If I have to find one single reason for the troubles I´ve got myself into by starting to learn German, and all those years when I had to look like I don´t understand when I am told that I make a lot of mistakes - ´and you say you have an academic degree´ - or that my speak with an accent and who cares to remember all those bad things about my German skills, that is for the sake of being able to read good books in the original German language. The standards are set very high though after reading Ministerium der Träume by Hengameh Yaghoobifarah that I´ve included on my list of German-speaking writers to follow after reading the collection of essays she coordinated Eure Heimat is unser Albtraum.
My current interest is to read books by young people about burning contemporary topics. Age may not matter when it comes to dating but for many many subjective reasons I am interested to read what people from my generation and younger have to do about life, city, Berlin, the universe and Nazis. Among many other things.
Ministerium der Träume follows the story of the two Iran-born sisters Nushin and Nasrin. Nushin´s death, in what the police describes at first as a car accident, has the appearance of a suicide, but the story is more complicated than it looks. Her queer sister, Nasrin, the legal guardian of her sister´s daughter, the stormy teenager Parvin, will pursue the truth and while searching for the circumstances of the supposed accident, old friends are back and friendships from decades ago are revisited.
The details of the story, the writing as well as the relationships between characters and the way in which the story develops, all are so carefully crafted that it is really hard to leave the story. The author is playing a marvelous chess both with the characters and the readers but it is such kind a game where one may really want to be used. Moving forward, even blindly, is an assumed decision one may be offered the chance to take.
In the logic of the story, mentions about the many neo-Nazi attacks against foreigners all across Germany - tell me some other writer who does it - Pegida, and the anti-immigration opinions, also among the authorities, comes along very naturally. The novel has the feet steady on the ground of the everyday German reality, but uses the opportunities creatively to create in the smallest details a world of the mind in itself.
I may read and review many other books by German authors in the next weeks and months but will be hard to equal the strong impression of the Ministerium der Träume. I can only hope that the book will be soon translated into English to offer the chance to non-German speakers to enjoy a generous slice of the literary cake of contemporary Germany.
Rating: 5 stars
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