The End is Near

 

One of my few events for this year Literaturfestival in Berlin was a discussion about Iranian revolution with Gilda Sahebi, Navid Kermani and Amir Gudarzi who introduced his debut novel Das Ende ist Nah - The End is Near, in my translation. A promise, not guaranteed, too. Shortly after I had the chance to read the book, a complex immigrant story in Austria.

Gudarzi studied theatre and dramaturgy in Tehran and was forced to leave the country following the protests of the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran.The character of his novel, A. had a similar experience, and also used to be active in the field of theatre. But now, he defines as an immigrant, humiliated by other fellow immigrants and facing the soulless bureaucracy. 

Interrupted with flashbacks from the past, filled with stories of his parents, his childhood and the friends and girlfriends he left behind, the prose follows like a logic of duality, where the past and the present are survival pills for the everyday survival.

What didn´t worked for me was the relationship with Sarah, an Austrian woman trying to break also with her past, a PhD student, a tormented soul, passionate about Iranian culture, democracy protests and Jewish history. I didn´t like her and such people usually belong to the category of people I avoid to have anything to do in the everyday life, but in the logic of the story, I felt ofen that she was there as a reminder of how things should not happen or just to offer a distraction from the dramatic story of A.´s immigration to Austria. Maybe in theatre such useful characters are welcomed, but in a novel, you can rarely get rid of them fast enough until they are becoming a stereotype. Relationships in general in this novel seem very clumsy and emotionally distant.

Besides those shortcomings that after all may be just a matter of personal taste, Das Ende ist Nah is an excellent debut novel, eyes-opening of the immigrant histories and with a story with its own dynamic. This novel is a proof of the rich literature written in German that once translated, would definitely bring a lot of novelty and new topics into the general topic of immigration and estrangement.

Rating: 4 stars