Book of the month 2009

© Suhrkamp

Two sisters, different as chalk and cheese, the older one rational and lenient, the younger one aggressive and nagging, are travelling through Bulgaria, a country despised by them, the former homeland of their father. Their Bulgarian driver, Rumen Apostoloff, is always keen to praise his country, but he falls on deaf ears with the younger sister, the first-person narrator, who prefers to sit in the back seat of the Daihatsu, ‘because I rather spread my poison from behind.’ At first the reader is in the dark. Who are the narrator and her sister? Why do they hate their father and Bulgaria, and why do they travel there? Who is their father, and why is he dead?

‘Apostoloff’ by Sibylle Lewitscharoff transmits only a rudimentary story. Instead, the book provides a description of thoughts and sentiments of the narrator, about whom hardly anything is told, not even her name. She depicts her impressions of her current travels, remembers in daydreams her childhood in Stuttgart-Degerloch, her parents and their relatives and friends, and the trip from Stuttgart to Sofia, which Tabakoff, a family friend, arranged to transfer the mortal remains of 19 dispersed relatives and friends from all over the world to their Bulgarian homeland. In an almost investigative manner the reader has to pick the utterances of the narrator and piece them together like a mosaic. Bit by bit a vague image about the past of the Exile-Bulgarians and the emotional relationship of the narrator with her family emerges. Not unlike the reader the narrator is also in a search. In her memories the early deceased father is only ‘a character without voice and weight’. So she uses the travel through her father's homeland as an opportunity to remember. But her hate against the parental authority is ingrained. Cynically she summarises: ‘Father-Hate and Bulgaria-Hate are intertwined and are stubbornly kept on a slow boil.’ Bulgaria mainly appears as a shattered land spoiled by industry and tourism and now ruled by the mafia. That stubbornness disappears only gradually ….…

Beside the intricate description of the past and current happenings, the special appeal of the novel ‘Apostoloff’ lies mainly in the language itself. The character of the younger sister is reflected in her narrative style, which is characterised by snappish-spontaneous and sardonic-ludicrous expressions. At the same time the narrator strives for the most appropriate expression of her thoughts and dreams. The result are extremely unusual descriptions, neologisms, also chunks of words or even silence: ‘- - - - - - - - - - - - - - word-blackout. […] Dirt. Coercion-Dirt. Power-Dirt. Nation-Dirt. All the words emerging are good for nothing.’ With this unconventional linguistic usage, the author, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, attains a deep black and very angry humour, which requires a good comprehension of the German language.
But ‘Apostoloff’ is not merely an entertaining novel. The first-person narrator deals with her own past. The reader finds out more and more details about the life of the father and the other Exile-Bulgarians. The author, who slips autobiographical elements into the novel, doesn’t become melancholic but battles against this with hate and humour which seem inseparably intertwined. Hence remembering turns into a merciless reckoning with parental authority because ‘Is is not love that is able to keep the dead at bay, […] only an indulgently cultivated hate.’

‘Apostoloff’ won the prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2009.

KH