Book of the month 2003

© Kiepenheuer & Witsch

The characters call their promised land "Bundes", short for Bundesrepublik. During the 1980ies Sonja's family dreams of leaving Poland and living in Germany. Germany is the land of Mercedesy, of huge palaces clad in velvet, of rust-free Gardena garden tools, and generally an attitude towards life that differs a lot from the Polish: "Somehow fudge your way through life and hope for the best."

Finally, having arrived in Germany the family realises that the life of Polish immigrants brings many problems, social tensions and the experience of being a foreigner in a foreign land. Thus, the yearning memories of the archaic but nevertheless happy life in Poland remain present. Especially memories of the peninsula Hel in the Baltic where Sonja's father ran the dilapidated beach Café Saratoga. There Sonja and her younger sister Majka shared care free summer holidays and their beginning adolescence.

The focus of Schwerdtfeger's novel, however, are the intertwined difficult domestic relationships which are part of Sonja's life: There are the much loved father "Tata" whose charme and vitality alternate between the ridiculous and tragic, and mother Lilka suffering from her divorce, depression and her menopause. For Sonja, her sister Majka and her friend Jane, the process of growing up, their awakening sexuality and the dissociation from the parents' world is a pressing existencial conflict.

The author has succeeded in depicting the characters in a sincere and sympathetic manner. The reader is mesmerised equally by the sensual and direct expressiveness of the narrative sections and the crude tone of the character depictions. The text, differs from the distanced "cool" perspective that is currently so much en vogue among many contemporary young German writers.

After "Leichte Mädchen", her collection of stories, Malin Schwerdtfeger has now presented a novel that is simply a joy to read.

TD

Bibliografic Details
German	English Translation
Hardcover: Schwerdtfeger, Malin: Café Saratoga. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2001 ISBN 3-462-03018-3 EUR 19,50	Hardcover: Not available yet.
Paperback: Schwerdtfeger, Malin: Café Saratoga. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2003 ISBN 3-462-03242-9 EUR 8,90	Paperback: Not available yet.
Audio-CD: Schwerdtfeger, Malin: Café Saratoga. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 2003 ISBN 3-7857-1281-2 EUR 24,90	Audio-CD: Not available yet.