Liam’s review of While We Were Dreaming > Likes and Comments

This is the point where our assessments of novels diverge. It was the same with Paul Bailey. Of course, every story told as a book is something fabricated, not reality. We differ in the degree of fabrication we still consider "true," and when we begin to take it as "show" and "kitsch".

It was the breakthrough book for Clemens Meyer from Leipzig, former East Germany. I haven't read it. I've read later stories by him - and panned them on Goodreads.

I say: Oh yeah! A young man from an educated family who once stole and drank, spent time in prison, and is covered in tattoos. He studied his Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway thoroughly, and now he's doing it all again for East Germany. Men who are such good friends but go astray. Oh yeah.

I found him: artificial, pretentious, a role he plays: Germany's real hard player.

The year 2024 was fitting, when he went to the press on his own initiative and publicly complained that he hadn't been awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. (He had already received it in 2008 for the story collection I read.)

Since then, he hasn't been unsuccessful at all. Leipzig is his city. (If you like, the only major city in the East where the AfD doesn't win — okay, Berlin still is.) He had, over a few years, written a major novel that juggles multiple time periods and foreign countries. He felt he ought to win the prize again.

German literary prizes are awarded based on bonus points, which are awarded for belonging to certain ideological groups, genders, regions of origin, etc. It's probably not much different in Great Britain.

So, the award went to an unknown because:
she's a woman
she's younger than him
she's a new discovery
she has a family background of migrants (Balkans)

He had to stage a revolt against that.
So, he's not without vanity. But perhaps he lacks humor.

Clemens Meyer is BRILLIANT, Liam, I hope "Die Projektoren" gets a translation next!