Two Munich men with golden pens
LETTERS BACK TO ANCIENT CHINA***With the help of a “time-compass,” Kao-tai, a tenth-century Chinese mandarin, travels 1,000 years into the future. Unaware that the earth is a rotating globe, he inadvertently ends up much further from his native Middle Kingdom, in a city that to him sounds like Min-chen, in a province called Ba Yan. After the initial shock subsides, Kao-tai decides to make the most out of the miscalculated journey and plunges headlong into this foreign world. In 37 long letters back to his friend, he describes his experiences and impressions of life among the “bignoses.” In trying to make sense of this new world, he provides the reader with a fresh view that is both revealing and incredibly funny. Are the cloth strips, for example, that men wear around their necks for no apparent reason insignia of their rank? And are the burnt offerings (“Si-ga-wei-tus”) that people constantly put in their mouths rituals to ward off evil spirits? Kao-tai discovers the conveniences of the modern world, such as riding through town in an iron “ta’am” house, which he describes to his friend as a public carriage belonging to the mandarin who governs Min-chen and who, “in the sunlike radiance of his bountiful goodness, allows the inhabitants to use.” But he also expresses his dismay at the noise, filth and chaos of modern life. The more acquainted Kao-tai becomes with life in Munich, the more insightful his observations become, musing, for example, about the “bignoses’ almost compulsive desire for constant change, leading them to confuse new with good.” While he cannot understand why people drink “disgusting” cow milk and do not roast fat dogs, he learns to appreciate “mo-te shang dong” (champagne) and the music of such composers as Vay-to-feng and Mo-tsa.
Letters Back to Ancient China is a modern picaresque novel, in which a savant from ancient China wittily comments on the dubious quality of Western civilization. First published in German in 1983 under the title Briefe in die chinesische Vergangenheit, the book was a huge success in Germany, selling well over one million copies. Fortunately, this modern classic is now also available in English, translated by Mike Mitchell. Combining satire with social criticism, Rosendorfer manages to provoke both laughter and thought. <<< Claudia Hellmann
GERMAN ANGSt***
by Friedrich Ani
Droemer, 2000
It is not a common practice of Munich Found to review books in German — thus excluding our non-bilingual readers. However, as this month’s column focuses on local authors, we offer this review of a novel, which is currently available only in its original language.
German Angst can be found in the fiction section of any local bookstore. However, the unsettling truth is that much of local author Friedrich Ani’s tale — a detective story — most probably belongs in the non-fiction corner. A former police reporter and writer for German television’s most beloved police/detective series, Tatort, the author examines, in his eighth work, racism and Nazism in modern-day Munich. From page one to its riveting conclusion, almost 500 pages later, German Angst assaults the soul, yet screams to be read.
In July and August of 1999, two topics captured daily headlines in the Isar city — the solar eclipse and the deportation of Bavaria-born Turk and 16-year-old juvenile delinquent “Mehmet.” In keeping with reality, Ani includes “the day the light went out” in his plot and features a heroine, Lucy Arano, a 13-year-old “foreign” petty criminal, who becomes liable for her actions, and is therefore deportable, on her fourteenth birthday. The Munich-born daughter of Nigerian parents, Lucy begins her life of crime after her mother dies in a house fire. Top missing persons investigator Tabor Süden of Dezernat 11— bleeding-heart liberal, spiritual messenger and psilocybin mushroom user — takes up the cause of breaking the young teenager’s icy facade and saving her from being sent “back” to a land she has never known. In his struggle to defend Lucy, Süden endures the right-wing posturing of politicians, fellow policemen and racist residents. Meanwhile, other missing persons cases, attacks on foreigners, a rape and a murder keep the officers at Munich’s Dezernat 11 busy.
To reveal more about the plot of German Angst would be to snip the threads of this tightly wound thriller. Though Ani’s work has been panned by many of Germany’s headier newspapers as being “like a movie script,” it is that very element that makes this novel a spellbinding read. Here, it is not clearly marked chapters that indicate a change of scene, but paragraphs. Fast-moving, multilayered and spiced with a multitude of memorable characters, German Angst may not be considered great literature, but it entertains and informs. Locals will certainly appreciate the author’s frequent references to city locations — some may even discover that the very building in which they live is mentioned here — but that may be the only aspect of the “fictional” story over which the reader may rejoice. <<< Liz Vannah
