Midsummer Night

by Uwe Timm, Peter Tegel (Translator)

An amusing and cautionary tale of one summer solstice night in Berlin. If this, Uwe Timm's enchanting novel, were a cautionary tale, the tag line would go something like Should you plan to be in Berlin on Midsummer Night, the time of the summer solstice – Watch Out! The narrator of Timm's story is a writer who simply can't get started on his next book. So he accepts a commission to write an article about potatoes. He has some interest in the subject because of an uncle who could, remarkably, from taste alone, differentiate one species of potato from another. Since one of the authorities on the subject worked in East Berlin, our hero takes off to do some research. Rushing around the newly united city, he becomes involved in a series of madcap adventures, strange entanglements, and odd, sometimes threatening encounters. Uwe Timm spins a fascinating tale here, one filled with surprise, magic, comedy, and hope.

Genres: German Literature, Fiction, Germany, Contemporary, Novels, Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Uwe Timm was the youngest son in his family. His brother, 16 years his senior, was a soldier in the Waffen SS and died in Ukraine in 1943. Decades later, Uwe Timm approached his relationship with his father and brother in the critically acclaimed novel In my brother's shadow.

After working as a furrier, Timm studied Philosophy and German in Munich and Paris, achieving a PhD in German literature in 1971 with his thesis: The Problem of Absurdity in the Works of Albert Camus. During his studies, Timm was engaged in leftist activities of the 1960s. He became a member of the Socialist German Student Union and was associated with Benno Ohnesorg. From 1973 to 1981 he was a member of the German Communist Party. Three times Timm has been called as a writer-in-residence to several universities in English-speaking countries: in 1981 to the University of Warwick, in 1994 to Swansea and in 1997 to the Washington University in St. Louis. He has also been a lecturer at universities in Paderborn, Darmstadt, Lüneburg and Frankfurt.

Timm started publishing in the early 1970s and became known to a larger audience in Germany after one of his children's books, Rennschwein Rudi Rüssel, was turned into a movie. Today he is one of the most successful contemporary authors in Germany. His books Die Entdeckung der Currywurst (The Invention of Curried Sausage) and Am Beispiels meines Bruders (In my brother's shadow) can both be found on the syllabi of German schools. His readers usually appreciate Timm's writing style, which he himself calls "die Ästhetik des Alltags" ("the aesthetics of everyday life"). Timm imitates everyday storytelling by using everyday vocabulary and simple sentences and generally tries to imitate the way stories are orally told. His works often indirectly link with each other by taking up minor characters from one story and making this character the main character of another work. For example, a minor character like Frau Brücker from Johannisnacht is taken up as a main character in his book Die Entdeckung der Currywurst. Timm's works also tend to have autobiographical features and often deal with the German past or are set in the German past.

Reviews

[L.A. Starks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recommend Midsummer Night, which is literary fiction, to readers interested in books set in post-unification Berlin.

I enjoyed reading about the changes in this city that is still, in many ways, two different cities.

[Nesya Maksimova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Немного офигела от того, что немцы понимают под чудесами, захотела в Берлин.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, but I'm not sure why exactly. This book, set shortly after German reunification, is ostensibly about a West German writer commissioned to write about potatoes. He goes to Berlin (the erstwhile east) in search of a potato archive compiled by a recently deceased East German researcher.

What the book is really about is the wall that still existed in Germans' heads, in spite of the tearing down of the actual Wall dividing Berlin. Wessis (Westerners) viewed the Ossis (Easterners) with condescencion alternately pitying their "backwardness" and disparaging them as rubes. Ossis reacted with a certain amount of antipathy. Though many people suffered under the old DDR, many in the East felt that their society had been stolen from them.

Timm writes with a sense of quirky oddness. His individual scenes are fascinating. Things seem a little disjointed, but it all connects in the end.

[Ritja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kartoffelsex? Sexkartoffel? Wie passt das zusammen? Diese Frage ist ein kleiner Teil der Geschichte, die sich um einen Autoren dreht, der eine Geschichte über die Kartoffel schreiben soll. Er reist dafür von München nach Berlin und erlebt einiges, was über seine Vorstellungen geht. Er sucht einen Katalog, der die Geschmacksrichtungen der Kartoffel beinhaltet und trifft dabei auf viele skurrile Personen, die ihn ein Stück begleiten und zum Teil auch beeinflussen. Das Buch ist ironisch und mit vielen kleinen z.T. bösen Anekdoten. Wer die Wende mal anders (als aus dem Geschichtsbuch) erleben möchte, sollte es lesen.

[Julie Whelan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translation of a German novel about the joining of East and West Berlin and the disconnect in the way people think in those two cultures. Wonderfully imaginative and innovative in its writing. Some scenes are so funny you laugh out loud. Great discussion of the varieties of potatoes eaten by Germans, the leather coat sold in the black market that disintegrates as the narrator walks in the rain, the taxi driver that stops and throws all the author's papers out of the cab when he disagrees with his politics. Ends with the wrapping of the Reichstag by the artist Christo.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the central plot is weak, it enables the narrator to criss-cross Berlin and discover how nonsensical and absurd life in eastern Berlin can be. It’s well worth reading if you knew Berlin during the DDR era and want to experience the chaos and fragmentation of post-reunification Berlin. Knowing something of the city's physical and cultural geography is also very helpful. You’ll also get some ‘not so politically correct’ Ossie-Wessie jokes:
What's the difference between a Turk and an East German?
The Turk speaks German and works.

[Suparna Dutta · Rating 1 out of 5]

This might be a lonnnng rant (or not since I don't like to stretch things unnecessarily) so you might want to buckle up.

The book is based on a protagonist who decides to write about potatoes and wants to find out what "Roter Baum" is. The book is based on "Zeit nach der Wiedervereinigung", that is after the unification of Germany and shows how the "then DDR" has changed after the unification.

But that's not where I started losing my interest. It's the constant unnecessary talks and long details of anything small and the personalities of the people he met, all those problems that poor guy faced and for what? To write about potatoes and find out what "Roter Baum" is.

The plot could've been so much different than making it entirely about potatoes. Personally, it kinda felt like the changes "nach der Wende" went completely in the background, felt more forced.
I still find it difficult how the book is named "Johannisnacht".

Also after 200 pages of reading, I at least anticipated Roter Baum must have been something interesting since he had an adventure of 200 pages but what is it? A Gasthof.

Now moving to the writing style. No inverted commas to indicate dialogues. I don't want to do a brainstorming and keep a check on who's saying what every next line. I DID THAT ENOUGH TRYING TO FIGURE OUT ABOUT ROTER BAUM AND POTATOES. The least that one can do is add inverted commas for DIALOGUES!
Coming to the humour part, I don't know if my humour is broken or the humour was really not humorous. Reading that entire thing with a blank face and then being asked "have found the joke?" by the prof., like no I didn't, tell me 'cause I don't find anything even mildly funny here.

The book felt entirely slow paced. Had this as a part of our lesson, and never again. Tried giving it a read again at home, and never ever again.

If the author wanted to show the changes after the Wiedervereinigung, it could've been done in so many better ways. And trust me, as a Germanistik Student, I've gone through the history of Germany every semester, so I know when I see it.



I'll add some more, if I'm in the mood but for now, that's all I guess since I've to go and finish an assignment based on the 5th chapter of this novel. I hope I don't fall asleep while reading. Again.

[Miguel Palafox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noche de San Juan de Uwe Timm es, en esencia, una novela de personajes. Aunque el protagonista tiene una meta clara y viaja a Berlín para cumplirla, esta premisa funciona más como un hilo conductor que como el verdadero motor de la historia. Timm aprovecha este viaje para sumergirnos en un Berlín que aún siente las secuelas de la reunificación alemana, presentándonos una galería de personajes excepcionales y excéntricos que encarnan la incertidumbre, el caos y la transformación de la ciudad tras la caída del Muro. A través de sus encuentros, la novela construye un retrato vívido de una sociedad en plena reconstrucción, donde los ideales, las identidades y los sueños se entrecruzan en un ambiente de cambio vertiginoso.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timm's tale of a writer visiting 1990's Berlin during midsummer is a riot and a romp. And by the end of the book, the reader is left wondering about it all, yet knowing that Timm didn't have to venture too far into fiction to conjure up the strange goings-on. Only in Berlin!

[Svitlana Filobok · Rating 3 out of 5]

Может дело в переводе, а может и нет, но очень странное чтиво, без четкого начала и конца, просто несколько дней странных событий и образов, искрометный юмор, заявленный в описаний, не замечен(

[HansBlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hübscher Episodenreigen aus Freakhausen. Meine Meinung dazu:

https://hansblog.de/romankritik-johan...

[Timothy Frasca]

A wonderful discovery, reminded me of Rachel Cusk, who may have been influenced by him?

[Daniela Iñigo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Una historia bastante aburrida a mi parecer, todo momento estuve esperando el momento en donde la emoción no te permite bajar el libro...pero nunca sucedió. De por sí una investigación de la patata ya es algo nada atractivo, la forma en que se desenvuelve está fuera de sí, no sé si por la traducción del alemán al inglés y luego de este al español pero había momentos en que no sonaba coherente. Siento como si la aparición de Tina hubiese sido sólo de relleno para darle un ligero aire de emoción, aún así queda inconclusa, y el final pffff sin comentarios. Un libro que no recomiendo, más tengo que mencionar que lo que me atrajo fue el título en español (La noche de San Juan) lo cual es completamente erróneo si nos basamos en el escenario en donde la historia se sitúa.

[Dorothea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to really like this book, and while Timm does a great job of taking the reader on a journey through unified Berlin and one has a sort of Midsummer Night's Dream experience that is fun and thought-provoking, with a lot of moments worth exploring for deeper meaning, I found it a little too obvious. The circularity of the plot and the symbols used throughout are done well and neat to see played out, but they end up a little bit too "in your face." Still, I enjoyed reading this and learned a bit about Germany and Berlin in the 90s that I previously hadn't. The interactions with all the characters in the different dialects was fun, and it did have a sort of Joycean Ulysses feel to it.

[syrin · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Johannisnacht" oder "Die Geschichte der Kartoffel", fand ich leider nicht so entspannend. Wie in "Die Entdeckung der Currywurst", Berlin nach der Wende ist das Hauptthema des Buches, aber diesmal fand ich die Figuren nicht so interessant, und die unterschiedlichen Akzente waren manchmal schwer zu verstehen.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend Evan recommended me Uwe Timm's book, and it certainly lived up to that recommendation. There are a rich variety of characters poking about in these 250 pages. Quite a slow start, but Timm really builds this story into a certain kind of comedy of errors that is both entertaining and manages to fit in a few seamless moments of reflection.

[Bernadette · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://rantsravesreviews.homestead.co...

[Betsy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Goodreads summary is not for this book, but rather for Umbrella by Ferdinand Mount!

[Andrés · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really disappointed in this book. It was really funny and had lots of ironic moments, but the story is really lackluster and it's format becomes repetitive in just a few chapters.

[Anca Druga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written with a good sense of humor.

[Collinjennings · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh.

[Felix Natusch · Rating 3 out of 5]

5

[Deborah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lost in translation I think.