Yo voy, tú vas, él va (original 2015; edition 2018)

Could these long years of peacetime be to blame for the fact that a new generation of politicians apparently believes that we've now arrived at the end of history, making it possible to use violence to suppress all further movement and change? Or have the people living here under untroubled circumstances and at so great a distance from the wars of others been afflicted with a poverty of experience, a sort of emotional anemia? Must living in peace - so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world - inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war?

This book, translated from German by Susan Bernofsky, was recommended by many LT friends, and I wish it were required reading for everyone. Richard, a widowed classics professor retires in Berlin, and begins to settle into an old man's routine. But the spectacle, protests, and commotion of a group of African refugees encamped in Alexanderplatz catches his attention and his curiosity. He does some research into these men and how they came to Berlin, and soon he is drawn to meet and interview them in person. As they begin to trust and befriend him, they share their stories - harrowing tales of war and terror, helplessness and violence, starvation and forced migration. The men all ended up in Italy, and after living on the streets, have made their way to Berlin. They want to work, they want to learn German (in many cases their fourth or fifth language), and they desperately worry for family left behind, but are stuck in this awful legal limbo that blocks them at every turn while ordinary Germans grouse about criminals and freeloaders and worse. Richard's deepening understanding of what these men have gone through is interspersed with reflections about his own experience - a young child during WWII, and then the years on the east side of the Berlin Wall, and the strange beginning/not beginning when the Wall fell and Germany was reunified. The history he has lived through is honestly not too different from the refugees' experience. The book is a very moving, very personal examination of the human experience, of borders of all kinds, and of the awful web of political and legal vicissitudes that ensures that the most helpless and most vulnerable can never be helped. Highly recommended.

Richard, a widowed, childless and recently retired professor of philology, becomes interested in the plight of a group of migrants living in a tent-city, (pro-immigration) protest camp in Oranienplatz in Berlin. The camp is about to be shut down by the authorities. At loose ends and with a great deal of time on his hands, Richard creates a new project for himself: interviewing, recording the stories, and teaching English to some of the African migrants, some of whom are moved to vacant space in an old-age home near Richard’s lakeside home and later to a facility in Spandau in West Berlin. It doesn’t take long for Richard’s involvement with the group to become more than an intellectual pursuit. He forms relationships with several of the men, all of whom arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean. The stories of the men are compelling and moving, although, like the character Richard himself, I sometimes had trouble keeping their individual narratives straight. For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the novel was Erpenbeck’s juxtaposition of modern German history (the persecution and extermination of the Jews, the division and reunification of Germany) with the story of contemporary migration. The novel is eminently aphoristic and quotable, and provides food for thought on many levels: historical, political, economic, religious, philosophical, social, and psychological. ( )

A man living in Berlin has just retired from academic life and has been widowed in recent years. Finding himself with a lot of time on his hands, and noticing a protest of African refugees taking place in his city's square, he finds himself curious to learn the stories of these men. One by one, he asks them to simply tell him their stories, and they do. Naturally, the more he learns, the more he becomes involved in their lives. We too become wrapped up in their stories, and ultimately his. ( )

What is it like, to be forced from the only home you have ever known by some force or event beyond your control: armed conflict, famine, fear of persecution? What is it like to leave your family behind with no idea of the fate that awaits them, or, indeed, to barely escape with your own life after seeing them murdered? What is it like to embark upon a journey that offers no guarantee of survival and makes no promise that once you reach your destination, you will be allowed to stay? Though we see or hear news reports about the refugee crisis almost daily, most of us in the West have no concept of the hardship, humiliation, and discrimination that displaced people must endure, and the official intransigence, obstructive bureaucracy and psychological scars that stand in the way of making a new life in a new country. In Go, Went, Gone, German author Jenny Erpenbeck addresses this gap in our knowledge, depicting what happens to a group of immigrants in Berlin who have arrived there from a variety of African states. The novel is narrated from the perspective of Richard, a widowed professor of Classics who, when we meet him, is cleaning out his office after retiring from his long-standing teaching post. Richard, self-sufficient, emotionally reticent, philosophically inclined, and finding himself with time on his hands, is pulled into a chaotic situation that local bureaucrats are making a botch of when he hears of new immigrants to the city staging a hunger strike—their demand: that they be permitted to work. Curious about their plight and embarrassed by his own ignorance, he begins his inquiry as any academic would, by reading, before approaching the men, in groups and individually, in order to speak and connect with them. Gradually, over many months, his empathy awakened, he inserts himself into their midst, learns their stories, their interests, their ambitions, and welcomes them into his home and his life, which becomes all the richer for it. Erpenbeck’s profound and unsentimental novel (ably translated by Susan Bernofsky) puts a face on a 21-Century human tragedy. For Richard, and for us, the lessons these young men can teach are indispensable to understanding the world we are living in as well as our own humanness. ( )

This book touched my heart so deeply. I was left thinking about it all day today. Richard, a widower, retired from his position as a university professor in Berlin and had nothing planned to fill his days. He soon became immersed in the lives of a group of Africa refugees who were homeless, jobless, and far from family or friends. He listened to their incredible stories of horror and loss of family, of physical, emotional and spiritual indignity, and of their struggle for identity in a place where they were not wanted or supported.

Richard became personally involved with many of the men and became an advocate in their struggle to become productive citizens in a country with so many contradictory rules - the injustice they suffered caused many to become hopeless - yet this is not a book of hopelessness, but rather a testimony of compassion and action. The writing was gorgeous and the book, translated from the German, gives voice to those who are crossing borders seeking safety from impossible situations, yet being further abused by callous, xenophobic governments. ( )