Böse Schafe

This is a first-person retrospective account of a love-story, in the voice of the author's alter ego Soja (in her communist mother's mind, the name of a fallen heroine of the Soviet workers' struggle; to every other German the name of a bean). Settled in the unfashionable West Berlin neighbourhood of Moabit after being allowed to leave the DDR in 1986, Soja falls heavily for a man she's met in the street, Harry. It's only after they've been together for a few weeks that he tells her that he's on parole after serving a long jail sentence, and has been a heroin addict. Soja and her radical lefty friends rally round to support Harry through a mandatory rehabilitation programme, although their enthusiasm for that effort wanes when Harry's show more case-worker warns them that he is HIV-positive.

It ends as we would expect, of course: Soja sticks by Harry until the end, and doesn't always get much thanks for her efforts. But this isn't a book you read for the storyline; it's all about Soja's wry retrospective digging into her own motivation and reexamining it in the light of Harry's view of things, as written down in a notebook she discovered among his things long after the event. And the background of Berlin around the time of the fall of the Wall. There's a telling scene towards the end of the book where Harry, watching TV in his AIDS hospice, sees Erich Honecker being led off to jail on the TV news and feels sympathy for him: he knows exactly what the renewed prospect of prison feels like when you've already served ten years (as Honecker did under the Nazis). show less

Kurzweilige, bisweilen spannende hoffnungslose Liebesgeschichte im Berlin kurz vorm Mauerfall. Wenngleich oberflächlich betrachtet als Sukkus nicht viel mehr als die platte Feststellung: "Werde kein Junkie und verlieb Dich auch nicht in einen - beides macht nicht glücklich..." zu bleiben scheint: Zwischendurch gibt es ein paar bemerkenswerte Sentenzen und am Ende ist man dann doch ein wenig gerührt...

Deze roman beschrijft de hopeloze liefde tussen de van Oost- naar West-Berlijn gevluchte Soja en Harry. Harry is een mysterieuze vent, waarop Soja maar geen grip krijgt. Datzelfde geldt voor hun relatie, want die verloopt ook zonder dat Soja daar iets over te zeggen lijkt te hebben. Soja wordt ook niet echt gelukkig van deze overweldigende nieuwe liefde. Dat het niet goed af kan lopen, voel je vanaf de eerste bladzijden van het boek.

Lees verder op deze pagina van mijn boekenblog.