Download PDF Aller Tage Abend 9783328102502 Books

Product details Paperback Language German ISBN-10 9783328102502 ISBN-13 978-3328102502 ASIN 3328102507

Aller Tage Abend 9783328102502 Books Reviews

• Already the title of Jenny Erpenbeck's new novel, ALLER TAGE ABEND (THE END OF ALL DAYS), gives me pause. It is an old fashioned phrase that goes back at least to Martin Luther. The story begins at the grave site of a baby girl, and, while the grandmother accepts this death without questioning the why?, the thoughts of the mother wander into all the possible future lives that the girl might have had... "One death is not the end of all days", first spoken by the grandmother, becomes the underlying theme that weaves through the book. The author builds her novel around the fundamental question" what if..?" What coincidences, unforeseen encounters, personal actions or external events shape our lives, could have shaped the life of this one nameless little girl? From that first scene of mourning and grief, Erpenbeck spins an extraordinary and complex narrative in which she intertwines a personal, intimate family story of three generations with pertinent political events and historical changes taking place in the course of the twentieth century - from 1902 to 1992. Brilliant! Without hesitation - very rare for me - I can say that this is the most powerful and thought provoking book I have read this year if not longer.
  
  In five "books", each linked to the next by an 'intermezzo', the author composes the novel like a musical arrangement - a symphony maybe - where each book has its own style and rhythm, yet picks up one or another elements from the previous only to develop it into another variation of the underlying theme "what if?..." The language can be stark or lyrical, the rhythm slow or fast. All depends on the pace of the story and images created. Nonetheless, each book contains its concrete setting in time and place. This could be Galicia, home of the Jewish grandmother, Vienna, Siberia, Berlin... Each locale has a role to play in the story's events as it does in the historical contexts. Each politically pertinent period is explored through the personal lens of the protagonists, a very effective way to bring difficult concepts to the fore, such as the Stasi system of neighbours spying on neighbours or the degrading "self-critique", common in the Soviet Union.
  
  Like in her award winning novel VISITATION and other works, Erpenbeck is hesitant to give personal names to her characters. Their individuality, however, could not be more strongly presented. At the same time, by not giving her characters names they can be perceived also in a broader context of human behaviour. What if ..., for example, we were born under different circumstances in a different place how would our lives have evolved? How would we have behaved if confronted with the challenges the novel's characters have?
  
  I am very reluctant to expand on the content of the novel in a review. As I said in the beginning it is one of the most engaging book I have read in quite some time. The intense pleasure of reading ALLER TAGE ABEND operates on different levels and also lies in the step by step discover of its composition and different story lines. [Friederike Knabe]
• The evening of all days?
  The Yogi Berra phrase `it's not over till it's over' is the best English approximation to the root of the German title of Jenny Erpenbeck's new novel. The title however turns the phrase around, telling us it is, actually, over. We have reached the evening of all days.
  
  Death is the beginning of immortality. That's what she says about a leading communist who gets killed by the Nazis, which saves him from being killed by his comrades.
  This brilliant 'historical' novel is firmly rooted in the schools of Joseph Roth, Arthur Koestler, Danilo Kis. In a way, that makes it less original than her previous great work (Visitation, Book of Words) but not less interesting. She continues from the familiar past (K&K, Fascism, Stalinism) into the more exotic more recent past in divided and reunited Germany.
  
  We begin this emotionally difficult and structurally complex novel in 1902, in Joseph Roth's Brody, then Galicia, now Ukraine. A young Jewish mother has lost her baby girl, possibly to sudden infant death syndrome. Her goy husband can't stand it and runs, takes a ship to America. That is not the last emigration in this migratory story.
  
  In the woman's mind, it was not just a baby who died. It was all future possibilities of the little girl. This determines the structure of the book we are told various consecutive life chapters of the person that the baby might have become. Each twist and turn affects the lives of others.
  Had the young woman miraculously saved her baby, the father would never have arrived in Ellis Island. The woman might never have left the straight path. The father might have been promoted in government service, the family might have moved to Vienna... You get the idea.
  
  Jenny Erpenbeck is one of the strongest contemporary literary voices, anywhere. Her books are thoroughly crafted masterpieces, not just plain tales shot from the hip. This kind of novel offers interpretations and meanings on several levels. Not the least a steady flow of Goethe quotes and allusions.
• A wonderful book that deals with serious topics in a easy-handed manner.
• The surprising twists in the story and her language (I read the German original).
• Very dark. Interestingly written. It's like a still life painting with decaying body part!
• Just mot my kind of book