The Leipzig Affair - Fiona Rintoul

Synopsis

The year is 1985. East Germany is in the grip of communism. Magda, a brilliant but disillusioned young linguist, is desperate to flee to the West. When a black market deal brings her into contact with Robert, a young Scot studying at Leipzig University, she sees a way to realise her escape plans. But as Robert falls in love with her, he stumbles into a complex world of shifting half-truths – one that will undo them both.
Many years later, long after the Berlin Wall has been torn down, Robert returns to Leipzig in search of answers. Can he track down the elusive Magda?
And will the past give up its secrets?


Review

'It's another world over there.'

I loved this novel, it had me gripped all the way through. The setting and time period is one that I find fascinating having studied German, and I do enjoy/find intriguing a lot of fiction that involves events surrounding the Berlin Wall and the former East Germany. Fiona Rintoul has created two captivating main characters in Magda and Robert. She creates tension and suspense, and really conveys the atmosphere and secrecy of the times. Magda is studying interpreting in Leipzig, East Germany, in 1985, but is disillusioned with life and politics there, and wants to leave and get to the West. Robert is a student at St Andrews, and events see him ending up in Leipzig and meeting Magda, getting to know some of her friends, and becoming involved in her complicated world.

The story is told in alternating chapters with Robert's story recounted in the first person, and Magda's told in the second person. I thought these points of view worked successfully here. I felt Robert's character was fleshed out particularly well; his personal weaknesses and the moments from his business career added depth and dimension to the story. The novel concentrates not only on those days back in 1985, but also takes us to the present, with the Berlin Wall having fallen and Robert finally revisiting Leipzig, and I was excited and nervous to travel with him there once more and discover what, and who, he would find there this time.

I felt absorbed in the tale as I read and I also felt that the author knew her stuff regarding the background and setting of her novel, and that she wrote in a balanced way about this period of Germany's history. Though Magda and many others like her felt determined, desperate to flee to the West from the GDR, and were very disillusioned by the country, the Stasi surveillance, the way some people were treated such as the tragedy that befalls Magda's brother, nevertheless many people also looked back at their former country with a certain amount of regret once it was gone. This is captured particularly well in a conversation between Magda and her father, after the regime has come to an end:

'"Personally, I think we've paid a very heavy price to have bananas in the shops and shiny new cars on every street corner. I look around me and I see young people with no jobs and no hope. I see homeless people. Did you ever see a homeless person in our Republic?..."

He's jutting his chin out again. It's odd. You agree with much of what he says. It's true that things are not so wonderful in the the new Germany. The West Germans are arrogant. They think they know it all. People like you have become strangers in their own country. Everything from the past has been swept away, whether it was good or bad, without anyone asking if that's what the people want.'

It's sad to read that 'all the dreams from 1989 of building a better kind of GDR, creating a new kind of socialism, are long forgotten.' Fiona Rintoul gives us a picture of the hope and then the reality that many felt hit them after reunification.

I thought The Leipzig Affair was a really enjoyable, gripping read, well-written throughout. I'm really glad I read it and I will definitely be watching out for more works by this author.

Review copy received via amazon vine

Someday we'll tell each other everything - Daniela Krien

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch - German title 'Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen.'

‘I think about my own secret and realise that there are things which can be said straightaway, others need time, and some cannot be told at all.’

I was keen to read this book as I love stories set in Germany, in particular those set in the recent past. It’s the story of a sixteen-year-old girl, Maria, becoming awakened to adult life and experiences. It is set in summer 1990 and the period just after, in the GDR, which will soon be the former East Germany; the Berlin Wall having fallen, and reunification of the country fast approaching. Maria has moved in with her boyfriend Johannes, and the rest of the Brendel family, living quietly in the countryside. Maria has dropped out of school and escapes into books; her thoughts return several times to the book she is reading as the story unfolds – The Brothers Karamazov – and she draws parallels from this tale and events in her own life. One day she meets Henner, an older, damaged man, and the two embark on a passionate, unpredictable love affair.

It is a time of exploration and desire in Maria’s life, and the author captures this first passionate, at times violent, love, the need she feels for Henner, the impression he has made on her. ‘I can feel Henner’s hands – coarse, gentle, brutal, expectant – and I long for them…’ Maria is insightful enough to realise that this affair will impact deeply on her. ‘A life can be changed by a single moment.’ She is discovering her own identity day by day. ‘I’m not the same girl I once was. But who am I?’ She feels the strength of Henner’s desire for her, and it is a contrast to her relationship to Johannes now; though she thinks he loves her, his real passion has become his photography, and she things he ‘doesn’t see me any more, all he sees is pictures.’ She has a conscience; she acknowledges to herself that the lies she is telling and her actions in deceiving the Brendels are bad. She suspects that old Alfred knows everything and will expose her eventually. I felt a tension building in the story as the affair gathered momentum and I was compelled to find out what would happen. I was shocked that she had this affair and was still living all the while with her boyfriend and his family, yet I could believe it.

Just as events are tumultuous for Maria, so the country around her is unsettled and changing. The fascinating times and momentous changes in Germany then are not just a backdrop; Daniela Krien incorporates this nicely into her tale and into the characters’ lives, and it is all the more authentic bearing in mind that the author grew up in the East herself. Initially we learn via Maria that the fall of the Wall and the events surrounding it ‘went practically unnoticed here on the farm. They stared at the television pictures from Berlin as if they were from another country.’

As time moves on, there’s a moving reunion as a relative unseen for many years visits the Brendels from the West, and a couple of characters take a trip into the West too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, for the elder lady of the family, Frieda, the trip to the West is difficult and unsettling. For Maria and Johannes it is an adventure to head to Munich; only Maria’s second trip to the West. Her observations come thick and fast, impressing her, then leaving her feeling unsure about it all; ‘The sounds and smells of the West are different….I stare at people. It’s so different here, so self-confident, so assured, so hard to describe… I’m holding a tiny notebook. I’d planned to write down the things I saw that were new to me, things I’d sometimes longed for. And now I realise that everything is new to me, I’d have to write it all down: the smell of the shops, the cleanliness of the streets, the bright facades of the houses, women’s fashion, the excellent coffee, the beauty of of the women here…I don’t write down anything and suddenly my heart feels heavy.’ For Siegfried, Johannes’ hard working father, it is an enlightening, eye-opening experience to discover the different farming methods and structures in the West, and he returns to the East with his mind overflowing with ideas for improvement on his own farm.

The author has written an intimate first person narrative that drew me in to the story and held my interest. The style of writing, the spare prose, suits the tale, and the translation captures it all so well, and reads very smoothly indeed. I hope it will reach many more readers thanks to being available in English. I was intrigued to find out what Maria would do, and how things would develop. She can fall back on her unhappy mother only so much, and her absent father has caused much pain in her life. It seems unusual that she has moved to live away from her mother, but the way of life with the Brendels is happier and more structured and she grows fond of Johannes’ family, helping them and becoming more and more involved in the duties on the farm and in the shop, and also learning some of their secrets. Daniela Krien nicely portrays the happy domesticity and hard work on the farm, and there is a strong sense of place in the book..

Though not a long book, this was a very satisfying, thoughtful read, which made me pause and think from time to time. It didn’t need to be any longer, for me. I felt I got a sense of all the supporting characters, but all were just that; a well drawn supporting cast for a dramatic period in Maria’s life. I thought this was a super story and a remarkably promising debut novel, so much encapsulated into under two hundred pages that really captured the passion, excitement and discovery of love and desire in a girl on the cusp of womanhood, when emotions are heightened. Maria felt real; a dreamer, a helpful hard working girl, conflicted and flawed, lying and feeling guilty and torn, and all the more convincing for being so rounded. I would say this is definitely an author to watch. 

Published by MacLehose

Find out more here.

Thank you to the publisher for kindly sending me a copy of this novel to read and give an honest review.

This is another read for my 2013 Translation Challenge hosted by Curiosity Killed The Bookworm.