#GermanLitMonth book five is Sieben Jahre, by my Swiss gentleman for the month, Peter Stamm. It’s narrated by a Munich architect, within a framework of his telling an acquaintance “now” of various events between his student days and middle age. The narration to the acquaintance is subtly, but effectively blended with narration of other events to the reader.
This is a low-key novel in other ways: the characters and events are not exceptional, and the protagonist’s missteps are often more irritating than anything else. Stamm is merciless in relating the character’s self-pity as he descends into the hole he is making for himself, making for a test of the reader’s ability to identify. The fact that two characters are called Sonja and Sophie was also confusing for this listener to the audiobook — I’m not sure whether that’s a quirk of my brain and the format, or Stamm making a point about their everydayness.
This is not one of my favourite Stamm books, as may already be clear, but I appreciated the dissection of the characters’ loveless lives and the skill of the storytelling more as it went on. Christian Brückner is as always a brilliant performer of the audiobook.
Posted inBooks, Uncategorized|Comments Off on GermanLitMonth: Sieben Jahre
And my fourth #GermanLitMonth book, my second for Austria, makes a nice pair with Schachinger’s Echtzeitalter: Die Inkommensurablen, by Raphaela Edelbauer. It again takes place in Vienna, and is viewed through the eyes of an outsider teenager, but this time is is essentially rooted in its setting of the city on the eve of the outbreak of war. It is a very odd book.
We follow the protagonist, Hans, and two friends which he makes — the upper-class aesthete-soldier Adam and the maths prodigy from the underclass Klara — as they spend the day and night before her viva visiting various underworld dives and discussing maths, philosophy, psychology and the paranormal. Again as with Schachinger, Edelbauer is aware of and addresses this improbability, and by doing so to some extent defuses it. There is a big reveal towards the end, which is satisfying enough while leaving enough open for the reader to continue thinking about the book.
That, I think, is the crux. This isn’t a masterwork — it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, and the mathematical content is shoehorned in. But the characters are diverse and interesting enough to want to keep following them, the milieu of a hysterical city, riven with psychoanalysis and jingoism, is fascinatingly weird and uncomfortably contemporary, and the balance between realism and the uncanny is constantly and skilfully reexamined. There is a lot to think about, and it’s a book which I’ll come back to.
Posted inAustria, Books|Comments Off on GermanLitMonth: Die Inkommensurablen
My third #GermanLitMonth book completes my pair of German books, and is by chance also non-fiction: Gebrauchsanweisung für Potsdam und Brandenburg, by Antje Rávik Strubel. This is certainly odd — as if Margaret Atwood had decided to write a guide for visitors to Ontario — and I would never have chosen it if it weren’t by the great Ms Strubel, even as an adopted Brandenburger. I’m very glad I did, though.
There’s very little in common with Strubel’s more literary books, although the frequent paddling about on lakes has echoes with Kältere Schichten der Luft. The narrative voice is understandably very different, here predominantly wry, and sometimes bordering on whimsy. It’s probably best read chapter by chapter rather than straight through, as I did it, as I found it wearing at times. Nevertheless, she strikes a fine balance between love for the region and glee in poking fun at it.
The slightly odd title — Potsdam and Brandenburg? — seems to relate partly to Strubel’s own Potsdam residency, and to the more obvious visitors’ attractions of that city. There’s always an eye on what sights and information might be interesting for a visitor to the state, but she also gives a good overview of its history and geography for residents or others with an interest in it. For the majority of people who, as Strubel points out, have never even heard of Brandenburg, it’s probably not the place to start with her, but the small number of my fellow Brandenburg- and Strubel-lovers, this is essential.
Posted inBooks, Germany|Comments Off on GermanLitMonth: Gebrauchsanweisung für Potsdam und Brandenburg
Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger! by Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi is my second book for #GermanLitMonth — sort of. I was reading it for Black History Month in October, before things got in the way, but it fits into the rulebreakers week of this year’s GLM: Massaquoi was German, at least during the time he writes about, but wrote this memoir in English after settling in the US.
Massaquoi was the grandson of the Liberian consul in Hamburg, left alone in the city with his German mother when his father departed. Massaquoi was a child whem Hitler came to power in the ’30s, and the bulk of the book consists of his reminiscences of the period. These are often extraordinary: in the pre-Nazi days, he was taken to the zoo and found there an “African village,” whose inhabitants were on display and recognised Massaquoi as a “brother”. Later he was himself caught up in the enthusiasm surrounding him and a desire to belong, persuading his nanny to sew a swastika on his jumper.
The later chapters, relating his experiences in Liberia and the US, are not of such great interest, tending to illustrate how brave, resourceful and spirited he was. The book has other defects as literature: the short chapters give it a choppy feel, and the prose is rich in platitudes and cliches. Despite eventually becoming a journalist, Massaquoi wasn’t really much of a writer. Nevertheless, for the insider’s view of being a Black German in this period, I highly recommend the book.
Posted inBooks, Germany|Comments Off on GermanLitMonth: Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger!
I’ve finished my first book for #GermanLitMonth: Echtzeitalter, by Tonio Schachinger. Deutscher Buchpreis-winner this year, it’s a Bildungsroman following a teen gamer at a Viennese school very similar to the one Schachinger went to, where he encounters first a Snape-like teacher dedicated to torturing him, and then a barely-distinguishable pair of precocious girls, Feli and Fina, who take his life by storm. The ending is very nicely-judged.
Schachinger’s style is borderline metafictional — the Snape comparision and the indistinguishableness of the girls are explicit, for example, while the book is packed with references to Schlüsselromane and Austrian writers from Adalbert Stifter to Thomas Bernhard and Stefanie Sargnagel. I was incidentally pleased to find that my brain had retained the insulting Austriacisms I’d learned from Eva Menasse’s Dunkelblum (“schiach, Gschisti-Gschasti, deppert”).
I spent most of the book waiting for a major event to happen, and it doesn’t really; this is more a book about remembering or discovering what life is like as a teenage boy. Which brings us back to the ending.
Posted inAustria, Books|Comments Off on GermanLitMonth: Echtzeitalter
A Covid-affected reading month meant I only finished seven books, and particularly disrupted my Black History Month plan (to be continued next month). I still finished four in German, one (1) in Portuguese, and five by women/POC.
Schwarzes Herz — Jasmina Kuhnke
A Bicicleta Que Tinha Bigodes — Ondjaki
Schwarzenberg — Stefan Heym
Zwei Schüsse und ein Lachen — Abdulai Sila tr. Renate Heß
Die Geschwister — Brigitte Reimann
Closure: Contemporary Black British Short Stories — Jacob Ross (ed.)
The Prisoner and The Fugitive — Marcel Proust, tr. Carol Clark and Peter Collier
Starting with what I did manage for BHM, Schwarzes Herz was a very powerful account of a character’s experiences with the twin issues of racism and domestic violence. The passages concerning the narrator’s childhood were particularly effective, as where she feels threatened on first meeting other Black people. Only in the latter stages of the story did the book seem over-dominated by the issues rather than the characters; on the whole this was a very impressive first novel.
A Bicicleta Que Tinha Bigodes is a young adult novel set in the Luanda of the author’s childhood, transformed into an enchanting semi-mythical environment. The first part focuses on the narrator’s friend and her close relationship with the animals in her yard, while the main, latter section contains the story of the dreamed-of bicycle. There is a meaningful ending, as to be expected from the genre, but the real pleasure is the journey. (I’ve classed this as part of my BHM reading because the author is mixed-race, though he doesn’t consider himself Black.)
Zwei Schüsse und ein Lachen is the second book I’ve read by Abdulai Sila (from Guinea-Bissau), and the first play. Again semi-mythical, it tells the story of a conflict between a group of people working to save a country very like Guinea-Bissau, under the guidance of a spiritual leader, and the efforts of some to stop them. I found it rather wordy (there’s a lot of the characters telling each other to get to the point, which I could empathise with), and the translator has an irritating habit of retaining Guinean words and phrases, but then immediately translating them.
Finally for BHM, Closure is an interesting and varied collection by Black and Asian British writers. Quite a few of the pieces were engaging, but read like novel extracts rather than fully-satisfying stories. The big names (Monica Ali and Bernardine Evaristo) finish off the book and produced probably the best stories, so it at least ended with a bang.
Then two East German novels, both grappling remarkably honestly with the tension between idealism and realpolitik. Schwarzenberg is the somewhat fact-based story of a mini-state which arises in the Erzgebirge between the American- and Russian-occupied zones of Germany. The inevitable happens, but before that Heym allows us some hope for human nature.
Die Geschwister is set after the establishment of the two German states, but at a time when crossing the border was still relatively straightforward. The protagonist is a Reimannesque young artist who struggles with seeing each of her brothers in turn decide on Republikflucht, and with her own position in the increasingly ossified East German society. There’s no happy ending, but the ambiguity it leaves the reader with is thought-provoking.
I finished eight books this month, mostly as part of a South American reading month (inspired once again by the Portuguese in Translation book group, which this time did Crooked Plow). Only three in German, mainly because 2666 took up 40 hours of my listening time. I count five of the eight as by women/POC, but the latter group gets tricky to define in e.g. Brazil (I found a timely article on Machado de Assis here: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cl7xvyz1eyro ).
Crooked Plow — Itamar Vieira Junior, tr. Johnny Lorenz
Budapest — Chico Buarque, tr. Karin von Schweder-Schreiner
Geschwister des Wassers — Andréa del Fuego, tr. Marianne Gareis
The Complete Stories — Clarice Lispector, tr. Katrina Dodson
2666 — Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer
Daytripper — Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá
Epitaph of a Small Winner — Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, tr. William L. Grossman
Sieben leere Häuser — Samanta Schweblin, tr. Marianne Gareis
Crooked Plow (and the accompanying discussion) was interesting in large part because of the culture in which it is steeped: rural peasants who are (largely — that troublesome classification again) the descendants of black slaves, and who continue to live lives which amount to something very like slavery. The Jaré religion plays a central part in their lives, and in the lives of the protagonists in particular; the connection between spirits, people and land is not just local colour, but central to the characters and their story.
Another Brazilian book, Geschwister des Wassers, is in some ways similar: a realist story of development through the construction of a hydroelectric dam collides with fantastic elements (characters disappearing into coffee filters, the dead transformed into ticks) which are accepted by some characters, but rejected by others. Del Fuego combines this with a laconic, fairy-tale style to make a highly enjoyable read.
Epitaph of a Small Winner also blends whimsy and realism; for an example of the former, enjoy chapter 55:
Narrated by the protagonist after his death, this is a kind of Brazilian Tristam Shandy: ironic, metafictional, but with a strong satirical edge (witness the narrator’s excusal of his brother-in-law’s brutality as being required by his business being the smuggling, rather than the legal trading, of slaves). The original title is Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas), and this happened to be only the first book this month to concern a dead Brás.
The second was Daytripper, this month’s graphic novel. It tells the story of Brás de Oliva Domingos’s life, through a series of episodes at the end of each of which Brás dies. The relationship between the stories — or the Bráses — is left poetically open, while the book builds to a powerful conclusion.
A different side of Brazil is presented in The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector: while there’s irrationality here, it’s a modern, neurotic irrationality much more familiar to the European reader. There are a lot of stories here, and it was striking how the ones which I appreciated most are also the ones which the introduction focused on when I read it later. Not I think a testimony to my literary judgment so much as to the variation in quality. At her best though, Lispector was excellent:
“stroking his black hair as if stroking the soft, hot fur of a kitten”
“the daughter-in-law … plunked herself down … and fell silent… ‘I came to avoid not coming,’ shed’d said to Zilda”
“To my sudden torment, … he started slowly removing his glasses. And he looked at me with naked eyes that had so many lashes. I had never seen his eyes that, with their innumerable eyelashes, looked like two sweet cockroaches.”
“Any cat, any dog is worth more than literature.”
Budapest is even more literally a story of a Brazilian who seeks to become European, seduced by the challenge of learning Hungarian. It has a lot in common with the other Buarque novel I’ve read (Mein deutscher Bruder) — an unsympathetic narrator/protagonist, the speeded-up passage of time, and obsessions with language and thinly-characterised women.
Speaking of thinly-characterised women, 2666. There was a lot to like in it, especially the first part, which was very M. John Harrisonian in its non sequiturs:
I’m not quite convinced though that there was 40 hours of my life-worth to like in it. Even bracketing out the Part About the Crimes, which by its nature concerns itself with misogyny, the other female characters (Elizabeth Norton, Rosa Amalfitano, Baroness von Zumpe) all feature mainly as sex objects. There is of course a lot to be said about the difference between the author’s attitudes and those of the society which he depicts….
Finally, one re-read: Sieben leere Häuser. I liked this much more on a second reading (and I liked it quite a lot the first time). The relationships and commonalities between the stories struck me much more (the kinds of emptiness, the relationships between parents and children). I’ve been occasionally comparing with Megan McDowell’s English translation, and found myself critiquing McDowell’s version against the “German original” — time to re-learn Spanish!
Next month is Black History Month (UK edition), although how much time Proust will leave me remains to be seen (The Prisoner/The Fugitive seems a substantial instalment).
Posted inBooks|Comments Off on Reading List September 2023
I finished a modest seven books this month, mainly because it was a Proust month (and Oxen of the Sun in Ulysses took a while). All except Marcel were women for Women in Translation month (two actually in translation, and four in the original German).
The Stories of Eva Luna — Isabel Allende tr. Margaret Sayers Peden
Liebe ist gewaltig — Claudia Schumacher
All the Lovers in the Night — Mieko Kawakami tr. Sam Bett and David Boyd
Sibir — Sabrina Janesch
Sodom and Gomorrah — Marcel Proust, tr. John Sturrock
Madgermanes — Birgit Weyhe
May Ayim: Radikale Dichterin, sanfte Rebellin — Ika Hügel-Marshall et al.
Starting with the odd one out, Sodom and Gomorrah is where we find out, amusingly, that everyone except Marcel is gay. Marcel, meanwhile, sleeps his way through fourteen of Balbec’s little band of girls, as you do. Other highlights on my mastodon thread: https://mastodon.green/@slnieckar/110980369394661379
The Stories of Eva Luna were my short stories for the month (plus Lispector, which I’ll hopefully finish in September for my South American month). Interestingly the stock characters which in e.g. Garcia Marquez look like dodgy sexual politics — the macho general, the happy whore, the silent well-brought-up girl — are the same ones she uses. Lispector’s stories, in comparison, are full of neurotically complex characters; I know that she’s considered a very “European” writer, but the question of how much is due to the writer’s approach, and how much to the subjects (the period?) will require more reading.
Liebe ist gewaltig is a brilliantly written story of the narrator coming to terms with childhood in a violent family, where the father’s rages warp his wife’s and children’s characters. Schumacher adjusts the narrative voice to show the movement (not always progress) from smartarse teen to alienated adult (with a terrifying shift from first to third person as the protagonist becomes a Stepford wife).
All the Lovers in the Night reminded me a lot of Breasts and Eggs, both heavily featuring alcoholic women in publishing having inarticulate conversations. This time, the protagonist is an enigmatic (autism spectrum?) proofreader, who tries to find a way through life through her interactions with the other characters. Despite her difficulties connecting with them, the tender portrayal has a powerful effect on the reader.
Despite the name, Sibir actually takes place in Kazakhstan (and in Germany after the characters’ migrations westward). The ex-Soviet Germans are a substantial, but as far as I can tell little talked-about group in this country, so it was a fascinating read. The plot is occasionally creaky, but the focus on children’s worlds in each narrative thread was very effective.
Graphic novel for the month was Madgermanes (explained in the novel as deriving from “made in Germany”). It tells the story of three Mozambicans who worked in the DDR, with each in turn presenting their own perspective and deepening the reader’s understanding. Both in Germany and (for those who return) in Mozambique, they face exploitation and hostility, though the positives are also portrayed. The visual style creatively combines traditional comic and African motifs.
Lastly, May Ayim: Radikale Dichterin, sanfte Rebellin shows another side of Black life in Germany. There is a mixture of recollections of Ayim by her friends and family, unpublished (very dark, late) poems, and some powerful, mostly academic writing of Ayim’s, which together show the prejudice she and other Afro-Deutsch people faced, and her marvellously good-natured ability to deal with it and process it in her work and activism.
As I mentioned, next month is South American month. I might not get through very many, because one of my selected books is the voluminous 2666, but there are a few I’m eyeing up….
Posted inBooks|Comments Off on Reading List August 2023
Eleven books finished this month, six in German and eight by women/POC — all of those as part of my theme for the month of African writers. I really enjoyed this one, especially because I managed to get books from a good range of countries.
The Ultimate Tragedy — Abdulai Silá tr. Jethro Soutar
Der weiße Fleck — Mohamed Amjahid
So Distant From My Life — Monique Ilboudo tr. Yarri Kamara
Black Foam — Haji Jabir, tr. Sawad Hussain and Marcia Lynx Qualey
Solange wir leben — David Safier
Metro: Kairo Underground — Magdy El-Shafee, tr. Iskander Ahmad Abdalla and Stefan Winkler
Blutbuch — Kim de l’Horizon
African Women’s Writing — ed. Charlotte H. Bruner, various translators
Die sanfte Gleichgültigkeit der Welt — Peter Stamm
Scarlet Odyssey — C. T. Rwizi
Die Schiffbrüchige — Ali Zamir tr. Thomas Brovot
The original prompt for the theme was The Ultimate Tragedy (Guinea-Bissau), which was discussed this month by the Portuguese in Translation group (highly recommended). The book’s plot is a fairly standard tale of colonial oppression, but made interesting by being presented from several different points of view. Silá includes several local (Kreol?) words, retained by the translator, which solidifies the sense of place without causing comprehension problems.
Der weiße Fleck (Morocco/Germany) was a great listen, disturbing and humorous, but most of all illuminating regarding the experience of non-whites living in Germany. The German self-satisfaction at having moved beyond racism is of course largely unjustified, while Amjahid manages to give a positive conclusion with a list of ways for white allies — “sweet potatoes” — to make a contribution.
The next two books, So Distant From My Life (Burkina Faso) and Black Foam (Eritrea), deal with a similar main theme: the reasons for migrants to leave their homes and attempt the journey to Europe. The first of these I found less satisfying — the central character remains opaque throughout, and the treatment of homosexuality is disturbing (and not in a good way, even conceding that gay characters donn’t always have to be the heroes). Black Foam manages to present a much more interesting protagonist; even though his extreme unreliability leaves one similarly uncertain about his true character, this becomes one of the focuses of the novel, with plenty of material for thought.
Die Schiffbrüchige (Comoros) is also in part a story of migration, this time of a woman from the Comoros to Mayotte. This intra-African migration is neglected by western media, but many of the same features are present (as is apparent from the title). I expected this to be “the best novel I’ve read from the Comoros”, but it’s much more than that: Zamir has a very modern style (the endless sentence), buut there’s tremendous substance too in his portrayal of the central character.
Metro: Kairo Underground (Egypt), my graphic novel for the month, was fun, with energetic artwork and fun sound effects in Arabic script, but ultimately unsatisfying. There’s no real conclusion to the plot, which need not be a problem in itself, but I think it is when the story is as plot-driven as this one.
African Women’s Writing was, as one always says about anthologies, a mixed bag, but on the whole I enjoyed the range of voices, and I have plenty of new leads to chase up. The Story of Jesus, by Violet Dias Lannoy, in particular, was an absolute cracker (a schoolboy writing his understanding of the Gospel narrative in a Kenyan context).
Finally, Scarlet Odyssey (Zimbabwe/Eswatini/South Africa) was something quite different: fantasy/science fiction (and the two are interestingly blended), borderline YA, but complex enough to be enjoyable for adults. Continuing the theme of the month, diversity is paramount: Rwizi creates a world of varied societies, all based in turn on a variety of African cultures. There’s a lot of world-building in this first book of a series, and unsurprisingly there isn’t a real conclusion to the story in this volume, but I will be reading on.
Three (mostly) German-language books to finish: Solange wir leben is intriguing in that it’s a novel telling the story of the author’s parents (the writer himself is a character towards the end, but to Safier’s credit I don’t think that you’d guess this “David” was him if you didn’t already know). There’s a lot to enjoy here, and Safier admirably declines to sugar-coat his portrayal of his father, in particular, but the writing style (especially the addiction to sentence fragments) was not quite my thing.
The last two books for this month form a coincidental Swiss mini-theme, and both are very much my thing. Blutbuch is an exploration of the author’s family history, and its influence on their own life. The writing style varies between the straight-forward and stream-of-conscious poetry, all brilliantly performed in the audiobook by the author. Die sanfte Gleichgültigkeit der Welt is also concerned with the protagonist’s family history, this time as an updating of the classically German Doppelgänger theme. In a very short novel, Stamm manages to explore the ramifications of his conceit so brilliantly that I immediately re-listened to the audiobook, and enjoyed it as much (and understood it much more) the second time. As with Stamm’s other books, Christian Brückner narrates perfectly.
Topic for next month is, of course, Women in Translation. Following the slightly odd rules, that will mean women/non-binary people who don’t write in English; possibly not very many, because there’s also the next volume of Proust to get through….
Posted inBooks|Comments Off on Reading List July 2023
I finished a modest seven books this month, mainly because of the continuing Proustathon. Three each in German and by women/POC, which isn’t enough, but for the half year that makes 24 and 31 respectively out of 53, so on target. No particular theme this month other than a bit of everything!
A Flat Place — Noreen Masud
Aliss at the Fire — Jon Fosse tr. Damion Searls
Wenn der Hahn kräht: Zwölf hellwache Geschichten aus Brasilien — ed. Wanda Jakob and Luísa Costa Hölzl, tr. various
Draussen um diese Zeit — Ulrike Ulrich
Der Augenblick der Liebe — Martin Walser
The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives — Neil Gaiman
The Guermantes Way — Marcel Proust, tr. Mark Treharne
A Flat Place was a great start to the month for me: poised somewhere between nature writing and memoir, it explores the relationship between the flatness of the not so obviously attractive landscapes which Masud explores, and the distinctly traumatic experiences of her childhood. Even if I wasn’t convinced by all the links she draws (which might also be a result of listening to the audiobook and not pausing enough at the more abstract parts), I found the honesty of her writing gripping, and her sometimes uncomfortable engagement with the landscapes refreshingly genuine. Bonus points for featuring a black cat called Morvern, which has long been high on my shortlist of potential cat names.
Aliss at the Fire is also heavy on psychological trauma and landscape, somehow packing a multi-generational epic into a novella-length story, despite the typically Fossesqe use of repetition.
I read two short-story collections: Wenn der Hahn kräht gathers stories by various Brazilian women, with an understandable emphasis on the position of women in Brazilian society (not always great). The stories themselves were often rather light, but the title story by Claudia Lage is a banger.
Ulrike Ulrich’s stories are often light on plot, but present intriguing situations; I particularly enjoyed Le Refuge, which follows the mini-society in and around a Paris cafe.
Der Augenblick der Liebe is a very strange book: an elderly man and a young academic have an inexplicable affair, which they intertwine with discussion of an obscure French philosopher. Walser does at least address the improbability and the problematic Altersgeilheit, but with no very convincing result. I listened to this one as an audiobook read by the author, which was energetic, if fatiguing in its one-noteness.
Sandman volume 7 was much more successful: every time I’m impressed by how much Gaiman can pack into a limited space, while allowing room for the reader to develop their own thoughts in response.
Finally, I finished volume 3 of Proust just in time to keep on schedule to finish in 2023: favourite quotes are in a separate thread; most notably for me, the aristocrats (especially the Duchesse) were more interesting than in my memory, but there was still a lot of cringing at their laboured conversations.
Next month I plan a mainly African month: I’ve already got far more books than I’ll be able to finish on my shortlist, so I’ll be focusing on the less obvious countries as much as possible.
Posted inBooks|Comments Off on Reading List June 2023
