Set between different timelines, Götterfunken - it could be translation as Divine Sparks, but also refers to the Beethoven´s Ode to Joy - by Hamburg-born Berlin-based Hannes Köhler is a story of failed youth utopias.
How far can a revolution go? And for how long, one started, it is still revolution? What deters an anarchist mindset?
A group of young and very young Spanish, French and German anarchists are roaming the streets of Barcelona in the last years of Franco dictatorship. Friendship, love, drugs and anarchy. Those were the times then, but closer to our times, end 1990s, first two decades of the 2000s, they switched sides, adding up to the bourgeoisie that they hated so much.
The novel, very animated and full of recent historical and social details, particularly about Franco´s Spain, is following those destinies, with a back and forth from one timeline to another, which helps to better understand the facts and motivations as well as the sudden changes of destiny.
It is a rare topic, especially regarding Franco´s reign, for the German-speaking literature, and Köhler is offering a generous context that helps understanding the framework of the story. But the focus is however on the characters, especially their motivations and life pathways, through dialogues and cross-memories adding little by little new elements to the story.
Although I enjoyed the novelty of the topic and the approach, I felt like the story is too much forced to be slowed down and the dialogues, although welcomed, do not necessarily lead to next steps. There is a conversational thread that do not lead to any development into the story. In real life, such ´maintenance´ conversations are necessary to build relationships between people, but the story is much shorter than a lifetime hence the frustration I had few time while reading the book.
I just read that Köhler just published a new novel so would be more than curious to explore it too.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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