Zaftig.
In his hugely ambitious second novel, German wunderkind Schulze (Simple Stories, 2000, etc.) aims to capture the complexity of East Germans’ response to reunification through one man’s transition from police state rebel to capitalist entrepreneur.
The postmodernist author maintains he is merely editing the writings of a disgraced businessman whose post-unification newspaper empire collapsed in the late 1990s. Schulze has “discovered” a series of letters written by Enrico (aka Heinrich) Türmer between January and July of 1990, a period of tumult surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. By “publishing” these letters Schulze claims he has created the novel Türmer was not talented enough to write—if this sounds confusing, it is meant to be, in a work complete with random footnotes and an appendix including the fictional Türmer’s fiction and poetry (frankly worth skipping). Türmer’s letters address three disparate readers. To his beloved older sister Vera, who has escaped to the West, Türmer writes as a younger brother, showing his insecurities and concern with family matters—his mother, his stepson, his soon to be ex-wife. To his best friend Johann, he writes man-to-man about his newspaper work in the heady days when an independent press first becomes possible, detailing the politics and business intrigues as an idealist facing business realities. And to Nicoletta, a woman he barely knows (and a blatant literary device), he recalls the everyday reality—tastes, smells, sounds—of his boyhood and young manhood before and during the fall of East Germany. The letters are crammed with details about German politics that assume a familiarity with German history most Americans lack, but anyone who has spent time in a political movement, or in a start-up business, will recognize the comedy of egos with its cast of con men, hangers-on and the occasional genuine talent. For all his comic foolishness, Türmer represents the book’s conflicted heart, asking “What were the ways and means by which the West got inside my brain? And what did it do in there?”
Zaftig.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26559-3
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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