palatial Dussman on Friedrichstrasse and found these writers have indeed both been praised as major contributions to contemporary German literature. Isn't it wonderful? I started reading the comic Kaminer, and had to laugh out loud - something that only happens to me with Bill Bryson (and less often with David Sedaris). This book is in fact a bit Bryson-like, a travelogue of true, hidden Germany. Who better to reveal it to us, German-Americans abroad, than a Russian theater artist who came to Berlin just a few years ago and discovered a new life as a writer in German? Who else would have been at a reading in Chemnitz, once known as Karl-Marx-Stadt (although Marx never set foot there), noticed that there was a garden gnome conference on, and realized that the great head of Marx still at the city's center (less determined and scary-looking than the Soviet versions) was really like the head of a garden gnome?!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Cosmopolitan
My mother asked A, the cousin I'm staying with in Berlin, to recommend some recent German books I could bring home for her. After finding that a 1000-pager on life in the DDR was not yet available in paperback, A recommended books by a Feridun Zaimoglu and a Wladimir Kaminer - Turkish and Russian names. I picked up both books at the 
palatial Dussman on Friedrichstrasse and found these writers have indeed both been praised as major contributions to contemporary German literature. Isn't it wonderful? I started reading the comic Kaminer, and had to laugh out loud - something that only happens to me with Bill Bryson (and less often with David Sedaris). This book is in fact a bit Bryson-like, a travelogue of true, hidden Germany. Who better to reveal it to us, German-Americans abroad, than a Russian theater artist who came to Berlin just a few years ago and discovered a new life as a writer in German? Who else would have been at a reading in Chemnitz, once known as Karl-Marx-Stadt (although Marx never set foot there), noticed that there was a garden gnome conference on, and realized that the great head of Marx still at the city's center (less determined and scary-looking than the Soviet versions) was really like the head of a garden gnome?!
palatial Dussman on Friedrichstrasse and found these writers have indeed both been praised as major contributions to contemporary German literature. Isn't it wonderful? I started reading the comic Kaminer, and had to laugh out loud - something that only happens to me with Bill Bryson (and less often with David Sedaris). This book is in fact a bit Bryson-like, a travelogue of true, hidden Germany. Who better to reveal it to us, German-Americans abroad, than a Russian theater artist who came to Berlin just a few years ago and discovered a new life as a writer in German? Who else would have been at a reading in Chemnitz, once known as Karl-Marx-Stadt (although Marx never set foot there), noticed that there was a garden gnome conference on, and realized that the great head of Marx still at the city's center (less determined and scary-looking than the Soviet versions) was really like the head of a garden gnome?!
