Adam und Evelyn
Adam and Evelyn
Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2008, 304 pages
To read Schulze means to become acquainted with the German scale of things. Germany is more than its capital. Schulze tames the all-consuming boredom of the provinces with formal devices that make an urbane impression. [...] The story is about a young couple. The hero is dressmaker. Self-employed. His name is Adam – actually Lutz Frenzel, but this is mentioned only at the end. He is thirty-three years old and is living in the GDR in 1989, in the house of his deceased parents. Together with Evelyn, who is twenty-one years young. She is supposed to be very pretty (her mother is a German and her father a Turk from West Berlin, who soon went on his way). She is called Evi and works as a waitress. She wanted to study art history, but was not allowed to. [...] Still, she fancies the idea of moving to the West so as there at last to enjoy life, as if life in the land of Adam could not be enjoyed. It is probably for this reason that she could not be called Eve. With a friend, she drives to Hungary. At first glance it seems that they want to go on a holiday, but they are contemplating flight. It is August 1989.
Ingo Schulze – Biography
Eberhard Rathgeb: „Die Zigarre danach"
© Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 03.08.2008
Neue Leben
New Lives
Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2005, 752 pages
The novel Neue Leben tells of the last days of the German Democratic Republic, viewed from a former imperial seat in east Thuringia. The Berlin Wall has fallen, the new unified state has not yet been achieved, and in the meantime the hero, a dramaturge at the Altenburg Theatre, is in the act of abandoning his lifelong dream of living the life of an artist. [...] The glowing core of the story is the rapid metamorphosis of a society in which personal relations, speeches and words were infinitely more important, even for practical survival, than solvency and property. This society is totally recast, remodelled into another one where money is the foundation and probably the meaning of all relations. Neue Leben is the literary document and poetic treatment of this transformation, bearing witness to its tremendous magic, its spellbinding power, its irresistible undertow.
Ingo Schulze – Biography
Thomas Steinfeld: „Diese Seele, schwarz und frei"
© Süddeutsche Zeitung, 18.10.2005
Simple Storys. Ein Roman aus der ostdeutschen Provinz
Simple Stories
Berlin Verlag, Berlin 1998. 303 pages
In February 1990, a bus drives to Assisi. The GRD is still a sovereign state; in Straubing, its citizens receive new papers. They are carrying eggs, coffee, bread, apples and tinned meat with them to Umbria in a plaid bag from Thuringia. At their destination, they marvel at themselves: ‘Suddenly, you are Italy and have a West German passport’. [...]Ingo Schulze, born 1962 in Dresden, narrates his novel in scenes that give the impression of being stills from an unshot film. Each scene has its characters, but there is no central character. No human being, at any rate. For the hero of this novel is a state of mind. It is the state of mind of the East German provinces, the casual calamities at the chinks of a pacified world.
Ingo Schulze – Biography
Thomas Steinfeld: „Ein Land, das seine Bürger verschlingt"
© Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24.03.1998
