German Literature Book Club discussion

Really puts your life in perspective...

I can see why she received the Nobel prize. Literature is the art of words, but how can words really convey what it's like to spend years in a forced labour camp? There's only so much a description can do to make us really understand.

The author appears to be obsessed with words just like her character is obsessed with hunger. For instance, in one chapter he's working with cement and it's spilling everywhere, leading to reprimands and being considered a Zementdieb (cement thief). The word cement must be used a hundred times and also in creative words like Zementkrank (cement-sick). It's not really the creation of new words that impressed me, but how realistic it felt that if you were to work with cement under those conditions, you would eventually think of nothing but cement.

I'm not generally a huge fan of episodic stories, but that was almost unavoidable here. It makes it a book that you can read slowly, a chapter now and then. At least they mostly follow the chronology, so it's not a collection of anecdotes either.