met through the letters they sent to each other but both had a lot in common in their careers. Nicholas Moore was in his day as well thought of and Known as Dylan Thomas. He wrote in the forties reaching his height in 1948 when he won a big prize after that he fell out of fashion and eventually took a job as a seed merchant that wrote the occasional poems. Meanwhile, in Brno a poet called Ivan Blatny aspiring and well regard through the forties. He ran off when he was part of a delegation to London in 1948. Meanwhile, the Nicholas moore whose wife had written down his poems leaves him he has to move into a small house that he lived in the rest of his life Ivan was like Nicholas a member of the new Apocalyptics Ivan was also in a group Skupina 42. After his arrival in the Uk he starts to have problems with his mental health. He ends up in Claybury hospital and this is where he writes to Nicholas there js a few letters between the men a swapping of biographies as both saw hard times after there bright youth but in later years had a few poems out in later life but never the success of earlier years. 

On the letters

The fact that not only the letters from Nicholas Moore to Ivan Blatny, but also those from Blatny to Moore have been preserved, is due to the fortuitous circumstance that Blatny made copies of his letters in a notebook contained in the file. The possibility that these copies might be mere drafts appears unlikely since the transcriptions contained no crossings out, etc. whether such drafts existed or Blatny committed his letters directly to paper cannot be determined with any certainty. No such drafts have been found to date. Nevertheless, the letter of 16th March 1963 shows that, at least in this particular case. Blatny wrote in several stages

the letters were kept and found between the two poets.

This is a short book 60 pages in a very small edition but he brings these two poets out of the literary bin both had fallen out of notice. we even have a small Blatny poem that Moore translates in a letter as he learns Czech to read his fellow poet’s work. A touching look at what happens when you burn bright when young then are forgotten. This is what appealed about the other forthcoming work he has to pick interesting lives sad in these cases the two men never met apart from in letters but their lives seem to have had so much similar in what happened with their writing. I can’t wait to read his longer work Nenik has mixed biography, epistolary style, and history with a bit of fiction to brew up something truly unique.

The Cold Centre by Inka Parei

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The Cold Centre by Inka Parei

German fiction

Original title –  Die Kältezentrale

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – personal copy

I move on this german lit month to a new writer a writer to the blog. Inka Parei,  who won many years ago the Ingeborg Bachmann award one of Germany’s biggest prizes. She has not written many novels only three in a twenty-year career. She studied German, sociology, political science and sinology. In an interview, she was drawn to the location of this novel. She also remarked that after writing the book she hadn’t gathered how the book had related to her own family history and some of her only families coming from Eat to West.

At some point I’d have had an answer and I’d have called Martha. She wouldn’t have said anything or expected anything. In a neutral voice, I’d have informed her of what I’d found out. Her breath escaping at the other end of the line would have grown gentle, like it hasn’t been for a long time now. She’d asked me how I was feeling and then, almost in the same breath, how the last few years had been. We’d laughed because there was suddenly so much to tell, astounded at how many little things make up the world, and we’d have wondered how we could have possibly have left all the tiny things that make people happy out of our lives for so long.

As he heads to his past and the present Berlin to find Answers fro his ex Martha.

The book starts with a chance call to our narrator from his ex-wife who is dying of Cancer which sends him back to Berlin. But as he does the past comes back to haunt him he worked in the 80’s in the air colling part of a german newspaper plant the cold center of the title. this Czech built unit never really worked and need constant monitoring this is maybe a nod towards the old east Germany. There is an event that happened then when him and what would become his future and then ex-wife spent time in the back of one of the truck there that had come from Ukraine and may have been contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster that may have caused her cancer. Alongside this, he is haunted by an event with a colleague Hansmann who fell from the roof of the building to his death could he have stopped this happening? As he drifts from then to now we see him recreating those dark days in the cold center his workmates and the death that he never recover from. What was up with those trucks at the time ?

The truck was just north of Kiev at the time of the reactor accident, she continued. So you can assume it was contaminated. Think how Hansmann must have felt when he put two and two together. He can’t stay at home. He’s in constant trouble at work. Then he thinkls one of you’s being kind to him but it tuerns out the place to sleep he;s offered is really a health risk.

But didn’t others use the truck as well?

I’m not saying they meant to harm him.

Radowski was kind of guy who’d go right ahead and eat the lettuce they suddenly toog off the shelves after the accident.

And who was it made Hansmann realize?

Me.

The past and the trucks from Ukraine haunt him in the past  and what happened then !!

Her works have been described as like detective novels and this is maybe as we go into his past it is in pieces there is a blurring of then and now but also an undercurrent of the old East Germany from the broken never probably working cold center as a metaphor for the country as a whole. Then there is the death he saw which he seems to have not recovered from. Then we have the ghost of Chernobyl is that which gave his wife Martha cancer she has in the present in the past. He has a man that has been broken by the events around a death that has haunted him over many years but he also brings us into the dark heart of East berlin behind the wall. I really liked this book and hope to get her other books for forthcoming German lit months. Have you read her books at all?

Apostoloff by Sibylle Lewitscharoff

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Apostoloff by Sibylle Lewitsaroff

German fiction

Original Title – Apostoloff

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – Personal copy

I was sent a German edition of one of Sibylle other books.When it was on the German book prize list, I only got a few pages in before hold my hands up and admit it was maybe too much for me. Since then I have wanted to try that book, Blumenberg. But when I saw this at a price I could afford I went for this first.Is one of the most successful German writers of recent years. Born to a Bulgarian doctor and German woman.She grew up a socialist. Spent time in France and Argentina. She is known for being outspoken at times.

Alexander Ivailo Tabakoff married a woman with Hollywood qualties, a cross between Marylin Monroe and the alleged murderess Vera Bruhne, albeit with the flaw of a broad Swabian accent,marking her out for those in the know as a child of East Stuttgart. This origin, and the thick ankles from which she suffered all her life, prevented Lilo Wehrle from trying her luck in Hollywood.Instead she married a very promising Bulgarian and gave birth to his son. We can barely remember that sone,Only that he died of meningitis at the age of six.There were nasty rumours that he had died of exhaustion because his parents, ragingly in love with him and raginly ambitous, had sucked the very life out of him, The subsquent birth was an unfortunate one, at any rat,and did not make up for the damage – a daughter .

A son was first then the two sisters maybe explains there relationships to there father.

Now, this is a simple story on the surface a pair of sisters are returning to there fathers homeland Bulgaria in a convoy of cars with their father’s body as he had chosen to be frozen back in his homeland. The sisters are being driven by Rumen Apostoloff. The two sisters are very different One is polite well spoken older sister.The younger sister is outspoken and caustic at times. This is a tale of two sisters remembering their father who took his own life at a young age. The book is about fathers, visiting the homeland that they don’t really k part coming of age and also has a lot of dark humour in it now.AS the driver tries to open there eyes that only see the grey dark side of the country and its post-soviet world. A story of a father and his daughters coming home but maybe finding a home.

As so often, the bulgarian have constricted a huge theory around a single detail, in this case a complicated murder theory – the king had gone to Berlin in civilian clothing rather than in uniform, wanting to demonstrate at first hand his political tactic of keeping his soldiers out of the war as far as possible, Hitler , they say had received him in a black mood and dismissed him in just as black a mood,that may well be the case but it’s not enough for a murder, And the Bulgarians are all too eager to forget how highly Hitler regarder Boris.

A view at anglo Bulgarian german relations in the war and the allaince they had .

I can see why I wanted to try her books. She has been on the German book prize list and is described as a writer that is very unique this book mix so many things it is in part travel book, part memoir, part coming of age and comic at times. But the main themes of the book are fatherhood how his living in Germany affected his life. It is worth noting, he was also a doctor like Sibylle’s  own father. Then there is Bulgaria as a character in the book.As seen through three peoples eyes the sisters both don’t really get their fathers homeland but their driver draws them in. But even after his funeral. They decided to go with Apolostoff to the Black sea coast. He has spoken so highly about. This is the story of a man Rumen trying to get two sisters to open there eyes to the place they are Bulgaria but maybe also learn more about their father. An intriguing if difficult book another from Seagull books.

 

The king of China by Tilman Rammstedt

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The king of China by Tilman Rammstedt

German fiction

Original title – Der Kaiser von China

Translator – Katy Derbyshire

Source – Personal copy

Well, another book from Seagull books for my second German Lit month selection. Tillman Rammstedt is the son of a famous Sociologist. He studied Philosophy and literature at a university in German and Scotland. He is part of a group of writers that form the literature group Fön including Michael Ebmeyer and Florian Werner. He lives in Berlin. This book won the Ingeborg Bachmann prize in Germany.

We’re staying at the Bamboo Gardens, a cosy and tranquil hotel. The staff aren’t quite as helpful as we’d like but that has partly to do with the culture, Grandfather explained. The rooms are tastefully decorate, Ming fuinture, a small but clean bathroom, abundant foliage outside the window, but grandfather says the typical flair of the city is somewhere restricted by the modern residential block directly opposite. The room costs 680 Yuan, a mid range price as we found when we made a comparison.

The first letter reads like the travel guide bar the last words about looking at prices.

I was struck by the synopsis of this book when I was choosing a read for German lit month. As there isn’t many comic German novels out there, especially as the English had always a wrong idea that the Germans hadn’t a sense of humour.For me, this was shattered when I lived in Germany and this book is as good as any of the great comic English novelists.The book follows a trip to China by Keith and his grandfather. Now the trip doesn’t actually happen as they are just about to leave the grandfather dies. The trip was the choice of the grandfather from Kieth four siblings as a gift, but when Kieth lose the money he grandfather says to go alone, then passes away. So Keith instead of telling the family hides at home sleeping under his desk and outsight of his window. He also starts to send back postcards and letters to the family. They start of sounding like they are just from the travel guide but as they progress Kieth starts to invent things like a mad channel just showing teeth cleaning. Then there journeys in trains next to fairground arts. Intersped with this is the story of his grandfathers young with Franziska who the young Kieth is in love with her.

My dears,

To my left lies a trapeze artiste, to my right a lady contortinist, both asleep, and I too am actually far too exhausted to write, but so much happened today that I want to tell you about, even though the days are beginning to blur together, even though tey seem like years to me.

Another letter when Kieth has let his imagination go wild, rather like Billy liar.

Now, this isn’t a travel book it is a book in the tradition of books like Billy Liar about inventing a world or that of Calvino with his Invisible cities. What happens when a white lie runs out of control, When Kieth start to drift off from the travel guide, which when he writes the early letters sound just like he has written from the travel guide when he talks about the history of places and I have a huge life when he described the hotel as mid-price, quickly saying they decide so after seeing other prices. But it seems an odd thing to say. The letters are the imagined world of a young man with his own problems, but a love of his grandfather and even more of his younger grandmother. This would be herald as comic great here, I was reminded of a writer like Dan Rhodes here or more so Magnus Mills where like Mills he uses a situation to create the story.