Book of the month 2003

© Picador

An unemployed art historian, dressed in a wetsuit and flippers, waddles through a pedestrianised shopping precinct, distributing advertising leaflets : this is only one of the bizarre and tragicomical episodes in the daily life of East Germany following the "Wende", told by Ingo Schulze in his novel Simple Stories. It is set in the "east German backwater", whose inhabitants tell their stories of failing relationships, job problems, of the difficulties of adapting to a life that has utterly changed following the fall of the wall.

Take, for example, Mr and Mrs Meurer who, on their first package holiday to Italy, bring a bag of provisions and tinned food with them. Or, Dieter Schubert, a teacher in former GDR times who had been spied on by the Stasi, who now spends his time fishing for heavyweight carps and reading "dirty books" to a "paid tart". The reader also meets Martin Meurer who sees his father again in Munich for the first time since he fled from the GDR in 1969, and who presents him with a pair of oven gloves crocheted by himself.

Schulze's book is characterised by his unsentimental, unsparing focus on these individual fates and their witty and detailed description. Each of the 29 chapters tells a complete episode from the perspective of different protagonists. There is no narrator who provides the links, and the connection between the scenes only gradually reveals itself to the reader. These scenes form a mosaic picture of daily life in East Germany which, in miniature, reflects the big social upheavals experienced by its people.

Like his earlier book "33 Moments of Happyness", reviewers and readers in Germany alike greeted Schulze's Simple Stories as a successful post-"Wende" novel with enthusiasm.

Bibliografic Details
German	English Translation
Hardcover: Schulze, Ingo: Simple Storys : Ein Roman aus der ostdeutschen Provinz. Berlin Verlag, Berlin, 1998 ISBN 3-8270-0051-3 EUR 19,00	Hardcover: Not available anymore.
Paperback: Schulze, Ingo: Simple Storys : Ein Roman aus der ostdeutschen Provinz. dtv, München, 1999 ISBN 3-423-12702-3 EUR 9,00	Paperback: Schulze, Ingo: Simple Stories. Picador, London, 2001 ISBN 0-330-39270-0 EUR 12,30
Audio-CD: Not available yet.	Audio-CD: Not available yet.