Currents Winter 2022 Currents Winter 2022 | Page 31

DISCOVERING GERMAN LITERATURE in translation

By Michaela Anchan
The list of German must-read books compiled by Deutsche Welle does not list a book for every year , but some years , like 2008 , have two listings . These two books are excellent reads , both looking at trauma and darkness from very different angles .
Broken Glass Park was Alina Bronsky ’ s debut novel , published in German in 2008 , and the English translation by Tim Mohr was published in 2010 . Bronsky is a Russian-born German writer living in Berlin since the early nineties , and she writes under a pseudonym that she describes as representing her “ German-speaking self .”
I ’ d describe Broken Glass Park as a tragicomedy . The protagonist is candid , sarcastic 17-year-old Sascha , who , like the author , is a Russian immigrant to Germany . She has witnessed her stepfather ’ s murder of her mother , and she is dealing with the consequences of the trauma in her own unique way — by plotting to murder her stepfather . The story is meandering and dark , touching on issues of identity and immigration , and is ultimately a coming-of-age story for Sascha . Bronsky reminds me of Ottessa Moshfegh in her tendency to write unusual , distinctive female protagonists . Another more recent novel of Bronsky ’ s , Baba Dunja ’ s Last Love , is the story of an elderly woman and a small community of survivors who have returned to live in a fictional version of the Chernobyl region , some years after the meltdown . Baba Dunja has a similarly unique , dark humor , and I ’ d recommend this one also . Broken Glass Park was nominated for the Ingeborg Bachmann Award in 2008 and for the German Young Adult Literary Prize in 2009 and was made into a movie ( Scherben Park ) in 2013 .
Jenny Erpenbeck ’ s Visitation ( Heimsuchung in the original ) has won almost too many prizes to list here . It is an excellent English translation by Susan Bernofsky ( published 2010 )— which must have been challenging for a book so focused on language . Bernofsky was also
the translator for Erpenbeck ’ s well-known 2015 novel Go , Went , Gone .
Visitation is a short novel , with a piece of land at its core instead of a character . It traces one property beside a lake in Brandenburg and all the tenants who have passed through it . Only one character remains throughout — the gardener , who starts as a young man and stays on the land until old age , and through him we trace the seasons , the rhythm of the trees , the flowers , and the lake . The storms of world wars arrive — crockery is buried in the garden , Russian soldiers pass through , a Jewish family has the property taken from them . Owners come and go , the lake freezes , neighbors arrive and leave . The stories are generational , and they twist and blend ; there are echoes and repetitions , scenes told from different viewpoints . It is a quiet , thoughtful , brutal book and gorgeously written . A book to read slowly , to savor and to think over .
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