Book Review: Monschau by Steffen Kopetzky

If someone would have recommend me two years ago a book built around a smallpox outbreak in the 1960s in Germany, my answer would have been a very polite decline. The realities of the last two years changed the interest and made such topics more relatable. It makes pandemic stories bearable at a certain point.

Monschau by Steffen Kopetzky was favorably mentioned in my bookish feed several times last year and hurried up to acquire a copy. Given my newly discovered pleasure of reading novels in German, I couldn´t miss such an opportunity to delve for hours into the language and from this point of view, my expectations were happily meet: the story is well written, both in terms of the construction and of the language fluency.

Set in what to use to be the district of Monschau, close to the border with Belgium, in the Eifel region, the action is taking place in the 1960s. A new generation, born at the end of the war is about to reclaim its present, while the old ones, involved for different reasons and at different extents into the Nazi machine, reclaim its right to ignore their past. The ambiance of those times is well represented both factual and from the sociological point of view.

Inspired by real facts - among others, the factory mentioned in the book still exist and produced various high-precision temperature measurement tools - it brings into the literary realm complex situations that are more and more addressed lately. The unassumed responsibility for the then German recent past was not an easy acknowledgement process. 

The pandemic part of the story is also inspired by historical facts, but in many respects it sounded too familiar to be distinguished from the current era pandemics. Personally, I did not feel and noticed any difference in terms of health decisions and approaches.

However, this was less bothering than an aspect that completely diminished my interest into the book: the love story between the young Greek doctor Nikos and the rich French-educated Vera. The two of them are predictably supposed to fall in love, but we are made believe that in fact this was meant to be even before they ever meet. Their behavior and personalities do not suggest it, unless the author himself insists that they are a couple and the sentimental part of the story is solved. The exclusive fictional part of the story is so clumsy and awkward that it completely diverted my attention from the rest of the narrative.

Pitty for my expectations, but a win from the point of view of the language. Hopefully my next German read will be more rewarding from the literary point of view.

Rating: 3 stars