A rediscovered masterpiece. Norton is reissuing Koeppen’s Death in Rome to accompany it. Let’s hope a new edition of Pigeons...
The first English translation of an important German novel, first published in 1953, whose pointillist complexity offers a searing image of postwar Germany on the perilous threshold of partition and possible rearmament.
Virtually forgotten today, Koeppen (1906–96) was an expatriate member of the literary generation immediately preceding that of Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, whose self-exile from Hitler’s Germany made him a prophet without honor in the country to which he returned after the war, living out the rest of his long life in undeserved obscurity. Though he published nothing after 1954, Koeppen is remembered for the so-called “Postwar Trilogy” that includes (his previously translated novels) Pigeons on the Grass and Death in Rome—and the present one: a meticulously observed chronicle of the last two days in the life of Keetenheuve, a Socialist Peace Party member of the Bundestag (Parliament) who, despairing over his countrymen’s amoral consumerism and reflexive drift toward militarism, finds he cannot survive in the “hothouse” atmosphere of Bonn, a capitol city sunk in the mire of getting and spending. Most of the story is keyed to Keetenheuve’s tormented psyche, and Koeppen produces numerous spectacular stream-of-consciousness passages—notably, the account of a long stroll through Bonn’s crowded mean streets, which triggers the bitter (and inevitable) hallucinatory ending. But The Hothouse isn’t hermetic: its flexible structure gracefully accommodates flashbacks illuminating its protagonist’s neglect of his weak-willed young wife, equally guilt-ridden love-hate relationship with his culture, and complex relations with colleagues who embody a spectrum of allegiance and resistance to the lingering phenomenon of Hitler’s “revolution.” This rich brew of history and psychological portraiture, further seasoned by subtle allusions to Teutonic myth and literature, is made fully accessible by Hofmann’s fluent, resourceful translation.
A rediscovered masterpiece. Norton is reissuing Koeppen’s Death in Rome to accompany it. Let’s hope a new edition of Pigeons on the Grass will follow soon thereafter.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-04902-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
PLB 0-688-13166-2 King Midas And The Golden Touch ($16.00; PLB $15.63; Apr.; 32 pp.; 0-688-13165-4; PLB 0-688-13166-2): The familiar tale of King Midas gets the golden touch in the hands of Craft and Craft (Cupid and Psyche, 1996). The author takes her inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling, capturing the essence of the tale with the use of pithy dialogue and colorful description. Enchanting in their own right, the illustrations summon the Middle Ages as a setting, and incorporate colors so lavish that when they are lost to the uniform gold spurred by King Midas’s touch, the point of the story is further burnished. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-13165-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.
A star-crossed romance captures the turmoil of pre-revolutionary Iran in Seraji’s debut.
From the rooftops of Tehran in 1973, life looks pretty good to 17-year-old Pasha Shahed and his friend Ahmed. They’re bright, funny and good-looking; they’re going to graduate from high school in a year; and they’re in love with a couple of the neighborhood girls. But all is not idyllic. At first the girls scarcely know the boys are alive, and one of them, Zari, is engaged to Doctor—not actually a doctor but an exceptionally gifted and politically committed young Iranian. In this neighborhood, the Shah is a subject of contempt rather than veneration, and residents fear SAVAK, the state’s secret police force, which operates without any restraint. Pasha, the novel’s narrator and prime dreamer, focuses on two key periods in his life: the summer and fall of 1973, when his life is going rather well, and the winter of 1974, when he’s incarcerated in a grim psychiatric hospital. Among the traumatic events he relates are the sudden arrest, imprisonment and presumed execution of Doctor. Pasha feels terrible because he fears he might have inadvertently been responsible for SAVAK having located Doctor’s hiding place; he also feels guilty because he’s always been in love with Zari. She makes a dramatic political statement, setting herself on fire and sending Pasha into emotional turmoil. He is both devastated and further worried when the irrepressible Ahmed also seems to come under suspicion for political activity. Pasha turns bitterly against religion, raising the question of God’s existence in a world in which the bad guys seem so obviously in the ascendant. Yet the badly scarred Zari assures him, “Things will change—they always do.”
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-451-22681-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
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