I haven´t advanced too much through the shortlist for Deutsche Buchpreis 2021, with some notable beautiful exceptions though, and for sure I haven´t get yet into the right mood for reading the winner book, but now I know for sure that the book that won the previous edition was definitely one of the best contemporary books with a historical topic I´ve read in German in the last 5 years or so.
Annette, ein Heldinnen-Epos - Annette, a Heroine Epic Poem in my own English translation of the title - by German author and translator Anne Weber was a revelation for me. First, for the temperately bold form chosed for writing the novel: an epic poem which visually may look like an classical poem, of the kind created during the Middle Ages, by unnamed authors. A historical epic poem set in the troubled times of the WWII and the period afterwards, in France and North African Algeria and Tunisia. There are no rhymes or verses, but simple prose, however, the ´epos´ is there to remind that we are offered a story which is first and foremost out of time.
Annette, the main and most important character of the novel was inspired by a real person, the Résistance fighter Anne Beaumanoir. Beaumanoir - who wrote her own Memoirs as well, covering the period 1923-1956, We wanted to change the life/Wir wollten das Leben ändern - is still alive, two years short from 100, living in the South of France. During the WWII, she saved and protected Jews in Brittany and therefore she was named by Yad Vashem ´righteous among the nations´, a title offered to the non-Jews who helped and protected individual Jews to escape the Shoah. She further fought on behalf of the Front de Libération Nationale in Algeria against France and therefore sent to prison.
Withough being a memoir or a historical story, Annette, ein Heldinnen-Epos is first and foremost an investigation into the credo of a woman aware enough to realize the failures of the Soviet Union gulag but nevertheless convinced that there is a social justice that one should fight for. A social justice that may lead to the freedom of the oppressed, although this may lead to the temporary loss of the individual freedoms. (´Für die Freiheit Algemeins, eines fremden Lands, hat sie die eigne Freiheit aufgegeben uns aufs Spiel gesetzt´). But the people, as a sum of various individuals, will Annette met only after she will be released from prison, when she is finally encountering the men and women of the land, while she is practising her medical skills, after the independence of Algeria.
The oppressed of the world, those in need of freedom, do they need being liberated? What is the price of not giving up on other people´s freedom? Does it help to fight on behalf of those unseen and eventually passive citizens who aren´t so keen maybe to fight for themselves?
The book ends with a short commentary of the Myth of Sysyphus, in the interpretation of the Oran-born Albert Camus. In that moment when he is lifting the stone up to the top, even shortly before he has to return to bring it back, Sysyphus is free. Free because it is his own will to continue to carry our stone. Our existence is that stone. Fighting for other people freedom is one of those heavy stones that you either carry on with or not. Annette/Anne, and many others like her, chose it with a pure brave heart.
Rating: 5 stars
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