German Book Review: Drei Kameradinnen (Sisters in Arms) by Shida Bazyar

 

I am happy to report that German literature is recording in the last five years or so an outstanding catch-up with the reality. Young women authors like Sharon Dodua Otoo, Hengameh Yagoobifarah or Mithu Sanyal to mention only few of them do write about real people, with real German society problems. Like far right, racism, unwelcoming attitude towards different skin colours or accents although born in Germany and owning a much praised German passport etc. I am delighted to be a reader contemporary with those authors, challenging the edulcorated literary version focused on men on midlife crisis or rebelious teenagers from priviledged families.

Shida Bazyar´s Drei Kameradinnen - Sisters in Arms - is my latest discovery. The second by Bazyar, longlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis in 2021 it gives reality of people one may encounter every day in Germany. On one side, the reality of Nazi supporters and operatives. On the other, people with a migrant history co-existing with all of them, but not necessarily keen to maintain either this victim- or an observer status. 

I loved the writing and the consistency of the characters, built not necessarily to be forced to complete each other - which does not happen and I am intellectually delighted it doesn´t. They are three friends, living in an unnamwd big German city, whose families come from outside German, from places no mentioned. They are somewhere in the middle: not migrants not refugees, but not part of the social history either. 

The three main characters are three girlfriends with their own - realistically depicted - experiences of growing up in a society that is more or less elegantly not keen to ´integrate´ them. 

The story unfolds during the NSU trials and Bazyar is, as far as I know, the first who introduces this detail into a book. Not that the NSU activities were not known in the last post-war decades. Simply - no offense - midlife crisis men were more relevant for the everyday public agenda maybe. One of the girls in the book is even trying to inflitrate one Nazi cell, through a fake social media account. 

Although I got very excited by the topic, as well as by the writing, I am still lucid enough to realize that I was not fully happy with some details: the story is lost sometimes in favor of a narrative about a topic of actuality or another, the other characters in the book are relatively low profile and almost non-important. 

But again, the fact that this book, and many others not only were written, but were included as part of  prestigious literary competitions and got noteworthy accolades in the local media, are an obvious sign that mentalities started to switchl. Better now than ever.

UPDATE: The book was - finally - translated into English by Ruth Martin as Sisters in Arms (excellent choice!) and would be published by Scribe UK mid-October 2023.

Rating: 3.5 stars