My highly astute friend Erin sent this book to me. "Go, Went, Gone" by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German. It is a story about a recently-retired widower living in what was formerly East Berlin. He becomes intrigued by the plight of a group of African refugees. His journey to understand these men proves to be a metaphysical blossoming for him. He contemplates their individual flights from war and terror, and through them he faces the excruciating position of what to do when you literally have nowhere to go. It's a hard read, emotionally. There were a couple of literary tropes that I could have done without, but I did appreciate how the disjointed flow of his thoughts reflected his formal professorial approach to the very messy human situation. And it was certainly an education for a non-European to glimpse the complications created by so many borders, so many languages, so many laws. I definitely recommend.
No comments:
Post a Comment