Customer Reviews

Heroes Like Us

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Originally I gave "Heroes like us" to my stepfather, because I thought it was about the term of history he has lived in, and so he would be interested in a witty story about East Germany. But when he read he was so enthusiastic about it that he could not give it away. I immediately took the book and did not wonder any more about his reaction. The slightly ironic style of Thomas Brussig took possession of me. The action mainly takes place in the area where I was born and so I could comprehend how "hero" Klaus experiences his surroundings. But I think for any other reader this book will also bring perfect entertainment and better understanding of "life in the DDR".

For anyone interested in life on a day to day basis in the DDR, this is the book. An insight into the working of the infamous Stasi, in a very humorous tone.

Brussig's Heroes Like Us is hugely entertaining as a novel and it is also highly educational: it throws open a gigantic picture window on a culture that we "cold-warriors" largely had to imagine for ourselves. East Berlin, East Germany, the Stasi. So many secrets, so much mystery, so much inhumanity. But as we might have guessed, the Stasi was too big and pervasive to be anything but cartoonish. In terms of per-capita employment it was the largest secret police force the world has ever seen and it influenced everyone's life on both sides of the Wall. An East German Portnoy*, Klaus Uhltzscht is the son of a mid-level Stasi functionary and a public health engineer mother. Klaus tells his story to a reporter from the New York Times (rather than to a psychiatrist) and we spend the entire novel trying to figure out how Klaus can lay claim to having caused the fall of the Berlin Wall. The journey is fascinating and fun, and it is also irreverent and obscene. It's an entirely new perspective on late-GDR East Berlin and its inhabitants, who in the end are just heroes like us. The translator gets a lot of credit and his job was so obviously difficult that I will try to find the original in German** and compare notes. I haven't read much German since college, but I think this will be worth the effort.

* Portnoy's Complaint

** Helden wie wir

a fine newish book from germany.... brussig has a similar bite to philip roth... facing real issues especially the german fear of being german....

I laughed from page 2 to the last. Brussig is an imaginative and talented writer that truly knows the meaning of satire. If you like dark humor and cynicism, then this book is for you.

Be aware that if you can't handle "penis talk" then you definitely should not read this. The German version is equally as good, and likewise the translation is quite accurate.

I started studying Germany a few years ago, including the DDR and some of its history.

This book is an entertaining fictional story set in East Germany in the 1980s for the most part. Considering the typical american doesn't have any idea what is was like "behind the iron curtain," and because I am interested in the DDR, the setting for the story was extremely well-suited for me.
Besides that, being a liberal young male helped also, as the protagontist Klaus explains his every thought on growing up, puberty and misunderstandings about those subjects that are gradually straightened out as he gets older.
His obsessive thoughts and little over-explanitory details get a bit tiresome as the story progresses (the story is written in the 1st person), but I was laughing a lot while reading this one. Very entertaining and unique.