The BURIED Book Club discussion

He has 60 ratings across 11 works, only one has been translated: At the Edge of the Night (1934), which has 31 ratings.

I discovered him through this podcast episode all about his life as a gay disabled man who tried to become a writer in nazi germany, getting his book banned, and eventually being shot by the Red Army at the age of 45.

https://bookriot.com/listen/you-are-n...

A very interesting podcast, I recommend you listen to it if you're into that sort of thing.

More about the style of the book from the podcast:

"At the edge of the night is a dreamlike book. One that feels connected to modernism and markedly disconnected from politics. In it, Lampe is experimenting with style more than anything else. Simon Beattie (translator): 'The way he crafted it, he's very interested in film and he can see the book as film-like, he was viewing it like a camera, and you get this idea of sort of like the camera angles--you can imagine it working as a series of large long camera shots--there's no one main character and there's these different threads of plot as you might get in a film. And then you get pieces of characters meeting together--someone will get off a tram and meet someone else, and then they'll walk away and then the camera (you the reader) will follow that person'"

From wikipedia: "Friedo Lampe was a German writer, librarian, and editor. Lampe was a gay writer during the Third Reich; he was shot in Berlin a few days before the end of World War II by the Red Army on 2 May 1945. His works remained unknown throughout his life."

An excerpt from At the Edge of the Night (taken from a review):

"Herr Berg carried on playing; he played the whole evening. He always did and today was no exception. Clear, constant, the gentle intervals of the cool, silvery notes floated over the gardens, mixing, melting into the evening air. But who heard these notes, really heard them, who could understand their terrible message, their clear lament? The dying man did not hear them, could not hear them: he had already fallen into all too deep a sleep, otherwise he would perhaps have been the person best able to grasp these notes. Other people hardly heard them. But little Luise, leaning at the open window in her nightdress, understood the music; she thought it very beautiful, and understood it perfectly. She rested her head in her hand and dreamed down into the garden. The notes took a gentle, steady path, the soft evening breeze rustling the trees in the garden and bearing off the scent of grass, flowers and leaves. The gardens lay there dark green and obscure, trees, bushes, black fences, soft-edged lawns, children's climbing frames. Light burned in some of the windows of the houses opposite, and people went silently back and forth. In the distance the sound of music on the radio seemed to accompany the flute. Luise breathed in the rich, sour smell from the stables of the carriage company next door. The carts stood silently in the yard, their shafts hanging down, the horses in their stalls giving the occasional snort and striking the ground with their hooves. The stable boy crossed the yard with a lamp, shining it here and there, went into the stables where, for brief moments, you could see a pale heap of hay, panelled walls with harnesses, a horse's broad, gleaming rump. Everything then sank again into soft, rippling, flowing night, and Luise floated off again with the music, on silver paths. Suddenly she started. She saw the rats again"

Another quote:

"A day had past and a night had come--important, unimportant--a rich, warm September night: it was now complete. It surged past, broad and heavy. It filled the streets and gardens, nestled in the trees and bushes and ruffled the leaves with its warm breath and drew the penetrating scent of flowers and grass along the streets. It sank into parks, ponds, and ditches, brooded over the harbour, the river, and squeezed under the arches of the bridge. The muted water ran past the piers. And the town tried to repress it: with lanterns and arc lamps, with music and conversation--but the night was stronger"