Eu plec, tu pleci, el/ ea pleacă

by Jenny Erpenbeck, Andrei Anastasescu (Translator)

Entdeckungsreise zu einer Welt, die zum Schweigen verurteilt, aber mitten unter uns ist

Wie erträgt man das Vergehen der Zeit, wenn man zur Untätigkeit gezwungen ist? Wie geht man um mit dem Verlust derer, die man geliebt hat? Wer trägt das Erbe weiter? Richard, emeritierter Professor, kommt durch die zufällige Begegnung mit den Asylsuchenden auf dem Oranienplatz auf die Idee, die Antworten auf seine Fragen dort zu suchen, wo sonst niemand sie sucht: bei jenen jungen Flüchtlingen aus Afrika, die in Berlin gestrandet und seit Jahren zum Warten verurteilt sind. Und plötzlich schaut diese Welt ihn an, den Bewohner des alten Europas, und weiß womöglich besser als er selbst, wer er eigentlich ist.

Jenny Erpenbeck erzählt auf ihre unnachahmliche Weise eine Geschichte vom Wegsehen und Hinsehen, von Tod und Krieg, vom ewigen Warten und von all dem, was unter der Oberfläche verborgen liegt.

Genres: Fiction, Germany, German Literature, Contemporary, Book Club, Novels, Literary Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2015

About the author

Jenny Erpenbeck (born 12 March 1967 in East Berlin) is a German director and writer.

Jenny Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985. She then completed a two-year apprenticeship as a bookbinder before working at several theaters as props and wardrobe supervisor.

From 1988 to 1990 Erpenbeck studied theatre at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1990 she changed her studies to Music Theater Director (studying with, among others, Ruth Berghaus, Heiner Müller and Peter Konwitschny) at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994 (with a production of Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle in her parish church and in the Kunsthaus Tacheles, she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Graz, where in 1997 she did her own productions of Schoenberg's Erwartung, Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and a world premiere of her own piece Cats Have Seven Lives. As a freelance director, she directed in 1998 different opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Aachen, Acis and Galatea at the Berlin State Opera and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zaide in Nuremberg/Erlangen.

In the 1990s Erpenbeck started a writing career in addition to her directing. She is author of narrative prose and plays: in 1999, History of the Old Child, her debut; in 2001, her collection of stories Trinkets; in 2004, the novella Dictionary; and in February 2008, the novel Visitation. In March 2007, Erpenbeck took over a biweekly column by Nicole Krauss in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her son, born 2002.

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where can a person go when he doesn't know where to go?

This book, about the current refugee crisis in Europe (specifically, Germany) asks this question and others - important ones, about what constitutes a border, about what separates us as human beings, about who takes care of whom and whose problem is it anyway? All great questions, and a big part of the reason why I wanted to read this book by Jenny Erpenbeck who is described as one of Germany's most important writers.

She obviously writes with a great deal of compassion towards the displaced African refugees, and is highly critical of her own country's policies. She must have spoken with many people to learn about cultures, experiences and stories. And it's evident she did loads of research on law and procedures.

But, she failed to draw me into her story. It's only because of my compulsive need to read a book in its entirety that I completed it. I was on the precipice, many times, to jump ship and just flee. But here I am to tell you, I read the whole book, and I was not engaged - with a story that could have been so emotional and meaningful (as well as timely).

I don't know what the problem was exactly, except it felt very hollow. It had an empty echo. I couldn't stick to the pages - I kept slipping off them. I found myself routinely glossing over entire paragraphs and having to re-read them in order to reacquaint myself with what the heck was going on. The description and tone of the book was flat and depressing. Also, the message was one sided - I would have appreciated perhaps a rounder view presented, to understand all sides in this complex situation. I wanted more action, more colour. The prose was communist grey. When the author went into stories of the refugees, it was more interesting, but wasn't enough to really capture my imagination.

Too bad, because it's an important topic - for Germany and for the rest of the world.

Must living in peace - so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world - inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, and defending instead it so aggressively that it almost looks like war?

Thank you to Netgalley and New Directions for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very strong work by Erpenbeck, but I didn't like it quite as much as her extraordinary THE END OF DAYS. The set-up here is excellent - a recently retired professor, Richard, is aimless. He can't go into his nearby lake because there is a dead body somewhere beneath the surface, his wife has died, and he still has never quite adjusted to East Berlin after the wall was brought down and capitalism has arrived. He befriends (by a series of well-done coincidences) a group of migrants seeking asylum in Germany, and begins recording their stories. So far, so good!

The problem is that the book then acquires a saccharine tinge that never goes away. I get the sense from the acknowledgements at the back that the migrants' stories are based on real interviews, and I COMPLETELY understand why Erpenbeck chose to make those characters universally likable, but oddly, this adds a fairy tale aspect to the book that diminished its impact, its viscerality. In its well meaningness, it has less meaning. The ending is really nuts and very dark (for only two or so pages), and possessed a tone that I found lacking in the back half. I definitely recommend this, but it could have been so much more.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

PERMESSO DI SOGGIORNO


Foto di copertina di Mark Wessels.

Erpenbeck sembra non avere fretta, sembra abbracciare il tempo di Richard, il suo protagonista, che essendo andato in pensione alla prima pagina del romanzo, non ha più fretta, ha tempo: forse anche il tempo di cadere fuori dal tempo.


Berlino, i rifugiati di Oranienplatz.

E questa assenza di fretta di Erpenbeck la percepisco soprattutto nell’uso del presente indicativo.
Col presente indicativo, Erpenbeck segue e descrive la routine di Richard, che è stato docente universitario di filologia classica, adesso è professore ‘emerito’ della stessa materia, se è fortunato lo invitano a un convegno all’ultimo momento a rimpiazzare un collega che ha dato forfait, le sue giornate sono da riempire: fa colazione, poi pranzo e cena, mangia (sicuramente troppo formaggio - questo lo noto io, non lo dice Erpenbeck), fa la spesa al supermercato, paga bollette e assolve ad altri aspetti burocratici del vivere.
E un giorno scopre gli emigrati. I rifugiati. Gli invisibili. Quelli sopravvissuti alla traversata del Mediterraneo in un barcone che ha lasciato annegare ben oltre metà del suo carico umano.
Prima una protesta sull’Alexanderplatz dove immagino saranno spariti, troppo pochi loro, troppo vasto e abitato quello spazio. Poi una riunione serale in una scuola. Infine li incontra in un ex ospizio ora adibito all’accoglienza che è proprio vicino a casa sua, nella periferia di Berlino di quella che una volta era la zona est.


Foto di Jan Grarup.

Richard è pratico di emigrazione e frontiere, è cresciuto nella DDR, è cresciuto col muro di Berlino, che quando è venuto giù, quando l’Ovest ha inglobato l’Est, ha messo in moto la sua personale forma di emigrazione, e tuttora conosce la differenza tra cittadini e altri cittadini, se non vogliamo usare l’espressione cittadini di serie A e cittadini di serie B, perché essendo dell’ex DDR percepisce una pensione inferiore a quella dei suoi colleghi pari grado dell’ex Germania Federale. In pratica, + riuscito a essere emigrante senza viaggiare, senza cambiare paese.


Foto di Juan Medina.

Richard incontra i migranti, che sono tutti africani, dell’africa subsahariana, sono tutti neri neri: li intervista per così dire, li studia, impara a conoscerli, ne diventa a poco a poco amico. Li aiuta, a un paio insegna il tedesco, a un altro a suonare il pianoforte. Per Richard quegli uomini (sono tutti uomini, né donne né bambini – e neppure anziani) diventano visibili, diventano identità singole e distinte, non più massa indistinta.
Molto presto Richard si dimostra un brav’uomo, e se il mondo fosse abitato da un maggior numero di persone come lui sarebbe sicuramente un posto migliore.

Foto di Darrin Zammit Lupi.

Gli invisibili hanno tutti alle spalle storie indicibili, di quelle che si confessano solo allo psicologo, se pure: guerre, violenza, tortura, fughe, fame, sete, morte e morti … E poi il mare, i barconi, qualcuno ce la fa, qualcun altro rimane là sotto, a nutrire i pesci. E chi ce la fa quei momenti non li dimentica più, anche se ci prova, anche se vorrebbe dimenticarli.


Foto di Santiago Ferrero.

Nonostante l’argomento, Erpenbeck si astiene da qualsiasi enfasi, pietismo, sentimentalismo: non calca la mano, rimane piacevolmente asciutta, usa un’ironia leggera, senza spingere sul pedale, senza esagerare, niente grottesco, lavorando tra le righe, lavorando in sottrazione.
Man mano costruisce l’emozione del lettore, un po’ alla volta, a strati, col bianco della pagine e il nero delle lettere e delle parole crea qualcosa che esula in tutto e per tutto dal colore dei tasti.
E così facendo, non di rado, riesce perfino a essere poetica.


Foto di Darrin Zammit Lupi.

Andare, andai, andato: sono queste le voci del verbo andare, o sono quelle coniugate dall’esperienza di chi ha lasciato casa e famiglia e amici, attraversato deserti e mari…?

Come si seppellisce un morto nel deserto?


Lampedusa: Porta d’Europa.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read all of Erpenbeck's previous novels and novellas but I was unprepared for just what a raw and powerful human story this one is, a book which is always vital and engaging and gains power and weight towards the end. I don't think I can write a review that does it justice, so these are just a few initial impressions.

Erpenbeck uses her central character Richard, a widowed retired professor of classics from East Berlin, to explore the lives and stories of a group of desperate asylum seekers he befriends and tries to help, finding a form of fulfilment in the process. The book highlights both the real human stories at the core of a problem which is usually presented purely in the form of statistics, and the callous absurdity of the laws that trap the migrants in cycles of bureaucracy while denying them the chance to work. She is also very strong on the history, both ancient and modern, African and European, and the cosy complacency of the Europeans.

As in her previous books, Erpenbeck tells her story in simple language that belies the depth of her knowledge and the complexity of the issues she describes, and her use of repetition is very effective. Her story has the simple morality that is so lacking in much of today's political debate. She even manages to end the book on a note of hope, though there are no real solutions on offer.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels like it was written with a translation in mind and to win over prize judges - unfortunately, I have to agree when "Der Spiegel" states that it also illustrates the poor state of political literature in Germany. While Erpenbeck's writing about the plight of the refugees and the dire situation many of them are in is really important and very well done, some of her analysis dwells on a dangerously simplistic viewpoint. But let's start at the beginning.

Erpenbeck tells the story of Richard, a widowed and recently retired Professor for Classical Philology, who becomes aware of a makeshift refugee camp at the Oranienplatz in Berlin. The African refugees are protesting, they want to become visible and to get a chance to find a place in society. Richard wants to know more about them and decides to help them, and as the story progresses, he (and the reader) gets to know many of the refugees, he learns what made them flee their home countries, what they had to endure on their dangerous passage to Germany and how they feel now, after they have arrived.

As Germany decided to help more than one million refugees, the bureaucratic processes take an enormous amount of time (which has gotten better, but is still way less than ideal - at the beginning, the federal states really struggled to find personnel, housing etc. as well as a common procedure, and epecially the situation in Berlin was pretty much a disgrace). As a consequence, the refugees spend months and months waiting, without a work permit or a clear perspective, sharing their small living quarters with many others, haunted by their past and afraid of what the future might bring. Erpenbeck does an absolutely phenomenal job describing this terrible situation.

She also describes the discussions that have taken place in Germany since the refugee crisis started. Reviewers from other countries noted her talking about the possible connection between Germany’s role in WW II and now helping the refugees - these kinds of discussions were widely held and publicized in Germany (and the far-right undertook disgusting attempts to instrumentalize them). Also, the question was widely contemplated whether there are any parallels between the German re-unification and now taking on another major challenge by integrating the refugees. In the story, Richard thinks about that; in reality, everybody did.

Which brings us to my thesis that Erpenbeck did not really write this book for a German audience: Germans already know all this. And then there are descriptions like "...around Castle Bellevue, where the German President resides." - This is as if an American wrote "...around the White House, where the American President resides." Just like Americans, Germans tend to know where their head of state lives, so why would you tell them?

And of course there's Richard, who obsessively eats brown bread, brings his paper to the blue waste bin, and always wears his practical shoes - we get it, he's really, really German. On top of that, I feel ambivalent about his attitude: Yes, he has good intentions and truly wants to understand the refugees, but he is unable to escape his own frame of reference, re-names them with the names of Greek Gods (he's a philologist, after all) and in the end even has the nerve to compare their plight with one of his own experiences. Sure, we are all caught up in ourselves to some degree, but this seems a little much to me.

And now on to my main issue with this book. None of us rich Europeans have done anything to deserve our privileged lives. We were simply lucky. From a moral standpoint, we have no right to deny others the opportunities that we enjoy simply because we were born in a Western democracy. It is this injustice which lies at the core of the refugee problem. With our privileges come responsibilties.

And what does Erpenbeck do, over and over and over again? She blames "politics", and - think about that! - "the law". From an argumentative point of view, this is no better than Trump blaming "the media" or "the Mexicans". "Politics" and "the law" did not somehow descend on the German people from the heavens above, Germans (all of them) do carry responsibilty for their government and regulations. Especially an author who writes about Hitler in the same book should be well aware of that. She should also be aware of the fact that a democracy is lost without the rule of law, and that the question must be which laws we want, but we hear nothing about that from Erpenbeck. Instead, she insinuates that "politicians" and "the law" are somehow out to get the refugees.

Germany decided to help over a million refugees (while the majority of other countries did next to nada), and the idea that "politics" in general does nothing and wants to help no one and is full of vicious people is simply insupportable. And if you want to stop the far-right, you better not give up on accounts of "politics" being vicious, but do something against them! We are confronted with tons of pressing questions: How can we change Dublin II without European solidarity? How can we improve the situation of the refugees? How can we stop the rise of the far-right in the West? And when in the world will Germany finally write that immigration law that we need (yes, good laws are a solution)?

If blaming "politics" is the level of argumentation in a political novel, "Der Spiegel" is right. This could have been so much better.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novel Writing versus Reportage

I hope Jenny Erpenbeck returns soon to writing novels; this one seems something else. Her Visitation is a poetic masterpiece; The End of Days tells one woman's life over the span of the twentieth century in terms of the many ways it might have ended, but didn't; the earlier Book of Words looks at a totalitarian regime through the eyes of a torturer's child. All are politically engaged. All tackle major issues of our times. But all are also novels. Admittedly, they occupy the fringes of conventional form. They look at their subjects either from a great distance or uncomfortably close up. They are neither character-based nor action-driven, but are held together by poetic concept; Visitation, for instance, has only one named character, but is anchored by the continued presence of the almost spectral gardener who tends the lakeside house that witnesses so many changing regimes. But above all, one reads Erpenbeck for the inventive richness of her language, whether in the German or the consistently brilliant translations by Susan Bernofsky.

So I preordered this latest book for the day of its release, and opened it eagerly. And was at first nonplussed, then disappointed, and only gradually began to see traces of the familiar quality coming through. There is no question that Erpenbeck is tackling a politically charged subject once again, but now it is a matter of current headlines, no longer safely in the past: the plight of African refugees in present-day Germany. It has particular relevance in an America that, even while I was reading, promulgated more restrictive refugee policies than any in recent memory. It is especially disappointing to read of these things in Germany, which appears from afar as the beacon of compassionate treatment. But in Erpenbeck's painstaking denunciation, it is clear that even there the policy of free housing, language lessons, and a small stipend can all too soon grind to a halt in verdicts of "Sorry, it's the law" or "Not our jurisdiction." Were Erpenbeck a magazine journalist, she would turn in a piece of searing reportage worthy of a Pulitzer in anyone's currency.

But a novel? True, there is a narrative framework of a sort. Erpenbeck's protagonist is a widowed and recently retired classics professor called Richard. At a loose end, he goes to Berlin's Alexanderplatz where a group of African refugees are staging a demonstration. Later, when they are temporarily rehoused in a former old folks' home, he obtains permission to visit, and starts getting to know some of the African men and learning their stories. An empathy grows up even as the mens' prospects diminish, and soon Richard's life is entirely consumed by his project.

I won't say there are not advantages to this approach. Richard is a former citizen of East Berlin, and the theme of borders is reinforced by his memories of life behind the Wall, and the difficulty of assimilation after its fall. Then there is the constant awareness of a rather older Germany that dealt with its embarrassing minorities in quite a different way. Further, Richard's area of study gives him a vast range of references that interlace with the present towards the end of the book in ways that return us to the brilliant interplay of ideas that Erpenbeck does so well. The opening paragraph in Chapter 50, for instance, moves from Seneca through Plato and Ovid to Soviet socialism in the course of a page and a quarter. The book may begin with dogged objectivity, but it ends as an intellectual tour de force.

The trouble is that Richard remains a convenient construct; he never comes to life as a person. Still less do his many friends and ex-colleagues, who fill out the background without ever coming into focus as individuals. The problem of keeping track of the African refugees is more difficult still. Over his many visits, Richard interacts with half a dozen or more. We get to know their names, and the nicknames that Richard gives them, and eventually their family circumstances, where they are from, and what they are fleeing. But this all comes too thick and fast to be easy to assimilate. No doubt this replicates Richard's experience of gradually getting to know the men not as case studies but people. But it is hard on the reader. Only as the novel entered its second half did I find myself beginning to care on a human level for one or two in this large cast, such as Osarobo whose ambition is to play the piano, but has never touched a keyboard until Richard invites him into his home.

To be honest, most of this was a three-star read at most. Had I encountered it as non-fiction in The New Yorker or Atlantic, I might have been utterly absorbed, but the book was simply not working for me as a novel. But then in the last 80 pages, Erpenbeck returns to her true metier as a prose poet. There is one brilliant passage, for instance, when she interleaves the text of Bach's cantata "Ich habe genug" with the side-effect warnings on prescription medication. The ending of the book, a free montage of voices, both African and German, around a dying campfire on the shores of one of the Berlin lakes, shows the novelist at the top of her form; its fading ellipsis is both politically inevitable and humanly affecting. But—if only to give a glimpse of Susan Bernofsky's translation as well as Erpenbeck's poetic polemic—let me end with a small part of Richard's meditation on borders:

Is the rift dividing them in fact a bottomless chasm; is that why such powerful turbulences have been released? And is it a rift between Black and White? Or Poor and Rich? Stranger and Friend? Or between those whose fathers have died and those whose fathers are still alive? Or those with curly hair and those with straight? Those who call their dinner fufu and those who call it stew? Or those who like to wear yellow, red, and green t-shirts and those who prefer neckties? Or those who like to drink water and those who prefer beer? Or between speakers of one language and another? How many borders exist within a single universe?

======

For a totally different point of view, let me recommend the review in the New Yorker by James Wood. He argues, fairly convincingly and at length, that the flatness of style and comparative banality of action in the first part of the novel is in fact the product of genius. And he nominates the novel again as his top book for 2017, predicting that before long the author will win the Nobel Prize.

======



My Top Ten list this year is selected from a smaller than usual pool. I really only started reading again in May, and even then deliberately kept new books to under 50% of my total. In compiling the list, I also did not exactly follow my original star ratings, but rather the takeaway value after time has passed. In particular, there are two books, Lincoln in the Bardo and Go, Went, Gone) to which I gave only 4 stars, but which I recognize as important books, with more staying power than many that I enjoyed more at the time, but have since forgotten.

For some reason, three of the ten books (Forest Dark, A Horse Walks into a Bar, and Three Floors Up) are by Jewish authors, set in Israel. To those, I would add a fourth: Judas by Amos Oz, read at the same time and of similar quality, but actually published at the end of 2016.

The ten titles below are in descending order (i.e. with The Essex Serpent being my favorite). The links are to my reviews:

1. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
2. Autumn by Ali Smith
3. Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss
4. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
5. Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
6. A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman
7. Exit West by Moshin Hamid
8. Three Floors Up by Eshkol Nevo
9. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
10. Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

And half that number again that didn't quite make it, in alphabetical order by authors:

11. Souvenirs dormants by Patrick Modiano
12. All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan
13. Improvement by Joan Silber
14. Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
15. Rose & Poe by Jack Todd

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this book on my shelves a few years but it took being stuck at home and a Book Cougars readalong to get me to read it. Translated from the German, it's the story of Richard, a retired academic living in Berlin who encounters refugees and starts to learn about the complexity of issues and bureaucracy surrounding refugees in Germany. He is trying to help, or wants to, but is ill equipped.

I must admit that while Richard as narrator can "explain" the issues better to the reader, it felt wrong to be yet another person witnessing the frustrations and dehumanizing treatment from afar, even as a reader. The author does a good job in showing the systemic inadequacies and the way nobody will take control and fix the problems (you first, right) and how these problems play out specifically in Europe with its country-specific placement and quotas that further serve to perpetuate the trauma for people who have been displaced already at least once, usually more. The author refers to this as "asylum fraud" and I don't think she's wrong.

The author also unveils, through Richard and his circle of friends, how people who on paper believe in their country welcoming people who are displaced, are not actually willing to do anything to help those that are in their neighborhoods. In this story in particular, the men from various countries are not allowed to work while being shamed for not working, have their mobility controlled by bureaucracy without access to translation for navigating the system, and the only people who seem to benefit are Berliners who have jobs created to manage these processes. We only know portions of the stories, not the whole stories, and that is really a shame.

I'm not sure it's a hopeful book. But I look forward to future discussion.

[merixien · Rating 5 out of 5]

2014 yılında Oranienplatz'da kurulan mülteci kampından temel alarak sığınmacı olmak, mülteci yasaları - bürokrasisi, sınırlar ve ev konuları üzerine muhteşem bir kitap. Hikayenin anlatıcısı Richard, birleşmeden önce Doğu Berlin’de yaşamış, bir süre önce dul kalmış ve şimdi de emekli olup zamanını nasıl geçireceğini bilemeyen bir üniversite hocası. Her ne kadar birleşme sonrası zenginleşen Almanya’nın topraklarında yaşıyor olsa da eski alışkanlıklarının izlerini ya da “Batı”nın sokaklarına olan yabancılığını görebiliyorsunuz. Çalışma izni alamadıkları için çadırlarda ya da yurtlarda hiçbir şey yapamadan zaman geçirmeye çalışan mülteciler ile Doğu Berlin’li emekli bir dul eşleşmesi; farklı kaderlerdeki hayatın bekleme salonu dönemleri anlatısı kitabın en güzel yanlarından birisi. Diğer bir güzellik ise tabii ki yazarın yazım tarzı. Almanya özelinde Avrupa yasalarının keskinliğini ve bürokrasisini karikatürize ederek eleştirirken, gerçek hayatlara, savaşlara dair detayları dramatize etmeden ya da yumuşatmadan bütün gerçekliği ile bir parça da mesafeli bir şekilde dile getiriyor. Kitabın 243. sayfasında “…burada karşı karşıya gelmiş iki grup insan da aslında bir evrenin birbirine ait olan, ama ayrılmaları yine de kaçınılmaz olan iki parçası mı yoksa? Aralarındaki yarık gerçekten dipsiz derinlikte de bu yüzden mi böyle şiddetli bir gerilim yaratıyor?” diye başlayan “…Tek bir evrenin içindeki sınırların sayısı nerede?” diye devam eden “sınırlar neden vardır ve bu sınırların koşulsuzca savunulmasının nedenleri-sonuçları nedir"i sorguladığı bölüm benim en etkilendiğim kısımlarındandı. Doğu-Batı Berlin örneğini de ekleyerek vatan nedir, anavatanın sınırı neresidir ve o sınırlar hangi esaslara göre çizilir soruları eşliğinde; adaletsizlik, bürokrasi ve “mülteci krizi”ni Doğu Almanya doğumlu Richard’ın kişisel kaderiyle de birleştirerek anlatıyor. Bu iki uç cephe sayesinde bir Alman olarak özeleştirisini de sunuyor sanki. Bir mülteciye dair duyulan önyargıları (bir mültecinin nasıl şişman olabildiği, nasıl laptop sahibi olduğu ya da batı dillerinden bildiği gibi), bir diyalog ortamı oluşturulmadan, neden burada oldukları anlaşılmadan sırt dönüldüğünü gösteriyor. Adeta güncel bir sorunu daha fazla insana anlatabilmek için kurgunun arkasına saklıyor. Bunu da üst perdeden yüzünüze haykırarak yapmak yerine sorunun her iki cephe için de temeline inerek, sizi durumu sorgulamaya sevk ederek daha sarsıcı bir şekilde yapıyor. Benim yazardan okuduğum ikinci kitaptı ve açıkcası onun üzerine çıkamayacağını düşünerek başlamıştım ancak bayıldım. Bu yıl okuduğum en güzel kitaplardan birisiydi. Mutlaka okuyun.


“ Richard şunu anlıyor: Dublin II’yle birlikte Akdeniz’e sahili olmayan bütün Avrupa ülkeleri, Akdeniz üzerinden gelen sığınmacıları muhattap almama hakkını kazanmış oluyor.”

[Semjon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein aktueller Roman über asylsuchende Flüchtlinge in Deutschland. Ich war zu Beginn skeptisch, ob ich daran Gefallen finden werde. Nicht wegen Desinteresse am Thema, sondern aufgrund der Komplexität der Materie und der daraus resultierenden Schwierigkeit für die Schriftstellerin, den Ansprüchen der Leserschaft gerecht zu werden. Und diese Leserschaft, von Gelegenheitslesern bis Literaturwissenschaftlern, deckt ja auch eine politische Bandbreite in der Bevölkerung ab. Trotz aller Vorbehalte vor dem Lesen und gefundenen Kritikpunkte beim Lesen muss ich letztlich zugeben, dass es ein überraschend gutes Buch ist.

Ein emeritierter Professor der Geisteswissenschaften, aufgewachsen in Ost-Berlin, verwitwet und in den Routinen seines ruhigen Daseins als Rentner gefangen, beginnt sich für die afrikanischen Flüchtlinge, die seit Monaten auf dem Oranienplatz campieren, zu interessieren. Als die Flüchtlinge endlich menschenwürdiger in einem ehemaligen Altersheim untergebracht werden, nimmt er Kontakt mit ihnen auf und befragt sie zu ihrem Leben und ihrer Flucht. Im Folgenden besteht die Handlung in erster Linie aus der Interaktion zwischen altem, weißem Mann mit den jungen, freundlichen, arbeitswilligen Afrikanern. Jenny Erpenbeck gelingt es dabei in recht ungezwungener Weise, viele Problem bei der Integration anzusprechen, insbesondere bei Menschen, die in unserem Land nur geduldet werden und kein Recht besitzen auf Aufenthalt und Arbeit. Das Buch hat nach meinem Empfinden in diesem Bereich seine Stärken, wenn sich die Menschen aus unterschiedlichen Kulturkreisen unterhalten. Wenn es dagegen darum geht, die Gründe für die Probleme darzulegen oder vielleicht sogar Lösungen zu präsentieren, dann schwächelt das Buch, teilweise sogar ungemein.

Frau Erpenbeck, selbst in der DDR groß geworden, setzt recht geschickt Parallelen zwischen dem ursprünglichen Fremdsein des Professors in Westdeutschland mit dem Fremdsein der Afrikaner in Europa. Richard, der Professor, erkennt sich dabei in den Flüchtlingen wieder. Aber ist das der einzige Grund für seine Hilfsbereitschaft? Ich hatte das Gefühl, als ob er (oder die Autorin) es selbst nicht so genau wissen, was ihn antreibt. Richard macht nie den Eindruck eines lautstarken Verfechters des Humanismus oder eines politischen Kämpfers für die Menschenrechte. Er ist weder gläubig, noch kann man ihn irgend einer Gesinnungsrichtung zuordnen. Vielleicht ist das gerade das Geheimnis des Buchs, denn auf diese Weise bietet die Autorin weniger Angriffsfläche für die Kritiker, die ihre ultrakonservative-fremdenfeindliche Gesinnung so gerne im Netz zur Schau stellen.

Die Stärke des Buchs war es also für mich, dass es Frau Erpenbeck schafft, den Flüchtlingen nicht nur ein, sondern mehrere Gesichter zu geben, in dem sie verschiedene Lebens- und Leidensgeschichten erzählen lässt. Während in den Nachrichten diese Menschen stets eine anonyme Gruppe bleiben, erweitert das Buch das Verständnis für die Not, in denen die Männer sind. Wo liegt nun aber das Konfliktpotential und die Spannung in dieser Erzählung? Etwa in der Fremdenfeindlichkeit oder dem Rassismus von anderen Deutschen, die der Handlung eine Wende geben könnten? Oder in der Tatsache, dass unter den Flüchtlingen auch Männer sind, die sich nicht adäquat verhalten? Nein, Frau Erpenbeck schießt sich auf einen anderen Gegner ein: dem deutschen Staat, in Form von Judikative/Legislative (das Gesetz ist Schuld) auf der einen Seite und der Exekutive auf der anderen Seite (die Behörden und die Polizei ist Schuld). Und das ist mir zu billig. Ich war sogar geneigt, dem Buch dadurch schlechter zu bewerten. Das ist diese angeblich gefühlte Unterdrückung des Bürgers und auch der Flüchtlinge durch den Staat und seine Bürokratie, die mir wirklich auf die Nerven. Sicher ist das System nicht perfekt und es gibt tragische Härtefälle, aber ich bin von unserem Grundrecht nach Asyl und den darauf aufbauenden gesetzlichen Regelungen überzeugt.

Im Grunde bin ich auch ein Richard, denn ich habe mich vor ein paar Jahren auch für die Flüchtlingshilfe engagiert und betreue seitdem wöchentlichen einen jungen Mann aus Somalia. Ich habe ihm geholfen beim Erlernen der Sprache, beim Sprachtest, beim Führerschein, beim Nachholen des Hauptschulabschlusses und aktuell bei seiner Berufsausbildung zum Elektroniker. Gehen, ging, gegangen: fast jede Woche muss ich mich mit deutscher Grammatik herumschlagen ohne pädagogische Grundkenntnisse. Warum habe ich das gemacht? Wahrscheinlich weil ich einfach einen klitzekleinen Schritt von dem "Wir schaffen das!" der Kanzlerin ausprobieren wollte und weil ich einfach Interesse an einem Mensch aus einem anderen Kulturkreis hatte. Inzwischen ist Abdulahi wie ein zweiter Sohn für mich und er erhellt meinen Alltag mit seinem Lachen.

Insofern wollte ich von dem Buch wissen, was Richard antreibt bei seiner Hilfe. Wie er sich verändert durch seine Tätigkeit und wie er die Probleme meistert. Dabei hat mir das Buch weniger Antworten geliefert als ich erhoffte. Allerdings könnte ich meine Erfahrungen nie in einen allumfassenden Roman verpacken. Daher war meine Erwartungshaltung fast schon zu hoch und nach längerem Überlegen gebe ich dem Buch trotz seiner Schwächen eine Leseempfehlung und eine gute Bewertung.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard, the protagonist, is a recently retired professor living in what was formerly East Berlin. He lives a very orderly life with little excitement nor purpose. He watches the news, but like many, he doesn't feel connected to the issues he views. He is able to separate himself from the problems of others. When he passes a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz, he barely sees the demonstrators; he looks away.

Because Richard is rather bored with his new life of retirement he decides to attend an interest meeting for those concerned about these refugees. He thinks he will do an interview series with a controlled set of questions to find out who they are, where they came from, what they are seeking. Little does he realize how uninformed he has been, how wrong his perceptions. Getting to know them as humans, as individuals who have withstood devastating trauma in their home countries as well as during their passage to Germany, he changes. Compassion evolves as each story is told until he becomes an impassioned activist. He helps them fill out the multitude of forms required by Germany and the European Union. He helps them with their German lessons which are provided by the government. Some joy is shared through the universal language of music. Minimally adequate housing options are obtained.

Jenny Erpenbeck is one Germany's most highly acclaimed authors. She does a terrific job portraying Richard as the 'you and me' who are living in every country where refugees are seeking asylum. To paraphrase, peace has been sought by humans throughout history but not enjoyed currently in many places. Yet those who have a peaceful place to live defend it against those who want a share. She uses quotes from Seneca, Plato, and Ovid all expressing similar sentiments. We all share our humanity with kings and slaves. We all must deal with arbitrary borders. Our ancestors may have had the same plight as these displaced people. We all may someday face the same dilemma. Erpenbeck made me think and think again.

This is an extremely well-written book about a dire and complex problem, one that will not just go away anytime soon. I strongly recommend it.

"How many borders exist within a single universe? Have people forgotten in Berlin of all places that a border isn't just measured by a an opponent's stature but in fact creates him?"

[Karen·]

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
(Martin Luther King)

Words have been used to scare people into pulling up the drawbridge around the bastion of wealthy comfort that is Europe, words like swarm, or horde, or tide; words that de-humanise those suffering squalor and ignominy in Idomeni or Calais, suffering disease, starvation and abuse in Gaziantep or Suruc, suffering trauma, pain, loss.
Words can humanise them again.

Richard is a recently retired professor, a classics expert - a humanist?. His life has become less than it was: there is no-one to make demands on his time, he is a little concerned that he might lose it, alone at home and no-one to talk to. An outing to see a colleague's archaeological excavations of the Alexanderplatz in Berlin fills his head with thoughts of the past: his own heady student days, paddling in the fountain there, the underground labyrinth beneath the small Polish town of Rzeszów, Nazis flooding the U-Bahn tunnels in the final days of the war. On his way back two hours later again he sees the past, children playing in the summer fountains, a symbol of the happy future world that communism had promised, but failed to build. And when Richard switches on the news to accompany his meagre but healthy evening meal, he is disturbed to see an item about a hunger strike by ten refugees on the Alexanderplatz. One of them had collapsed and was being taken away to hospital. Why did he not see them? There they were, with journalists and supporters, and oh, deepest of ironies, posters saying We become visible. Visible? Richard did not see them.

Richard learns to see again. In gentle, understated, dignified prose, Erpenbeck takes her protagonist close up, so close that those faceless hordes turn into Awad, born in Ghana, whose father took him to Libya where he had found work. Awad found a niche for himself as a car mechanic. Until his father was shot, and the military rounded him up with the other foreigners. Raschid, escaping the horror of civil war in South Sudan. Osarobo, Rufu, Ithemba. The thin man who sweeps the corridor of their accommodation. Who took years of soul-destroying toil to scrape together enough to pay to cross the desert - but his money was only enough to get him as far as Dakoro. After that the traffickers lent him the rest, which he had to re-pay by working on a construction site in Tripoli. Until the war started.

Erpenbeck is far too good a writer to allow this to become mawkish. Her prose is measured, and all the more deadly for that. The device of using Richard to interview the men stranded in Berlin is, perhaps, a little transparent, but it works, it works, because he is more, much more than a mere mouthpiece. He serves, too, to remind those of us living in the centre of Europe that history is fluid, that peace is a fragile state, that our own existence is purely contingent, for Richard belongs to that generation whose parents nearly perished in WW2. He reminds us that regimes can fall and values change, a Berlin wall can dissolve away to nothing.

Ist nun der schon so lang andauernde Frieden daran schuld, dass eine neue Generation von Politikern offenbar glaubt, am Ende der Geschichte angekommen zu sein, glaubt, es sei möglich, all das, was auf Bewegung hinausläuft, mit Gewalt zu unterbinden?

Is it the long period of peace that is to blame for a new generation of politicians evidently believing that we have arrived at the end of history, evidently believing that it is possible to put a stop through violence to anything that might result in change?

That, by the way, is my own translation, and unfortunately this is not yet available in English. Soon, I would hope. Soon.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

My final job before I took early retirement and stopped working was as the only UK member of a global team. One of my colleagues was a German man about the same age as me. We would often take a few minutes at the end of a business call to discuss the competition we were having (which I won) to see who could retire first. We would also discuss our plans for when we finished our professional careers. Mine were self-centred and based on getting my photography from a hobby to a money-making enterprise. His were far more altruistic: he wanted to work with asylum seekers in Germany and to teach them useful skills for life, help them get back on their feet. He was not happy with the way they were treated by his country and wanted to do something about it. I admired him for this.

Primarily for this reason, I went into this book predisposed to like it. It is about an important topic: migration, or perhaps, better, displacement.

Richard is an academic just starting out on a life of retirement (echoes of my own recent experience). Early parts of the book are filled with quotidian details that show him comfortable and somewhat divorced from the real world around him. In fact, he manages to walk by a group of asylum seekers without even noticing them until he sees a news report on TV and realises he had been there earlier in the day. His interest is piqued. Initially, we see him taking what for him is a natural approach, given his life up to that point: academic research and a desire to ask questions aimed at gathering data rather than understanding the people. But, of course, as he (and consequently we, as readers) get to know some of these asylum seekers, things change and Richard becomes more involved, becomes more aware, becomes a different person.

I haven’t read anything else by Erpenbeck, but I understand this is a bit of a departure from her normal style. It is true that this is a very straightforward, straight-talking narrative that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to political commentary. This, for example, seems a bold statement:

"Tomorrow—this is already clear to him—the newspaper will report on the high cost of this deployment, and this country of bookkeepers will be aghast and blame the objects of the transport for the expense, as used to happen in other periods of German history, with regard to other transports."

Earlier on in the book, we read:

"The Africans probably had no idea who Hitler was, but even so: only if they survived Germany now would Hitler truly have lost the war."

And later on we read:

"The more highly developed a society is, the more its written laws come to replace common sense."

Richard invests more and more of his time and money in trying to help these men. And perhaps the story is predictable, but it is only that because it is real and we see this kind of thing happening not just in Germany but in other countries, too.

Initially, I thought this book was going to disappoint me. Looking back, I can't quite remember why - it might be something to do with taking a while to develop any liking for Richard! And it’s true that it does seem to dip a bit in the middle. But, overall, it is, I think, an important book about a key topic in our modern world, and it is well worth reading.

[Jan-Maat]

A worthy read but not compelling.



This was the first novel that I have read by Erpenbeck, I judged the book by it's back cover, but the excitement and drama promised there, takes a few pages to appear and then is swiftly tidied away, which is consistent with the title and the narrative drive of the book, but still, it's not very dramatic.

The novel concerns widower and newly retired classical philologist Richard who gets to know or notice, or take note of a group of refugees from Africa who are slated or fated to be deported, at best to Italy where they first made landfall in Europe, at worst back to where they were trying to leave because they found it impossible to live. All of these men have dramatic back stories and they have differing degrees of trauma, however since Richard is the novel's viewpoint character we only experience this indirectly. At the same time Richard does not emerge as a character, I couldn't think of him as a dynamic part of the book, I was unsure if his engagement with the Africans changed him, or if he actually was always the same throughout, he seems eventually somewhat less fussy and punctilious but maybe that is because Erpenbeck stops telling us what is on his shopping list and what he is eating on a slice of bread big, bad spoilers coming up honey? or cheese? , he does get to see some of the racism among his contemporaries, or to realise that they are racists, but I am not sure if that really is character development.

Richard starts with the idea of interviewing the men and he develops a set of questions to ask them, before eventually developing friendly relationships with them. I had the feeling that Erpenbeck had had a similar experience herself, and perhaps the lifelessness stems from a desire not to appropriate the stories of refugees nor to misrepresent them or the complexities of their situations, neither does she go the full Kafka and via Richard walk with them step by step through the daily disappointments of seeking asylum.

There are some fine moments, I laughed a couple of times, and I loved the heavy intimation of death in the opening pages - here is a man with nothing to do but sit with his hands folded in his lap and wait for the end, until he sees the Africans which gives him a project. They save him I felt, though he in the end does what he can to help them too, but maybe all the men want is to be seen and not ignored.

I don't disagree at all with Erpenbeck and what she presents, I'm completely on board with her sympathies, so the book was for me completely worthy and noble, but was not a compelling or exciting read, despite the slow build up of similarities between the initially opposite seeming experiences of Richard and the refugees and the history of welcoming migrants if they were Huguenots welcome throughout the Protestant world or among the ancient Germans, according to Tacitus. Somehow the novel was always for me a slice of brown bread with a lettuce leaf on top of it, no doubt it was healthy, but it failed to excite.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is sometimes argued that, in order to remain attractive, literature must keep far away from current events, from themes that are in the spotlight today. That may be true, but not entirely. Over the past few weeks I have read two novels that focus on the migration theme, the theme that nowadays rivals with that of globalization, identity and the climate crisis to claim our full attention. The result, my appreciation of the books was mixed. Materiaalmoeheid, 'Material fatigue' by the young, Czech author Marek Sindelka describes the hallucinatory and degrading journey of 2 Syrian brothers through Europe. That book disappointed me, not so much because of the subject, but because of the clinical style. But this book, Jenny Erpenbeck's "Go, went, gone" has made a great impression on me.

Erpenbeck also focuses on refugees, this time on African migrants, but in a completely different way. She uses the perspective of a somewhat unworldly, freshly retired professor who lives near Berlin and is almost accidentally confronted with the refugee problem. Richard (we don't get a family name) is intrigued by the stubbornness with which the Africans stand up for their rights; to his own amazement he’s eager to find out more about them and gradually gains their confidence. Piecemeal we get the stories of the traumatic experiences of the refugees, both in their home country and on their journey to and through Europe. And we are also introduced to the sometimes absurd European regulations on asylum law, to the well-intended but often counter-productive support of aid organizations and individuals, and of course also to the resistance and (racist) prejudices against the refugees.

This seems like a very documentary book, full of information about the refugee problem, and indirectly it is. But Erpenbeck has made a real literary gem out of this, mainly thanks to her protagonist Richard. He listens to all the stories and looks at the situation of the migrants with increasing wonder. This refers both to his own ignorance (as a professor he led a very sheltered and orderly life), as well as to the hopeless fate of the refugees and their perseverance. Erpenbeck makes a nice link with an entirely German dimension of the migration story: Richard himself is a child of Sudeten Germans who had to flee after the Second World War, he ended up in the eastern part of Germany and spent 40 years there, living in the "GDR myth". And then in 1989 the Wall came down, all his certainties evaporated and he ended up in another country from one day to the next, thus in a way also ending up as a migrant.

The confrontation with the refugees makes our Richard very reflexive, becoming aware of his own privileged existence. In a rather ‘Sebaldian’ way he constantly links back to his own life, things that he did wrong and that he got away with without having to flee. From his background as an expert in ancient literature he also refers to the interaction of Western cultures with others (‘barbaroi’). The novel is full of references to Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, etc. A new light is shed on the classic quotes. It's as if Richard only now discovers the real world in the confrontation with the stories of the Africans. In that sense, "Go, went, gone" is curiously more the coming-of-age story of an almost 70-year-old man than a real refugee book. “Much of what Richard reads on this November day several weeks after his retirement are things he’s known most of his life, but today, thanks to this bit of additional knowledge he’s acquired, it all seems to come together in new, different ways. How many times, he wonders, must a person relearn everything he knows, rediscovering it over and over, and how many coverings must be torn away before he’s finally able to truly grasp things, to understand them to the bone? Is a human lifetime long enough? His lifetime, or anyone else’s?”

And there are a few other layers that Erpenbeck has submerged the refugee issue with: that of temporality, the perception of time, for instance. His retirement is an important cut-off in Richard's life: after a busy academic life he suddenly falls into a black hole. This reflects perfectly the situation of the refugees, who have to wait endlessly for what will be decided for them, are not even allowed to accept official work, are left to their fate, and therefore also have fallen into a time gap. Hence also the constant references to the German lessons that the refugees receive and in which the conjugation of the irregular verb 'to go' keeps recurring: "gehen, ging, gegangen/go, went, gone", which expresses their entire existence, and by extension that of every human being and perhaps even of all humanity.

This stratification of multiple layers is the great power of this novel. And that is most symbolized in the metaphor of the lake that Richard lives on. Erpenbeck has a thing with lakes: her most important book Visitation is also about a house on a lake in Potsdam. Lakes seem to stand for timeless reality: the lake is there and it stays there, no matter what happens in the chaotically teeming human world around it, in other words, the lake stands for the indifferent cosmos. But that too is not completely innocent, as is clear from this book. In Richard’s lake, a man drowned in the summer, and the corpse has never been found, it is still there; which means that for the time being no one ventures into or on the water. It is clear that Erpenbeck uses the 'curse' on this lake as a metaphor for the volatility of fate: even timeless reality has a threatening character.

So this is another very impressive novel by Erpenbeck. "Go, went, gone" is perhaps less condensed and imaginative than "Visitation", some passages are a bit too instructive and preachy, and the end even a little melodramatic. But as a layered reflection on human existence, with current affairs as a topic, this has been done really well. In my opinion, Jenny Erpenbeck is the most important German author of the moment. (rating 3.5 stars)

[Paula Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5*
#readgermanbooks2020

“Have people forgotten in Berlin of all the places that a border isn’t just measured by an opponent’s stature but in fact creates him?"

Se tinha algumas reservas em relação a este livro por ter um tema mediático, depressa as dissipei com a escrita lúcida de Jenny Erpenbeck. “Eu Vou, Tu Vais, Ele Vai” aborda muito mais do que a crise dos refugiados na Europa, e aqui especificamente na Alemanha, e fá-lo de uma forma inteligente e intimista, com compaixão q.b., numa abordagem quase multidisciplinar, ao incluir história, geografia, classicismo, religião e até física quântica no meio de reflexões pertinentes ou conversas informais entre amigos.
O protagonista, Richard, é um professor universitário reformado, viúvo, que viveu no lado oriental de Berlim antes da reunificação e agora, mais só, com muito tempo livre e apenas um pequeno grupo de amigos, observa, compadece-se e estabelece paralelismos entre os refugiados desvalidos que acaba por conhecer e os cidadãos da Alemanha de Leste face à riqueza e ao progresso da Alemanha reunificada.
Notável é a capacidade de autocrítica de Erpenbeck como alemã e a maneira como expõe os preconceitos velados e a ignorância dos europeus face aos refugiados e aos seus países de origem. Há comentários como os que se ouve muitas vezes: como é que um refugiado pode ser gordo, como é possível que tenha um portátil, como é possível distingui-los se parecem todos iguais? Richard tem estudos e, aparentemente, é bastante culto, mas nunca tinha reparado na forma quase geométrica como o continente africano está dividido. Infelizmente, no que toca aos refugiados em si, ao querer dar-nos a conhecer muitos casos de vários pontos de África e do Médio Oriente, Erpenbeck acaba por se dispersar e apresentar mais perfis do que personagens redondas, levando a que, em certas partes, debite a informação das entrevistas do professor quase de modo mecânico.

“When did he turn from a man filled with great hopes for mankind in to an almsgiver? Surely was not when the Wall came down – but maybe not so long afterward. At some point along the way he must have buckled, and now he’s just trying to “do his part” on a small scale, with the occasional gesture, wherever the opportunity presents itself. Has he now truly relinquished all hope?"

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A machete to the heart. An ambitious project masterfully completed. This is the kind of novel that could change deeply held convictions on emigration and immigration.

A different kind of refugee story, told from the eyes of a post-war German retiree instead of an immigrant. A fierce comparison of life as the German professor has known it, first on the east side of the Berlin wall then after the fall of the wall, to the lives of the black refugees who first landed in Italy then fled to Germany for work. Absurd bureaucracy prevents them from working, separates them, forces unnecessary psychiatric treatment on them.

Filled with philosophical questions, you’re forced to confront your belief system. Erpenbeck’s comparison of individual refugees to Greek gods is brilliant. After all, the refugee crisis is a tragedy.

“What would you do if you had no where to go?”

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wohin geht ein Mensch, wenn er nicht weiß, wo er hingehen soll?“

Where can a person go when he doesn’t know where to go?

"Citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent to feudal privilege—an inherited status that greatly enhances one's life chances."
Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration

Book 10/13 from the impressive 2018 Man Booker International longlist and another strong contender.

The two previous Jenny Erpenbeck novels I have read, both translated into English by the excellent Susan Bernofsky (also known for her work on Robert Walser's books), Vistation and End of Days have both been excellent. End of Days in particular would have a strong claim to being (desevedly) one of the most successful translations of recent years, taking the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Schlegel-Tieck Prize and the Ungar Prize, and was shortlisted for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, the IMPAC Prize and the US-based National Translation Award. (Its omission from even the 25-strong longlist of the BTBA more a reflection on that prize than the book).

Go, Went, Gone in purely literary terms doesn't quite live up to the two earlier works, but it is an important and powerful book on migration, one of the key topics of our times, a book to be read alongside the excellent Exit West
from the 2017 Man Booker list, albeit with a very different approach.

Richard is a cerebral and cultured professor of classical philology, brought up in the immediate aftermath of World War II in East Germany, living “a mere two hundred yards as the crow flies from West Berlin", now alone after his lover had left him and his wife's death. The novel opens on his first day of (well remurated) retirement as he goes to put on a blazer but then thinks maybe a cardigan is more appropriate to his new condition. His spacious Berlin house is by a lake where earlier that summer a swimmer had drowned, his body as yet undiscovered, an image that haunts Richard throughout the book, an implicit echo perhaps of the well-reported plight of the refugees crossing the Med.

But walking through Alexanderplatz in Berlin, distracted by the trivial concerns of his retirement plans, he fails to notice a tent city, a hunger strike protest by a group of 10 anonymous African refugees: their slogan "We become visible" clearly not working on him. Their plight does attract a rather different kind of supporter to Richard:

The sympathisers are young and pale, they die their hair with henna, they refuse to believe that the world is an idyllic place and want everything to change, for which reason they put rings through their lips, ears and noses.

The refugees, on the other hand, are trying to gain admittance to this world that appears to them convincingly idyllic.

Richard only realises that he failed to register their existence when he later sees a report on the news, while preparing his shopping list (lettuce, cold cuts and rye bread for his sandwiches, screws and varnish for a new shed door):

The local and regional news hour that evening includes a brief report: the refugees on hunger strike have been removed from Alexanderplatz. The demonstration is over.

He’d liked the notion of making oneself visible by publicly refusing to say who one is. Odysseus had called himself Nobody to escape from the Cyclops’s cave.

He starts to become interested in their fate, finding that a larger group of refugees having been living in tents on Oranienplatz for over a year (see https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/controversi... for the real life story), although his in them is initially rather academic and to an extend self-obsessed:

In the evening the newscaster says it's just a matter of time before a solution is found for the untenable situation of the refugees on Oranienplatz. Richard's heard sentences like that before, referring to all sorts of untenable situations. Other things too - the leaves becoming earth again, the drowned man washing up on shore or dissolving in the lake - are basically just a matter of time. But what does that mean. He doesn't even know yet if time exists for the purpose of making various layers and paths overlap, or if it's to keep things separate - maybe the newcaster knows.
....
Speaking about the actual nature of time is something he can probably do best in conversation with those who have fallen out of it. Or been locked up in it, if you prefer.
...
Richard spends the next two weeks reading several books on the subject of refugees and drawing up a catalogue of questions for the conversations he wants to have with them.
....
It's important he asks the right questions. And the right questions aren't always the ones you put into words. To investigate how one makes the transition from a full, readily comprehensible existence to the life of a refugee, which is open in all directions — drafty, as it were — he has to know what was at the beginning, what was in the middle, and what is now. At the border between a person’s life and the other life lived by that same person, the transition has to be visible — a transition that, if you look closely enough, is nothing at all.
.....
"Where did you grow up? What’s your native language? What’s your religious affiliation? How many people are in your family?
...
Was there a TV? Where did you sleep? What did you eat? What was your favorite hiding place when you were a child? Did you go to school? What sort of clothing did you wear?
...
Do you have a family of your own? When did you leave the country of your birth? Why?
...
What did you think Europe would be like? What’s different? How do you spend your days? What do you miss most? What do you wish for? If you had children who were growing up here, what would you tell them about your homeland? Can you imagine growing old here? Where do you want to be buried?"

But what starts as something of an intellectual exercise in understanding becomes, as he starts to talk to the men, genuine emotional involvement in their plight, trapped in a Catch-22 world of EU law on asylum seekers where having first landed in Italy, the Italian authorities happily let them travel on to Germany yet the German authorities, under the Dublin Regulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_...) can return them to Italy. The men simply want to work, to earn their living - but that very right is denied them.

The only support they seem to get under the bureaucratic Berlin rules are money to buy a transit pass for the Berlin transport lesson and free German language lessons - the novel's title "Gehen, ging, gegangen" coming from German grammar exercises.

And while Richard helps out with the more advanced students, this Catch 22 become clear to him:

I am Yussuf from Mali and I worked as a dishwasher! Richard observes this laughing Yussuf from Mali, a short, extremely dark man who, before coming to Germany, worked in Italy as a dishwasher. His pronunciation is perfect. The sentence is perfect.

As a statement - of this he is quite certain - it spells Yussuf’s doom. Richard has now learned enough about German and immigration law to understand this. Without meaning to, he thinks of a line from Brecht; He who laughs has not yet received the terrible news.

Mohsin Hamid, the author of Exit West, argued that "part of the great political crisis we face in the world today is a failure to imagine plausible desirable futures. We are surrounded by nostalgic visions, violently nostalgic visions."

The refugees in Go, Went, Gone certainly struggle to imagine a plausible desirable future, as the authorities do their utmost to prevent them seeing one in Europe.

And Erpenbeck's novel also argues that the nostalgia is for a world that never existed, certainly not for Richard and his friends:

To Richard, also to his friends, the thought of everlasting flux and the ephemeral nature of all human constructs, the sense that all existing order is vulnerable to reversal, has always seemed perfectly natural, maybe because of their postwar childhoods, or else it was witnessing the fragility of the Socialiat system under which they’d lived most of their lives and that collapsed within a matter of weeks.

Could these long years of peacetime be to blame for the fact that a new generation of politicians apparently believes that we’ve now arrived at the end of history, making it possible to use violence to suppress all further movement and change?

The theme of borders is also key to the novel, in Richard's life that between East and West Germany and between work and retirement:

A border is a place where, at least in mathematics, signs often change their value.
....
At the border between a person’s life and the other life lived by that same person, the transition has to be visible – a transition that, if you look closely enough, is nothing at all.

The novel is mainly told from Richard's perspective - other than a unexplained and anomalous interlude halfway through for a few pages from the perspective of one of the refugees (who thinks of Richard as "the polite older gentleman”). But if Richard's past means the notion of borders and flux is not as alien to him as it might be to some Europeans, he still finds himself having to re-think many of the things he takes for granted, even his interpretations of the classics:

Richard has read Foucault and Baudrillard, and also Hegel and Nietzsche, but he doesn’t know what you can eat when you have no money to buy food.
...
How many times, he wonders, must a person relearn everything he knows, rediscovering it over and over, and how many coverings must be torn away before he's finally able to truly grasp things, to understand them to the bone? Is a human lifetime long enough?
...
The professor emeritus, who’s hearing so many things for the first time that it’s as if he’s become a child again, now suddenly understands that Oranienplatz is not only the square designed in the nineteenth century by the famous landscape architect Lenné, not only the square where an elderly woman walks her dog every day, or where a girl on a park bench kissed her boyfriend for the first time. For a boy who has grown up among the nomads, Oranienplatz – where he made his home for a year and a half – is one station on a long journey, a temporary place, leading to the next temporary place. When they tore down the shacks – purely a political issue for Berlin’s interior minister – this boy was thinking of his life in the desert.

Overall - an important and ultimately moving book, if at times a little dull and overworthy in the middle sections.

Recommended.

[emre · Rating 5 out of 5]

şimdiye dek okuduklarım içinde en çok etkilendiğim kitaplardan biri olduğunu rahatlıkla söyleyebilirim. muhteşemdi. muhteşem.

[Argos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Göç edebiyatı genel başlığı altında yeraldığını düşündüğüm mülteci-sığınmacı edebiyatına dair okuduğum en sarsıcı kitap bu oldu. Yazarın daha önce “Gölün Sırrı” adlı kitabını okumuştum, bu kitabında da “göl” genişçe yer almakta. Aslında gölde boğulup cesedi bulunamayan bir adamı “tekinsizlik, bilinmezlik, görünmezlik” kavramlarıyla özdeşleştiriyor. Tıpkı romanda Afrika’dan gelen mülteciler gibi. Derisi siyah olan bu insanlar, sırf derilerinin renginden dolayı beyaz derili mültecilere göre (misal EU üyesi olmadan önceki Romanya, Bulgaristan, Hırvatistan, Polonya vatandaşları), göl dibindeki cesetle daha çok kader birliği içindeler.

Romanın kahramanı Doğu Almanya kökenli emekli bir filololoji profesörü. İleri yaşına rağmen ülkesindeki genç Afrikalı sığınmacıların derdini dert eden bir güzel insan. Avrupa ülkelerinin başta kendi ülkesi Almanya olmak üzere yasaların arkasına sığınarak insanlık adına ikiyüzlülük yapmalarını abartıya ve duygu sömürüsüne kaçmadan çok anlaşılır bir dille, tabii edebi bir dille anlatıyor.

Bu arada iki Almanya’nın birleşmesinin sonuçlarını tam olarak içselleştiremediğini, bir gecece “Demokratik Almanya” vatandaşlığından “Federal Almanya” vatandaşlığına geçişlerinin altının boş olduğunu, ekonomi tarihi profesörü arkadaşının birleşmeden sonra Federal Almanya üniversitelerinde “sosyalist ekonomi” dersine ihtiyaç kalmadığından bilgisayar tamirciliği yaptığını örnek gösterip ironik bir dille anlatarak okuru düşünmeye yöneltiyor.

Ülkelerindeki savaştan, iç çatışmalardan, politik baskılardan, diktatörlüklerden kaçan bu insanların dramınının, daha iyi ve refah bir hayat sürmek için iltica eden hepsi beyaz derili “ekonomik mültecilerden” çok daha farklı ve acımasız olduğunu sorguluyor ve sorgulatıyor. Her gayri insani gerekçeyi “yasa” ile açıklayıp bu yasaları çıkaranların da kendileri olduğunu görmezden gelmelerini, zorunlu olarak sığınmacı olan bu insanları ölüm ve zulüm arasında bir seçime zorlamalarını yakıcı bir dille anlatıyor Jenny Erpenbeck.

Kitabın adı Almancadaki düzensiz fiil çekimlerinden biri, ama kitabı çok iyi tanımlayan bir fiil seçimi. Etkileyici ve çarpıcı bu gerçekçi romanı okumanızı öneriyorum.

[CanadianReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard, a widowed, childless and recently retired professor of philology, becomes interested in the plight of a group of migrants living in a tent-city, (pro-immigration) protest camp in Oranienplatz in Berlin. The camp is about to be shut down by the authorities. At loose ends and with a great deal of time on his hands, Richard creates a new project for himself: interviewing, recording the stories, and teaching English to some of the African migrants, some of whom are moved to vacant space in an old-age home near Richard’s lakeside home and later to a facility in Spandau in West Berlin. It doesn’t take long for Richard’s involvement with the group to become more than an intellectual pursuit. He forms relationships with several of the men, all of whom arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean. The stories of the men are compelling and moving, although, like the character Richard himself, I sometimes had trouble keeping their individual narratives straight. For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the novel was Erpenbeck’s juxtaposition of modern German history (the persecution and extermination of the Jews, the division and reunification of Germany) with the story of contemporary migration. The novel is eminently aphoristic and quotable, and provides food for thought on many levels: historical, political, economic, religious, philosophical, social, and psychological.

[Patrizia · Rating 5 out of 5]

È uno di quei libri che non riesci a lasciare nemmeno dopo l'ultima pagina. Affronta il tema dell'emigrazione, che infiamma i dibattiti politici e l'opinione pubblica dell'Europa, ricordandoci che il cosiddetto problema sono esseri umani come noi, e non entità astratte, in fuga da guerre e in ogni caso da condizioni di vita inaccettabili.
Jenny Erpenbeck ha uno stile affascinante. La sua narrazione è incisiva e limpida, con un'attenzione assoluta ai dettagli e la capacità di coinvolgere ed emozionare con una scelta accurata delle parole, con dialoghi in cui anche i silenzi sono eloquenti, senza mai indulgere alla facile retorica cui l'argomento si presterebbe.
Richard è un professore in pensione con una brillante vita accademica alle spalle. Si ritrova ad avere tempo, tanto tempo e nessun impegno, nessuna scadenza. La sua quotidianità cambia. Dalle giornate scandite dal lavoro, passa a ore dilatate in cui è libero di fare quello che vuole. È un tempo a cui deve abituarsi, con i pensieri che continuano ad affollare la sua mente e la preoccupazione di impazzire. È un uomo chiuso al mondo esterno e ai cambiamenti. Ama il luogo in cui vive, fuori Berlino, in riva a un lago che vede dalla scrivania del suo studio. Vi è da poco annegato un uomo e quello specchio d'acqua è "Bello come nelle altre estati, ma quest’estate la cosa conta poco. Finché il morto non verrà ritrovato e portato via, è a quel morto che adesso appartiene il lago. Già per un’estate intera, e presto sarà autunno, il lago è appartenuto a un morto". Per fortuna c'è il suo giardino, dove si sente al sicuro perché lì il tempo è circolare, non muta col trascorrere degli anni: le stagioni si susseguono sempre con gli stessi profumi e colori. Non come il tempo di fuori, che influenzato dal tempo della Storia, fluisce in maniera vorticosa cambiando tutto quello che investe. Ha vissuto il dopoguerra, con l'occupazione russa, lo Stato socialista, la divisione di Berlino in due parti, e poi la caduta del Muro, che raddoppia improvvisamente lo spazio che conosce, abbatte la distinzione tra zona Est e zona Ovest e lo proietta in una Germania unita in cui fatica a ritrovarsi.
Un giorno, per caso, scopre l'esistenza di alcuni africani che manifestano in piazza per avere il diritto di rimanere in Germania e lavorare. Vengono da luoghi che non sa collocare geograficamente, di cui conosce ben poco, trascorrono le giornate senza poter fare nulla, e il suo universo diventa improvvisamente immenso.
Anche per lui il tempo di ogni giorno è cambiato, ma "Per capire in che cosa consista il passaggio da una vita quotidiana interamente occupata e prevedibile alla vita quotidiana aperta in ogni direzione, esposta per così dire alle correnti, ossia quella che conduce un profugo, Richard deve sapere come stavano le cose all’inizio, come stavano a metà e come stanno adesso. Là dove la vita di una persona confina con l’altra vita della stessa persona, deve pur rendersi visibile il passaggio che, ad un esame attento, di per sé non è nulla".
E per capire deve iniziare a fare domande, entrare in contatto con quegli uomini, sapere cosa facevano "prima".
Nel tempo dilatato di Richard si inserisce quello dei profughi, nei quali cerca di immedesimarsi, scoprendo realtà atroci e la rigidità di uno stato che non tollera deroghe.
Alla sua storia personale si sovrappongono le tante storie di guerra, massacri, fuga verso una speranza indefinita. Storie raccontate con semplicità, senza autocommiserazione, con la consapevolezza che la vita è "crazy". Si ricomincia, dopo aver visto morire tanti compagni di viaggio nel mare che li separava da una nuova esistenza, dopo essere stati ammassati in centri accoglienza in Italia ed essere riusciti a raggiungere la Germania. È la speranza a tenerli in vita.
"La guerra distrugge tutto, dice Awad: la famiglia, gli amici, il luogo in cui sei vissuto, il lavoro, la vita di tutti i giorni. Da straniero, dice Awad, non hai più scelta. Non sai dove stai andando. Non sai più nulla. Non riesco più a vedermi, non riesco a vedere il bambino che sono stato. Di me stesso non ho più alcuna immagine. Mio padre è morto, dice. E io –io non so più chi sono. Diventare uno straniero. Per se stesso e per gli altri. In questo consisteva dunque il passaggio".
Richard si scontra con leggi, burocrazia, uffici, funzionari. Adesso che sa, non può non tentare di fare qualcosa. Capisce che "Il tempo esercita un effetto sull’uomo, perché un uomo non è una macchina che si può accendere e spegnere. Il tempo, durante il quale un uomo non sa come la sua vita possa diventare una vita, riempie dalla testa ai piedi chi è costretto all’inattività".
È una lotta impari quella contro uno Stato che sembra aver dimenticato cosa sia una guerra. Forse va "ascritto a questi lunghi anni di pace il fatto che una nuova generazione di politici sembra credere nell’imminente fine della storia e nella possibilità di troncare con la violenza tutto quanto sfocia nel movimento? Oppure l’essere così lontani nello spazio dalle guerre degli altri ha provocato penuria di esperienza in coloro che non ne sono stati disturbati, così come altri soffrono di penuria di globuli rossi? La pace, che è sempre stata la massima aspirazione dell’uomo e che finora si è realizzata in così poche regioni del globo, ci impedisce dunque di farne oggetto di condivisione con coloro che da noi cercano rifugio e ci spinge a difenderla in modo così aggressivo da farla sembrare già quasi una guerra?"
E cosa dire della memoria? Come Richard, anche i suoi nuovi amici ricordano, ma sono immagini insopportabili e il futuro è avvolto in una nebbia pesante. È come continuare all'infinito a navigare in cerca di un approdo che non esiste.
"Proprio allora credo di aver compreso, dice Richard, che quanto riesco a sostenere è solo la superficie di tutto quanto non riesco a sostenere. Come in mare? domanda Khalil. Sì, in linea di principio, proprio come in mare".



Inviato da iPad

[Dagio_maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primo: confessioni, libri e …tatuaggi…

“Quante volte bisogna tornare a imparare, a scoprire e a riscoprire ciò che già si sa, quanti travestimenti bisogna strappar via per poter penetrare le cose fino all’osso? Basterà mai la durata di una vita? La propria o quella di un altro?”

Confesso che, parlando di libri, quando leggo:
«Capolavoro!», in me nasce un piccolo sentimento di scetticismo.

Confesso che quando leggo:
«Questo libro dovrebbe essere obbligatorio nelle scuole!», scuoto la testa con un piccolo moto di ribellione anarchica perché trovo un conflitto nell'associare il sostantivo libro e l’aggettivo obbligatorio.

Confesso che la frase «Questo è il libro della mia vita!», mi crea altrettanto disagio.

Sono una persona strana, lo so.
Ma più leggo più sento come non ci possano essere valori assoluti.
Tutto è così relativo…
Più leggo più sento come ci sono pagine che se le porta via il vento e pagine- invece- che mi si appiccicano addosso.
Mi marchiano in modo indelebile.

Sono tatuaggi che solo io vedo ma che raccontano la mia storia…
Voci del verbo andare è uno di questi…

Secondo: Andare. Andai. Andato .

Berlino- 2013-

“ E anche adesso gli veniva di nuovo da pensare che lo sguardo di un uomo valeva esattamente quanto quello di un qualsiasi altro uomo. E che il vedere non ha nulla a che fare con la ragione e il torto.”

Richard è un professore di filologia classica. E’ vedovo ed organizza la sua vita solitaria in modo metodico soprattutto da quando è andato in pensione e di Tempo libero ce n’è in abbondanza.
E’ il momento in cui ci si sommerge di una routine ferrea e confortevole.
Si programma tutto (l’uovo solo la domenica…) si srotola uno schema di azioni meccaniche

“Solo il martedì mattina prende il soprabito e si infila le scarpe marroni, le più comode che ha. Gas chiuso, luce spenta, le chiavi. Venti minuti a piedi.”
Poi….




"Un giovedì di fine agosto dieci uomini si radunano davanti al Municipio rosso, a Berlino. Hanno deciso, corre voce, di non mangiare più. Dieci giorni più tardi decidono che si asterranno anche dal bere. Hanno la pelle nera. Parlano inglese, francese, italiano. E altre lingue ancora che lì nessuno capisce. Che cosa vogliono questi uomini? Lavoro, vogliono. E vivere del loro lavoro. Vogliono restare in Germania."

Inizia un lento processo per Richard:
lui, erudito del mondo classico deve reimparare a camminare, a parlare a conoscere mondi sconosciuti.


Guardare e imparare a vedere.
Sentire e imparare ad ascoltare
Parlare e imparare a comunicare
Sapere e imparare a conoscere
Capire e imparare a comprendere (“Un dialogo riuscito è quindi solo un’operazione di riconoscimento? E capire è dunque non una specie di cammino, quanto piuttosto una condizione?”)

Come Richard, siamo spettatori delle rovine altrui.
In silenzio e da una posizione privilegiata guardiamo il rotolarsi delle loro disgrazie ma la nostra routine non cambia.
Noi siamo quelli che hanno potere.

Poter di scegliere:
dove andare,
cosa mangiare,
cosa guardare,
con chi stare “in quale realtà stare”

”Adesso in quel remoto recesso dell’anima albergava, in luogo di un simile pensiero, la vergogna di essersela cavata così a buon mercato per gran parte della sua vita.

Richard viveva a Berlino est: sa cosa può significare un muro….

“Un confine, pensa Richard, può dunque manifestarsi anche all’improvviso, può apparire all’improvviso in un luogo dove non ce n’era mai stato uno – ciò che negli ultimi anni era avvenuto ai confini della Libia oppure a quelli del Marocco o del Niger, adesso accadeva anche lì nel bel mezzo del quartiere di Spandau. Dove prima c’era solo una casa, un marciapiede, la quotidianità berlinese, adesso all’improvviso spunta un confine, e cresce a vista d’occhio, imprevisto come una malattia.”


Lo Stato con le sue leggi è cieco e sordo.
Tocca a noi aprire occhi e orecchie e perché no, anche il cuore.
Perché vergognarsi di riconoscere dignità ad ogni essere umano?


” Così come Richard legge in Seneca: Considera che costui che tu chiami schiavo, è nato dallo stesso seme, gode dello stesso cielo, respira, vive, muore, come te! – allo stesso modo Seneca leggeva in Platone: Non c’è re che non discenda da schiavi e schiavo che non discenda da re. Vicende alterne nel corso dei secoli hanno sconvolto tutte queste categorie e la fortuna le ha sovvertite.

” Tunc tua res agitur paries cum proximus ardet! Ed è molto soddisfatto, quando Richard fa cenni di assenso con il capo e sussurra prontamente la traduzione: Se la casa del tuo vicino brucia, questo riguarda anche te.”

- Grazie alle amiche ed agli amici che mi hanno consigliato questa lettura!!❤ -

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

With its immediacy of topic, I found myself thinking of Ali Smith’s Seasons (soon-to-be) quartet. At first I wasn’t too engaged with this novella and I wondered if it was "too soon" for a fictional rendering. But, no, my biggest problem with it is that the narration is much more telling than showing. However, there are so many great things about the work, I hesitate to criticize it. I also wondered about the choice of narrator (and his depiction) at times, but I made my peace with that too, as the viewpoint of Richard, a former East German who almost died as an infant during the war, adds layers.

I loved the sarcasm of Richard’s imagined to-do list as opposed to the to-do lists other German citizens want to impose on the African refugees. In Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights I’d read the horrific story of Angelo Soliman, the African man who, after his death, was skinned, stuffed, and dressed in a grass skirt for a Holy Roman emperor to exhibit, despite Soliman’s daughter’s pleas to have his remains returned to her, and I had a déjà vu moment coming upon the same story in this text. Erpenbeck turns Richard's thoughts about stories like these into teaching moments, forcing us to see it another way, though I feel the readers of her works are already on her side. Richard thinks early on: …you could only ever find what was already there. Because everything is always already there.

Can one man, like Richard, make a difference to many? I’m not sure if the end is supposed to be realistic—her resolution seems to disregard all kinds of fraught issues—or if it’s utopian, pointing the way toward a solution of mostly men helping other men. But to answer my own question, perhaps one man can make a difference, with lots of help from his friends.

[But_i_thought_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jenny Erpenbeck is a method-writer. For her first novella, she enrolled as a (pretend) pupil in secondary school for more than a month to write about the trials of adolescence. For her latest novel “Go, Went, Gone”, which tackles the plight of refugees in present day Germany, she spent an entire year talking to local asylum seekers and accompanying them on various appointments. As a result of this commitment, her writing feels like that of a German Sarah Moss – deeply inquisitive, analytical, probing, affecting without veering into the maudlin.

The plot of this novel takes place in Berlin and follows Richard, a newly retired professor of classical philology who takes pleasure in his quiet comfortable routine and quaint philosophical musings. One day, feeling a sense of unity with local asylum seekers by a mutual plight of time abundance, he ponders that they might be interesting subjects with whom to discuss the nature of time ("Speaking about the actual nature of time is something he can probably do best in conversation with those who have fallen out of it"). Armed with a list of questions, he thus visits a local refugee shelter and engages in a series of conversations with wary African migrants. The project soon evolves from one of mere intellectual curiosity to one of personal involvement.

We can imagine where this story goes, and it could have easily become preachy and emotionally manipulative in the hands of another author, but Erpenbeck avoids those pitfalls. Instead, she examines complex issues (displacement, identity, coexistence) in all their facets, skirting easy conclusions and inserting scenes and anecdotes that feel hauntingly real – at times ironic, at times tragicomic, often eye-opening. The narrative additionally sheds light on the complicated history of North Africa (and the ways in which the West has helped shape it), the legal issues surrounding the refugee crisis and the endless (Kafkaesque) bureaucracy hampering relief.

Since the book was originally written in German, I read it in two languages side-by-side (English in paperback, German in eBook). The original German text is naturally richer and more lyrical, while the English version at times feels clunky. Consider, for example, the following sentence:

“Die Zeit, in der ein Mensch nicht weiß, wie sein Leben ein Leben werden kann, füllt so einen Untätigen vom Kopf bis du den Zehen.”

The English translation, by contrast, just sounds odd:

“The time during which a person doesn’t know how his life can become a life fills a person condemned to idleness from his head down to his toes.”

In another (more practical) example, I was wondering why Richard was pouring “alcohol” into “lamps” in preparation for his birthday party – was it a local custom to drink punch out of lamps? Only when consulting the German version did I realize he was in fact pouring “fuel” into “lanterns”.

There are many such examples throughout the book and unfortunately a great deal of the novel’s humour, too, is lost in translation.

Nevertheless, for its thoughtful portrayal of complex issues and its thought-provoking content, this book is a definite must read. Just forgive the occasional clumsy English.

Mood: Philosophical, moving, thought-provoking
Rating: 10/10

Also on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk2LuyTFB...

[Shaimaa شيماء · Rating 4 out of 5]

تعبر الرواية عن مدى جهل الإنسان الغربي بحقيقة اوضاع الناس في العالم والصور المغلوطة التي تصلهم... وما يأخذونه من مواقف سلبية بسبب هذا التشويه.

أستاذ جامعي متقاعد يعيش وحيدا بعد وفاة زوجته، يلتقي مصادفة بمجموعة من الأفارقة طالبي اللجوء لألمانيا.. وبعد ان كانت معلوماته عن أفريقيا لاتتعدى كونها قارة سوداء؛ لا يستطيع التفرقة بين دولها المختلفة، يغوص في حياة هؤلاء الأفارقة ويتفاعل معهم وتتقاطع مع حكاياتهم قصته هو كألماني كان يعيش في المانيا الشرقية قبل سقوط جدار برلين..

[Makis Dionis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Που πάει ένας άνθρωπος, όταν δεν ξέρει που να πάει;

Για όσους αντέχουν παραπέρα από την επιφάνεια...

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delayed on this review - hesitated presumably for various reasons. So - a very sympathetic portrayal of victims of forced migration - from war-torn African countries to Germany from an initial landing in Italy.

The book tackles the politics of decisions made about refugees: their right to assistance, their right to be heard and the responsibilities of the host country towards these people. Erpenbeck tackles head on what she considers to be a major failing on the part of the German Government, but at the same time softens her message with her main narrator Richard who is in some ways a refugee himself - from the former East German section of Berlin.

Her protagonist experiences a rolling series of new experiences and revelations about the human condition, which in fact he is well-able to consider and analyse as well as respond to emotionally. I doubted whether such an altruistic character could exist in reality and I think this was very much a reaction to my own experience of immigrants into Cyprus.

In particular I used to rent rooms to people who came from Syria, Congo, South Africa, Bangladesh, Nepal, China, Romania and Egypt - also France and Italy. Quite a history; unfortunately I found the attitudes of some of my lodgers very difficult to reconcile with my own particular set of values and experiences.

I did however, have much more positive experiences with people that I was friends with - people who were economic migrants from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia etc.

So, I found Erpenbeck's book overall naive but ultimately an uplifting experience - the possibility that we can listen, with open hearts, to other people and try to understand who they are and where they have come from. Does it just need to be applied to refugees?

I am eternally interested in the project of psychology/therapy - where you can pay to have someone listen to you for 50 minutes a week - Richard gave his time and his ears for free - and he also opened his home and his heart to these poor, wandering souls who gradually become his friends. But he also commented several times on how tiring it was to just listen.

I think Erpenbeck's book helps to break down the image of immigrants/refugees as people "looking for a hand-out". It helps to show the wariness and hostility demonstrated by European governments. It helps to make these refugees into humans, individuals. But - there is no real solution offered. I've always thought that each person must take care of herself first - I have never in my life been in a position where I could offer a room - for free. So, I also found this book lacking in some primary considerations of what it means to be human.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bu kitabı çok, çok, çok sevdim. Okuduğum ikinci Jenny Erpenbeck kitabıydı ve kendisinin olağanüstü bir yazar olduğuna kesinlikle ikna olmuş durumdayım. (Gerçi çağdaş Alman edebiyatı genel olarak çok heyecan verici değil mi? Monika Maron, Wilhelm Genazino, Daniel Kehlmann falan…) Memlekette sığınmacılara karşı gitgide tırmandırılan bir kampanya yürütülürken bu kitabı okumak çok acayip oldu. 2012-2014 arasında Afrikalı sığınmacıların Berlin’deki Oranien Meydanı’nda yaptıkları işgal eylemine odaklanan bir roman “Gidiyor Gitti Gitmiş”. Emekli olmuş bir profesörün bu mültecilerle tanışıp onları anlayarak hayatındaki boşluğu doldurmaya çalışmasının öyküsü bir yerde. Birkaç kuşak önce büyük bir savaş yaşamış, kayıplar vermiş ve bizzat kendileri sığınmacı olmak zorunda kalmış bir halkın dahi mültecilere karşı nasıl korkunç bir tutum alabileceğini, bu konularda düzenleme yapma iddiasındaki “yasa”ların aslında tek işlevinin bu insanların bürokratik çözümsüzlük içinde kaybolmasını sağlamak olduğunu ve görkemli medeniyetimizin o devasa çelişkilerini öyle incelikli bir şekilde yüzümüze vurmuş ki yazar. Nasıl tarif edebileceğimi bilemiyorum ama ancak büyük bir yazarın yazabileceği bir kitap bence bu. Daha çok insanın okumasını çok arzu ederim. “Bir sığınmacının, sefil yaşam koşulları içinde ağır ağır yok olması değil de kendini çatıdan atması bir ülkenin itibarını niçin daha fazla zedeler? Böyle bir anda mutlaka yakınlarda deklanşöre basacak bir fotoğrafçı bulunduğu için muhtemelen. Yoksa asıl skandal, bu adamların olanaksızlaşmış olan yaşamlarını onları istemeyen bir ülkenin yönetmesine izin vermeye devam etmek yerine kendi ölümlerini kendilerinin belirlemek istemeleri mi? Yoksa insanın kendi hayatı üzerinde iktidar sahibi olma meselesi öncelikle bir iktidar meselesi mi?”

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine rätselhafte Entwicklung nimmt dieses Buch: Über 200 Seiten wird ein komplexes Bild mit zahlreichen Figuren, aber eben auch Bezugsebenen aufgebaut. Auf den letzten 150 Seiten hatte ich dann ein Buch in der Hand, das vor allem auf starke Antagonismen und damit einhergehende Emotionen setzt. Ich mags nicht, wenn ich bemerke, was ich fühlen soll.

Richard, gebildet, emeritiert, ein Ost-Überbleibsel und seit dem Tod seiner Frau (why?) allein im großen Haus, lernt zufällig das Elend einer Gruppe von Flüchtlingen kennen, die in der Nähe von Berlin zwar hausen, aber niemals ankommen dürfen. Angst essen Seele auf also. Zugleich webt Erpenbeck noch einige Gedanken um die Auflösung der DDR in den Text. Auch die Hoch-Literatur findet immer wieder Erwähnung. Ich war daher 200 Seiten lang begeistert von diesem gut geschriebenen Buch, das eine klar einwanderungsfreundliche, weltoffene Haltung vertritt und vehement in seinen Anklagepunkten ist. Das fetzt und wirkt wie ein Krafttext, der für viele Intolerante oder zaudernd Abwägende der benötigte Ziegelstein zu sein scheint – ein gut aufgebauter und elegant beschrifteter Ziegelstein sogar.

Die „Einzelschicksale“ der Flüchtlinge schocken durchaus, mit den Bildern von Booten und Schlangen und Pegidisten vor dem inneren Auge kamen sie mir allerdings nie dramatisiert oder instrumentalisierend vor. Ja, wir sollten nicht vergessen, welch großes Schwein wir haben, hier und heute geboren zu sein. Ein Verdienst war das nun mal nicht.

Leider gefiel mir hinten raus immer weniger. Richard war als Person nach 200 Seiten praktisch verschwunden, seine Aufgabe erschöpft sich dann offenbar in einer modernen Jubelperser-Variation pro Immigration. Das fand ich sehr schade, gerade in Anbetracht der eigentlich zahlreich vorhandenen Möglichkeiten, einen Christa-Wolfesken Dichtemantel der Bezugsschwerheiten aufzufalten. Die anfänglichen Anklänge an die europäische Kultur (ein Flüchtling als Apoll, ein anderer als Odysseus) wirkten wie der Auftakt einer furiosen Verdichtung, nach der Hälfte wurden diese Analogien aber still fallengelassen. Hier geraten auch die literarischen Fronten zu deutlich, Freund-und-Feindschablonen sind verteilt und werden dann kaum noch bewegt, nur in neuen Lichtern immer wieder angestrahlt. Dass gerade der deutsche Staat und seine Gesetze (Bürokratie…) als Übeltäter erkannt wurde, wirkt für mich gleichzeitig wie ein schwaches und zu pauschales Urteil. Ich finde ja gerade unsere Bürokratie in humanitärer Hinsicht verdammt geil und hoffe, dass der nächste versuchte Genozid auf deutschem Boden schon in den zu bewältigenden Dokumenten und Bescheiden steckenbleiben wird.

Und, auch auf die Gefahr hin, falsch verstanden zu werden: Ich denke, dass sich hier nun mal zwei Grundthesen gegenüberstehen, die wie die Brüder Klitschko gleich stark und daher beide mächtig sind. Klitschko 1: Jeder Mensch hat das Recht, nach Glück und Wohlstand zu streben. Klitschko 2: Der Wohlstand, von dem wir hier profitieren, basiert darauf, Menschen auszuschließen oder auszubeuten. So radikal wie Richard sind die wenigsten.
Hinten raus wurde mir persönlich der Roman dann doch zu sozialkitschig und emotionskitschig, das hatte ich so nicht erwartet.
Viel Kritik, ich weiß. Aber insgesamt eine absolut lesenswerte literarische Axt, die das Meer in uns aufwühlt und dabei auf den Tod von tausenden aufmerksam macht. Europa ersäuft im Konsum, die Immigranten im Mittelmeer. Und mit der emotionalen Steuerung dürften viele Leser_innen ja auch einverstandener sein als ich.

[Quo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Go, Went, Gone or Gehen, Ging, Gegangen in the original German version of Jenny Erpenbeck's narrative dealing with the refugee crisis in Germany is a fictional tale enshrouded in a strong non-fiction polemic that argues for a more humane treatment of the countless refugees, most from sub-Saharan Africa that have seemingly overwhelmed the German legal system's ability to fairly & efficiently handle their cases individually.



Not so very long after the gradual assimilation of the former East Germans into a unified Germany, the country has had no little difficulty in handling the influx of refugees, many of them poorly-educated Africans who lack any familiarity with the German language (hence, the declension of the word Go) or German culture & law.

Two points to be made at the outset: since WWII, Germany has accommodated a great number of refugees from around the world, many from Turkey, the Balkan countries + Syria/Iraq & Afghanistan, and also the key distinction between those "asylum seekers" in search of a refuge from war, political & tribal hostility or famine and the desire of a country to harmoniously maintain its own identity in the face of an endless supply of poor people who ultimately desire immigrant status & the benefits of life in a wealthy European country. To be fair, Germany has thus far taken in millions of refugees, while some other European countries, notably Poland & Hungary have admitted none.



Jenny Erpenbeck's novel relates the story of a recently retired classics professor named Richard, originally from East Germany, whose wife died 5 years before & whose unnamed "lover" has fled elsewhere, leaving Richard alone & in search of a new identity, a status that is given a boost when he encounters a series of homeless Africans living in tents in a section of Berlin.

Richard is initially curious about the refugees from the African continent & sets himself on a path of learning the capitals of African countries, a preface to greater involvement with the lives of the refugees. Oddly perhaps, all of the Africans encountered are men, with the exception of an attractive woman who is a legal immigrant from Ethiopia, someone Richard is enamored of & who attempts to teach German to some of the refugees before becoming lost within the fabric of the novel. (I had in mind something a bit more involved for poor Richard & the Ethiopian woman.)

Gradually, we come to learn the stories of the African men, including Awad Issa from Ghana, Salla Alhacen from Niger, Ithemba Awad from Nigeria, Yussuf Idrissu from Mali & Moussa Adam from Burkina Faso. Another man, Rashid, is from a wealthy family but his father was murdered in inter-tribal or political hostility, forcing the rest of the family to flee elsewhere in Nigeria. Most have fled extreme violence in their countries, making an arduous journey north to Libya, then a very risky voyage in unstable boats to Italy & onward across various European borders.

Richard assigns most of the Africans names from antiquity, including Apollo, Hermes & Tristan, while Rashid is cast as "the thunderbolt thrower". Eventually, some of the African refugees become disenchanted with their lack of a clear status about their future lives & stage a protest, which only serves to cause a counter-reaction by German officials. Interestingly, the asylum seekers are bound together by their cell phones, with the comment that "they feel more at home with wireless networks than in many of the countries in which they await their futures."



The men are safe in a wealthy country, though their status within Germany is quite tenuous & impermanent. Some of the Africans become despondent over time, moved from one shelter to another, increasingly uncertain about their fate & upset at not being allowed to work until rendered "legal" by the courts.

Richard progressively comes to identify with the refugees, moving from curiosity to a considerable preoccupation with their plight. He becomes an advocate and seems to develop an abiding compassion for the men, ultimately sharing his house with several of them. Along the way, even Richard feels in exile.

Last night, he woke up & walked through every room in the house for no particular reason, as if strolling through a museum, as if he no longer belonged to it. As he passed among the furniture, some of which he'd known since childhood, room after room, his life appeared to be utterly foreign, utterly unknown, as if seen from a far-off galaxy. His tour ended in the kitchen. Ashamed, he sat down on a kitchen chair & without knowing why, began sobbing like a man condemned to exile.

While I enjoyed reading much of the book, with the passage just cited as an example, there seemed to be uncertainty on the part of the author as to how to craft a novel based on the plight of homeless refugees from Africa, their impact on Richard & others and just how much legal documentation to include, with the latter material serving to clutter the novel, causing it to read like a broadside at times.

I wish that more detail had been added to Richard's background & that of the very compelling Africans, with much less emphasis on German immigration statutes & the seeming heartlessness of the laws with regard to refugees. Many if not most legal systems seem bent on confounding those who are not sufficiently skilled to master them.

There is also an odd sort of subplot or consistently applied metaphor, that of a person who drowned in the lake near Richard's residence, with the body never surfacing, making the lake & Richard's boat on it, out-of-bounds. The author inserts a line within the novel that suggests that "the line dividing ghosts & people has always seemed thin to Richard."

There are in fact many details raised but then abandoned or left unresolved, including a break-in at Richard's home, seemingly by an African he has befriended, a man named Osarobo. Richard goes to Frankfurt to present a paper, "Reason as Fiery Matter in the Works of Seneca the Stoic" but it is never clear just why he does so & after reading his paper, which draws no pertinent commentary from other professors, he abruptly entrains back home. Few readers would recognize Richard as a Stoic character.

There is also a considerable cultural-historical gap between Richard's Germany and the Africans, with WWII, Hitler, the Holocaust, the division & eventual reunification of the former East & West Germany, a complete unknown to the Africans. But at the heart of the novel is a confrontation with the guilt of being white, wealthy & European, at least by standards held by those who occupy much of the poorer landscapes on the face of the planet, perhaps (probably) overshadowed by the devastation of WWII & Germany's primary role in it

. The author intones that "Richard knows he's one of the few people in this world who are in a position to take their pick of realities." I like this thought but would rather that Jenny Erpenbeck had allowed the characters in her novel to demonstrate this.



Most reviews of Go, Went, Gone are quite positive. James Wood in The New Yorker calls the novel "a powerful response to the refugee crisis", which I find to be true, while still deeming it less than successful as a novel. Wood mentions Richard's "highly educated ignorance", being familiar with Foucault, Nietfzsche & Hegel, while not knowing how the poor can eat when there is no money for food.

Sadly perhaps, many in the western world are gainfully preoccupied with their lives & those of their families while exhibiting an illiteracy about, even an indifference to much of the rest of the world. It is also mentioned by James Wood that Richard's "journey is functional rather than spiritual" but would not this accusation apply to a goodly portion of mankind? I enjoyed reading this novel & also a few interesting G/R reviews of Erpenbeck's novel, while recommending the book with reservations rather than outright enthusiasm.

*The images within my review include: the author; a boatload of Africans in search of a new homeland; protest rally in support of German refugees/immigrants; representation of the African diaspora against the German flag.