The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice

A wonderfully wild and unruly book that brings together elements of feminism, fairy-tale magic realism, steam locomotives, fundamental physics, and hard-line socialist realism, with multiple narrators collectively undermined by a subversive layer of playful irony. You never quite know what to take seriously, or what's coming next, with stand-alone stories, poems, travel writing and factual articles interwoven with fragments of several different stories about several different sets of characters that might or might not overlap, including a series of long excerpts from an unpublished novel by Morgner (which had in fact been suppressed by the censor a few years earlier).

The central conceit is that the trobadora Beatriz, Comtessa de Dia, on show more realising that 12th century Provence was not yet ready for a woman who writes poems eroticising men, has done a deal with Persephone and obtained eight centuries of Sleeping Beauty time from her. The money runs out in May 1968, and it is a couple of surveyors building a new autoroute who are the first to penetrate the thorn hedge and wake her. She has fun at first, aided and abetted by her dragon-below-the-waist sister-in-law, the Fair Melusine, but soon comes to realise that soixante-huit hasn't led to anything and that France is still not the feminist paradise she was hoping for, so she moves on to a small country in the East where she has heard that women are treated as the full equals of men. In Berlin, she meets the single mother and S-Bahn driver Laura Salman, and the two form a writing partnership based on Beatriz's notion of trobadora and minstrel. Then Beatriz goes off in quest of a unicorn called Anaximander...

Morgner uses this complicated framework to explore many different aspects of gender relations in the modern world, especially the discrepancy between legal equality and social equality (women might have the same career opportunities as men in theory, but they still end up doing most of the childcare and housework), and attitudes to women's role as creative artists and in scientific research (a female physicist finds she needs to believe in her own magical powers if she is going to combine science with childcare responsibilities; a female nutritional scientist finds it useful to be able to change sex on demand...). There's a lot of ostensible praise for the wisdom of the East German model of society, but quite a lot of that is subtly undermined by comments elsewhere in the book. Socialism is clearly good for women - or at least it would be, if we were doing it right.

Very entertaining, full of interesting period detail about life in the DDR, but definitely not just a period-piece. show less

Beatrice de Dia, Provençal noblewoman and trobadora, is awakened from eight centuries of enchanted sleep by a highway construction project in 1968. Soon disenchanted with modern France, a land so unenlightened that it offers no career opportunities for a female troubadour, she makes her way to the GDR (East Germany), which she believes (and will never stop believing) is a socialist paradise for women. In (East) Berlin, she meets Laura Salman, a trolley driver and single mother who reluctantly agrees to fill the role of Beatrice's "minstrel." In addition to introducing a little magic into Laura's life, in the form of "the Beautiful Melusine," a wish-granting half-woman/half-dragon, Beatrice provides surprisingly reliable childcare. show more Nevertheless, before long Laura decides to get rid of the trobadora for a while, by sending her on a quest to capture a unicorn.

This vastly entertaining "montage novel" includes, among many other things, scientific reports, quite a few chunks of a previously suppressed Morgner novel, and poetry in Morse code. This is (among many other things) a feminist novel that is truly important and truly hilarious.

A glossary in this edition explains many of the acronyms, terms, dates and names unlikely to be familiar to an English-language audience. I have no doubt a great many other references went over my head, and I sometimes found myself wondering, in sections that were political/patriotic, if Morgner was being satirical, or sincere, or both.

While reading, I kept thinking, "This book is amazing! I can't believe I never heard of it, or of Irmtraud Morgner!" Thus my first LibraryThing review: my tiny way of making sure other people hear about this amazing book and writer. show less